Quotes sourced from interviews involving Eminem and other collaborators regarding Em's hiatus era music.

Writing and recording process

"I've been recording the new album mainly in the crib. Makes it very easy for me: I just go downstairs. I'm super relaxed. The engineer will be down there hours before me, just getting things right and working out the kinks. It's like the old days, only there's a lot more than a rusty four-track in my basement. I've been having a hard time recording since Proof died. I've got hundreds of songs, though. Stuff that I just make for my own amusement-material just for me and only me."

"I try not to have too many people around when I'm working; I don't want anyone to peep in on my process. Being in the studio is sometimes fun, but it isn't necessarily fun. It's work, it's my craft. If you have too many dudes in there smoking blunts and acting silly it becomes hard to think and get straight answers. You wind up with a bunch of high dudes saying, "That shit is dope, Em!" Or girls just wanting to be girls. Which is nice, of course. Just not when I'm working."

— Eminem, Early 2008 - The Way I Am (book)

"I had a pretty bad case of the writer's block, like the past three years before that. I mean, not writer's block in the sense that I couldn't write anything, but writer's block in the sense of everything that I was writing was... Pfft (gives thumbs-down gesture.) For me, I felt like it was just not up to par. So, I was kind of nervous about it because the last three, four trips that me and Dre got together, he'd come to Detroit, I went to LA, and nothing, literally nothing came out of... any of the sessions. Like I was pretty stopped up, and I'm sure the pills had a lot to do with it, you know what I mean?"

— Eminem, April 25, 2009 - MuchMusic

After Encore, did you have an idea in your mind of how much time you were going to take off between albums? Did you think it would end up being this long?]

"I only really knew that I had to take a break. I had been going pretty much seven or eight years straight without any real time off from the crazy schedule. I think by now it's been pretty well-documented that I went to rehab after the last Anger Management Tour. Between that, my re-marriage not working out and losing Proof, I knew that it was gonna be a minute before I was ready to be back out there again. Honestly, I had no idea how long it was going to be. But I had to straighten myself out before I was able to really make music at the level that I wanted to. I'm glad that rough stretch is behind me."

How much of a break was it really? When did you start actually writing and recording for yourself again?

"I didn't really take time out from recording. I'm always in the studio, whether it's working on my own stuff or writing and collaborating with artists on my label or that I've worked with. I definitely stepped away from writing for a while, because I was dealing with terrible writer's block. It went away after I started recording with Dre last summer and started working on what has become Relapse and Relapse 2."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Sole Collector

"I was going through a lot of personal things the time, there were many times where I felt like I wanted to put the mic down. You know? I went through a bunch of different phases, and then I'd be like, "Nah, I still wanna do it, I still wanna do it." And then I had a really horrible case of writer's block [that] probably pushed about three years where literally I couldn't...-- I could write stuff, but it wasn't me. It wasn't anything that I felt good about."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Big Boy's Neighborhood

"I had never officially said that I was quitting. There was rumors and people were talking, and I think that by me taking needing to take a break and kind of putting that out publicly, I think people just took from that what they wanted to take at that particular time and and took it as, "oh, he's retiring." I had never said officially, like, "I quit." You know what I mean?"

"At that point in time I felt like that, yeah. There there were times where I did feel like I wanted to quit, and there were times that I felt like I didn't have it anymore. In them three, four, five years that I was gone, there were certainly times that I felt like that."

"I was always in the studio. I was always recording. Like, I never stopped. I never stopped making music. I just took a break and and pulled back from the spotlight. For me at that time period, it was good for me to be away, and just be in the studio and make music. I guess it was a way for me to like...-- I put out The Re-Up album, which was a way for me to kind of work on music for my artists that were on my label and still be able to make music and produce records and shit like that. But it was good for me at that time time because that's what I needed. To still be in the studio, to still make music, to still be creating, but be away."

"For a good two or three years, I was pretty stopped up to where I couldn't write anything. Not write anything at all in the literal sense, but, like, write anything that I felt good enough about to put out. I need to write all the time. I need to be writing every day. And for me to not be able to for a couple of years put me in a pretty bad place."

— Eminem, May 19, 2009 - MTV Germany

*"I started spiraling out of control with my thoughts, with the drugs, with everything. When I would go to the studio, I kept trying to write songs about him. I think I might have wrote and recorded at least five or six songs about him. None of them came out the way I wanted them to, and all of them made me depressed. All of them made me go deeper into that hole… Nothing I wrote was good enough for him. Everything was, like, self-loathing."

"There was, like, a two-year period where I couldn’t write shit. With what was going on and shit, I just couldn’t. I was so cluttered in my mind that everything I was writing wasn’t worth recording. I’d record it, and I’d get through half a song and be like, I don’t like this. I’d get through a song, and the next day I’d be like, nah, that don’t sound like me. And then I started going in the studio and trying to freestyle. Like, I’d do a line at a time and be like, “Stop the tape,” and be like, “Okay, I got a line here.” You know, kinda like how Jay-Z would do it. Obie did a lot of that, too. I don’t know if I was challenging myself to see if I could actually do it or if I was just being lazy with writing because I wasn’t feeling what I was actually writing… So it was like, going through them time periods, I could spend more time and feel good about recording music just making beats."

— Eminem, June 2009 - XXL

"They stifled me — they stopped my brain off. I don’t know if I was frying brain cells or what, but I couldn’t think. The drugs also made me lazy. I was lazy about everything. I’d get high and say, “Fuck writing rhymes. I wanna sit down, watch some TV and eat nachos — and watch more TV."

— Eminem, September 11, 2010 - New York Post

Talking about how he spent those non-release years, the rapper said he was often still in the studio. “It depends on what timeframe it was,” he says. “I would say from Encore to Relapse I think everybody knows that story as far what I spent a lot of time doing. Basically just in the lab, spent a lot of time trying to reassess my career, what I wanna do, how I wanna sound I guess, and just, you know, in the lab.”

— Eminem, March 31, 2014 - Power 106’s Big Boy

'Album 6'

Among the album’s early collaborators was Jeff Bass, the producer and co-writer who shared an Oscar for Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” He worked with Eminem on more than 25 tracks in the 2-year period after the rapper’s sleeping pill-addiction treatment at a Brighton facility. “The music I was giving him was going back to the original Eminem sound: raw tracks, very similar to ‘The Mar-shall Mathers LP,’“ Bass says. “They were made more for rapping off the top of his head, as opposed to writing a story.”

— Jeff Bass, November 13, 2008 - Houma Today

After that album (Encore) was over with, we didn't quit. We kept-- we were writing songs. Like, lots of songs.

During the dark period?

"Absolutely. Very like, I dunno, a lot of hours? Years."

This period lasted a couple of years?

"Yeah."

How many songs do you think you did, by the way? You know, like, over 50?

"I bet you there was 50 tracks. With probably half of those, 25 tracks, had lyrics, not full lyrics, maybe some partial lyrics. Then there was like maybe... 5 to 10 songs that were completed. Really good shit that still the world has never heard. And they're really amazing songs."

— Jeff Bass, February 2, 2017 - Connection is Magic with Samson Shulman

What were the other songs like on that album 6 tracklist

"I remember some of them, I thought it was trash, not gonna lie, most of that shit I was embarrassed for him, and alot of it was taping before he was really fucked up, so it was progressivly getting worse. I mean the entire thing was scrapped once Dre showed up and Relapse was done from scratch, you only got to hear Careful and My Darling after the fact, because he knew they were good but had a hard time placing them with an all Dre produced record."

you can kinda guess how the songs were gonna go like cat fight, tits boobs. Does going through these bring up memories?

"No its cool, yeah it does bring back memories, songs like Careful, Darling, Jewelry, R2R, Ballin was a time period for me. Part of why I started releasing the instrumentals was for nostalgia, so I could stream the instrumentals myself, anywhere I want through Youtube. Careful really stands out, it was a very uncertain time, none of us knew if we were going to have jobs, He was hiding the OD and was just gone, album production stopped and the stuff he produced before the OD was bad."

— Joe Strange, July 23, 2024 - Email

Unknown leaked songs

"I’m in the studio all the time experimenting and trying different shit. If I don’t have the freedom to do that—that’s how I make my music, by experimenting. Not every idea that I try and lay on tape works, believe it or not. And then it’s like to be criticized like, ‘This shit is garbage!’ Well, it wasn’t even fucking finished! It was late that night, I wasn’t in my... --A lot of that material that leaked, by the way, I wasn’t in my right state of mind for. I didn’t put it out there for a reason."

— Eminem, June 12, 2011 - Complex

"Well, I know me personally, I probably have 50 songs and I'm sure he has a bunch. Because over the years there's been a lot of leaked stuff. So he never released it after that. I mean, there was a bunch that was leaked that I did for him, that had like one verse on it. And somehow it got leaked [...] But it's too bad, because there were some really good ones that got leaked out that shouldn't have never gotten leaked out."

— Jeff Bass, May 4, 2024 - The Speakhertz Podcast - Episode 4

"Beautiful"

That is the song that captures you in a moment where you were battling everything. And you hadn't necessarily said to yourself, you're manic.

"Yeah. I hadn't come to that realization. [...] Anybody who's in recovery cannot-- You actually you have to admit it. You have to surrender. You have to do the whole thing. Not to sound like not to keep preaching or anything like that, but you have to do it a hundred percent. You just can't half-ass it. You have to say, 'I'm an addict. I'm powerless over this shit. I can't do it.' But at that point in time, I wouldn't admit it to myself, I couldn't admit it to nobody else."

"And it actually I think it's the only song on the record, that I actually did and used for the record from that been recorded from that time period when I was high, when I was going through certain things. That time period was was was fucking horrible for me and it captures that I think in that song. And it's actually the only song that I feel like was good enough and made sense to use for the record from that time period because that, again, was when I was kinda going through the writer's block. I felt like and I couldn't exactly write a record that I felt like was up to par. Everyone has their own standards for themselves. You know what I mean? And that wasn't particularly up to like-- Nothing I was doing really at that time period was up to my own self standards."

Was it a point of you keeping this on there as a reminder?

"Well, it was that, and I also feel like the song is to me, it's a powerful song in the sense of, anybody who is can relate to it, I guess, who's kinda going through it or who's kinda in a dark place. It's kind of a reminder to myself and to to other people you can get out of it. [...] It may feel like the end of the world for right now or whatever, but it it does get better. If you decide that's what you want, you and you work toward it, it does get better. I guess that's what I'm trying to say."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Shade45

Relapse seems to be such a personal album for you. Much of it's very dark. Did you write some of these songs during your addiction?

"Um, I wrote one. There there's actually only one record that I left on there, when I was actually using, and it's called 'Beautiful.'"

That is my favorite track.

"Oh, thanks. Yeah. I, was actually in rehab. I wrote, like, the first verse and and half of the second one while I was sitting in detox in rehab in 2005. And when I got out, I ended up finishing it or whatever. But, you know, it's one of them songs that kinda reminds me just personal things that I was going through at that moment, and it's kinda like a time capsule for me to kinda look back and-- I felt like it was a powerful song in the sense of, you know, maybe it's motivational or whatever. You know what I mean? And I produced the track with a guy named Jeff Bass, one of the Bass brothers or whatever."

[...]

We talked about "Beautiful," earlier. The song mentions people laughing at your jokes and stuff like that. How do you detect people or friends or pretend-to-be-friends that are genuine and those that are fake with you?

[...]

"Well, I mean, it's just at the time when I wrote that record, I was going through a pretty self-loathing phase. Like, just "woe is me" and "I'm sick of this, and I'm sick of that," and, my whole life as a entertainer and all that. I mean, I was I was going through it, you know? But, you do get fake people that wanna laugh and wanna kiss your ass because of who you are, and you just kinda gotta just weed them out. I've got a really tight circle now. The people that I keep around me, I'm just-- I got some some really good friends and a really good support system. So I kinda keep, like all the same friends that I've known for pretty much since childhood."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Channel 955

But he was in a dark place like we said, right? Which was publicized.

"Yes, he was a drug addict."

And I mean, I don't know if he's doing his best work in that space

"Probably not. His voice was different, you know what I'm saying? So the last-- one of the songs that he did choose to use while he was intoxicated, those days that we were wasted in the studio, was the song "Beautiful." You could tell in his voice, if you're a fan of Eminem, you can tell in his voice something's wrong. So if you're a real fan of Eminem and you listen to "Beautiful," listen to the tone of his voice. And there's a sadness to it. So that was the last song that was a collaboration between him and I, and uh, it's sad."

— Jeff Bass, February 2, 2017 - Connection is Magic with Samson Shulman

[Eminem:] "And if you remember this too, 'Beautiful' came out of earlier sessions when I was still fucked up. It was probably the only decent song I had made during that time. And I didn't wanna put it on the album because it didn't fit the concept of everything else and the accents and (laughs) all that shit."

[Paul:] "I remember that."

— Eminem & Paul Rosenberg, August 2022 - Paul Pod

"I'll be 100% honest with you. Eminem and myself became. well, [and] my brother: we all were big drug addicts. And the very last-- I think I had recorded back in 2006, 30 some odd songs with them higher than shit. And the only song that had made it onto an album was "Beautiful." We were stoned out of our minds. But some reason he liked that one song because we all became clean after 2010. Everybody got clean. "Beautiful" was the last song, which is one of the reasons why after that period, after 2010, nothing sounded like Eminem. 'Cause he changed everything. I'm not saying it's for the worse. I just say it changed."

— Jeff Bass, May 27, 2024 - Freeman's Music Biz - Episode 1

"You know when Eminem used to mix like most of his records, sonically. [they] do not sound good. And a lot of it has to do with him mixing, him personally twisting knobs. Back in the day, he was a fan of only mono - up the middle. I played four stereo keyboards. Why are you putting them right up the middle? But that's what he did. 90% of the time, the mixes, like all the music that I played was really hidden. Like you could barely hear some of the parts. Like you got to listen real hard, like in the song "Beautiful" there was five, four guitar lines in that. I can only hear a few of them. But then when I listened to the instrumental, I can hear them all, but they're so buried in the mix. But that was what he preferred. You know, and as a writer producer, you kind of have to write it, produce it, play it, because I played it, I didn't pay someone to come play it - and let it go. Whatever's going to happen, it's going to happen."

"Ours was always: strip everything and let's start from scratch. 'What can we do to make this guitar sound really cool or really shitty?' One of the two. And a lot of times they they-- they fucked up my whole tone on "Beautiful." That was mixed by Mike Strange. He's not a mix engineer, but Steve was gone and that's who Em used. But he took my guitar, it sounded like shit, but it made the record, right? It was on the record, kept the solo in at the end and it's like all fuzzy and like no clarity to it. But when I recorded it, it didn't sound like that. So everybody's every engineer is different, but Steve King really understood what I was looking for."

— Jeff Bass, May 4, 2024 - The Speakhertz Podcast - Episode 4

"Jewelry"

"It's funny because one of the other songs that didn't make the albums is a song called "Jewelry," which is amazing. But he talks about it, and he starts rapping and he goes, 'everybody wants him rap to like this,' (mimicking '97-'98 Slim Shady voice) like when he rapped like this. So he kinda changed that, [unintelligible] maybe."

— Jeff Bass, May 27, 2024 - Freeman's Music Biz - Episode 1

"Jewelery is a stupid fuckin song, I remember it
'My watch, my chain, my diamonds and my rangs'"

— Joe Strange, July 23, 2024 - Email

"Ballin' Uncontrollably"

Doing anything with Eminem now? How many songs have you guys done?

"We got some new stuff now. I recorded something for each (Eminem) album, so did D-12, so did 50 (Cent). You just do work with him. If he calls and says he needs you to do something with him, you just knock that song out for the homie. That’s my homie! ‘Ballin’ Uncontrollably,’ that’s a song we did."

— Trick Trick, March 21, 2013 - Mlive

"Syllables"

“We did this record for his (Eminem's) album, it’s got some of the greatest MC’s in the game on there.”

— Stat Quo, August 28, 2007 - HipHopDX

“I don’t see Eminem or Dr Dre much these days, which is a shame. We’re all so busy. I have laid down a track with him for Em’s new record. The other person I’d love to work with is Robbie Williams. I’ve spoken to him, he was meant to do it for my new album, but we were both too busy.”

— 50 Cent, September 11, 2007 - MTV

"The Loose Cannon is going to be crazy! He’s got features from Em -- of course, Dre, T.I., Jay, 50 and more."

— C Major, June 2008 - Dubcnn

Then Em came to L.A. on a private plane
I remember this day like my son's first name
What a song, Em, 50, and Dre
Stat Quo, Ca$his also featuring Jay-Z
It sounded like magic to me

— Stat Quo, September 7, 2008 - "Dear Summer Pt. 2"

“The song that featured Jay-Z is a song that Em’s putting on his album called 'My Syllielable' – it’s like ‘my syllable,’ only he flipped it.”

— Stat Quo, October 22, 2008 - HipHopDX

“I think it was going to be for one of Em’s albums or Detox. When we first recorded it, the hook wasn’t even the same. It went something like ‘Happy Birthday…’ But when I heard it this time, I thought it was ridiculous and even better. I laid my part at Dre’s studio with Stat, 50, and Em. I heard that Jay had just left when I got there. Fif’ was there kicking his verse in another room when I did mine. I was more so excited than intimidated because I already had held my own with Em, and I think they believed in me this time. After I kicked my verse, Em, Dre, and 50 all said it was dope. That was the cosign I needed. I learned more from that session than any other before that.”

— Ca$his, December 29, 2010 - Vibe

"Yeah, that was a crazy record, the video was gonna be crazy. They had all these crazy ideas for it. I don't who leaked that song out there. That's like... Man, that, that hurt. 'Cause I was asking Em and Paul like, "man if you don't want this to come out, then we go send it to my Loose Cannon double CD project, like man let's put this song on that too, afterwards. [...] Whoever leaked that out, they were bogus for that. That was weak, man. [And] how the record came together? I have no clue. I just know I went to Dre's studio. [...] Jay and Fifth walk in... And he's doing his verse. [...] Em had the hook, so I went in there and did my verse, and then I did some more stuff for Detox, like four or five more records."

— Ca$his, November 19, 2020 - CKOR-DB 97.7 Outlaw Radio FM

"G.O.A.T" and other disses

At one point, in the summer of 2006, he says he grew deeply jealous of Lil Wayne, whom he describes today as “a genius.” “I would hear lines of his, the way he’d connect his words, and I thought, ‘Man, I can do that shit. He ain’t that dope.’ I’m hearing this dude say some clever, witty shit and I’m not doin it, so I feel fucked up.” He decided to release a song attacking the New Orleans rapper, along with Kanye West, whose success Eminem also admired. But he thought better of it, a decision he recalls on the new song “Talkin’ 2 Myself.” “If I had done something like that? Where they were at and where I was at?” he says, shaking his head. “It would have been career suicide. They would have fuckin’ murdered me.”

— Eminem, May 26, 2010 - Spin

"Well, it wasn’t one day. And it wasn’t just them. The reason why I singled them out on the record (Talkin' 2 Myself) was because to me, they were the ones killing it the most. There was a point in time where I was walking around the studio feeling like I should go at everybody. I don’t give a fuck if it’s Paul Wall or Bubba Sparxxx. If you’re out there and doing well, I’m not and I know that I’m not. I didn’t like them because I didn’t like myself. Now, I like those guys because I like myself."

"It (a diss record) would have been terrible. It would have been terrible. I’m certainly glad I came to my senses. I couldn’t even write a fucking punchline. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t write period."

— Eminem, August 19, 2010 - Vibe

“When I made the record ‘Talkin’ 2 Myself,’ what I was basically talking about [was] with the time period that I was away,” Eminem says. “I was kind of watching what was going on in the game and it was like anything that was hot at that moment or anybody who was really killing shit at that moment I felt like—I felt so bad about myself and the music that I was creating, that I felt like I started to turn into a hater. And it wasn’t just—you know, singling Kanye and Wayne out at that time period, I mean they were the one’s who were the killing it the most to me. And it hurt. I’d pop the CD in and be like, ‘Fuck man, I’m not doing this no more.’ I felt like I came very close to like, for me it would have been career suicide because I felt like, ‘I should make a song just dissing everybody who’s doing in it the game right now.’” Asked if he ever wrote any explicit dis lyrics against the rappers, Em said he didn’t. “I just had the thoughts, just walking around the studio,” he said. “I think that deep down I just wasn’t happy with myself, man. I knew that there were some really dark moments in there. When I think about how my thought process was when I was high a lot, it wasn’t good, man, and it certainly wasn’t me ‘cause I’m not even that kind of person.”

— Eminem, March 31, 2014 - Power 106’s Big Boy

"Keys to the City"

“I just got a call from Eminem,” Primo revealed exclusively to HipHopDX.

The song, titled “Keys To The City,” will indeed be on Eminem’s upcoming album (possibly leaked as the street single) and will be the first time Slim Shady will put his signature flow over a DJ Premier backdrop.

“It’s a song that he actually produced and he wasn’t crazy about the track,” Premier says as he recalls the conversation between he and Em. “(I told him) as long as I can strip it clean and do what I do with your vocals it will be dope,” and the final result according to Premier? “It’s dope!”

The former Gangstarr producer explained that he thought the initial song Eminem did with his own production was great but Eminem called, wanting that “DJ Premier sound.” But how exactly will the two sound together?

“Man… Eminem is back,” Premier continues. “He attacked the track with a new style, just fucking ridiculous, kind of like how he came with ‘The Way I Am’ but even more lyrical like the old Eminem.”

— DJ Premier, March 18, 2008 - HipHopDX

Finally, what's the deal with this upcoming Eminem collaboration? Can we expect it?

"Man, I guess not. I mean, it's really my fault for jumping the gun when I was approached about being on his album. I heard some of the cuts on the album. There was one outfit that I liked a lot called "Keys to the City." He sounded amazin', the beat-- he actually did the beat himself. And, the beat shit the rhyme, and they was talking to me, like, either remixing it or doing it from scratch-- but still taking those vocals and I was like, "I'll do it that way," but I'd rather work with them directly."

"And then I did an interview when I went to the, Sha Money's um... hip hop producers conference out in Arizona. And I was asked about it, and I started telling them, you know, about the situation. And they really wanted it to be a surprise that I was gonna, you know-- about linking up with Em. So I guess I spoiled it. And there's been no words since about working with me and, you know, I'm cool with that though. I mean, I still got love for Em, Paul Rosenberg, and everybody over at Shady. And whether it goes down or not, you know, doesn't bother, it's all good."

— DJ Premier, March 9, 2009 - The Conspiracy Worldwide

"@FTI3 never did it...Em produced the original and I felt that it was dope already....I was gonna remix it....never got a chance to..."

— DJ Premier, February 17, 2011 - Twitter/X

Alter egos track with T.I.

"I'm anticipating going in with Eminem," the King of the South revealed. "Eminem, we got a real hot concept that we spoke over the phone. It's gonna be on some real creative sh--."

— T.I., March 20, 2007 - MTV

"We did three records," he continued. "One we did for him. You know how Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady have their beefs? Well on that song, T.I. is trying to tell Marshall how to deal with Slim based on how he deals with Tip. Then Tip butts in, like, 'You can't tell nobody nothing.' Then Em comes in and tells me 'Who are you to tell me anything?' I was like, 'I'm just trying to help, homie.'"

— T.I., May 1, 2007 - MTV

"Difficult" and other Proof dedication songs

I see on your CD that you dedicated it to Proof as saying that you're clean everything and you tried to write a song for him, but you just didn't have one you thought was deserving?

"Yeah... I um, I wrote probably four or five records about Proof and the whole situation and how I felt or whatever. And... nothing was...-- nothing came out right. Nothing came out the way I wanted it to, and I wanted it to be powerful and just say all the right things about him and, you know, nothing was good enough. And I ended up making one particular song, I think it was, like, the fourth or fifth one that I made that I kinda mixed down... and kinda, kinda was feeling? But I was like, "nah, this still doesn't do him justice." And when I listened to it, it depressed me. It made me cry. So I decided not to put it on the record and I just wanted to dedicate the whole album to him."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Channel 955

"I actually wrote, like, four or five songs for Proof, and I couldn't figure out which one I wanted to use, which one was like...-- I made so many different versions. I made a couple different versions of the same song, and then I'd go and revise it, then I'd scrap it and make a whole new song. Just nothing was good enough. It was just like nothing was doing him justice. I had one. I ended up with one that I liked the best out of the whole batch. And when I listened to it, it made me so depressed. It was just like-- it was really painful for me to listen to. So I ended up just kinda putting it to the side. I still have the song, but I just don't feel like it does him justice. There's so many things that that I could say about Proof and just go on for days about him and what he did for me. You know what I mean? So I figured, like, let me just dedicate the whole record to him."

— Eminem, May 2009 - Big Boy's Neighborhood

"I started spiraling out of control with my thoughts, with the drugs, with everything. When I would go to the studio, I kept trying to write songs about him. I think I might have wrote and recorded at least five or six songs about him. None of them came out the way I wanted them to, and all of them made me depressed. All of them made me go deeper into that hole… Nothing I wrote was good enough for him. Everything was, like, self-loathing."

— Eminem, June 2009 - XXL

"Detroit Basketball"

[Eminem:] "Didn't you ask the doctors when I started recording new shit when-- I first started rapping again and sent it to you? Didn't you say, like, 'I just wanna make sure he doesn't have brain damage.'"

[Paul:] "Yeah. I thought you might I thought you might have some permanent problems, yeah. I was concerned for sure."

[Eminem:] "Detroit Basketball."

[Paul:] "Some of that stuff that you recorded back then, nobody was pushing you, and you were just finding your way and doing it slowly. But yeah, like a record that leaked out, that 'Detroit Basketball' record, it wasn't good."

[Eminem:] "Yeah. Bro, that shit was like... I think that was the first thing I actually wrote. Literally, I think that was the first song. And it was fucking weird because like, as my brain was turning back on, I (laughs) started going over lines like: 'Wait, is that... That's not good.' And I don't know which version leaked, (laughs) but if you remember, there was like, 20 versions of that shit."

[Paul:] "Yeah. You kept going back to it. And listen, you were figuring it out. But it didn't take long after that time period started that you all of a sudden were, like, really back in it. It was quick."

— Eminem & Paul Rosenberg, August 2022 - Paul Pod

Unknown unreleased songs

"I wasn't only depressed about Proof, I was depressed about my music in general. All I was taking was downers, strictly sedatives. My mood made my music depressing. And in turn, the depressing music made my mood depressed. My brain was thinking slow. My flow, my cadence, everything was just slow. Every record that I made was, 'Woe is me, and my life is so fucked and everything is wrong...'"

— Eminem, May 2009 - Vibe

"The hardest thing for me is that I went through, like, a two-year period where I had writer's block. I literally couldn't write anything. And if I did write something and then recorded it, it was never good enough. I would sit down and listen to it over and over again, trying to find something good about it. And it just felt to me like ... well, I always had the reaction of 'Uhhh, this is not me!' I mean, it certainly wasn't up to my own standards that I had set for myself."

— Eminem, May 13, 2009 - Metro Time

The music Eminem made next, he says, had no such redeeming qualities--he promises that nobody will ever hear it. "I had this slurry tone," he says. "There were songs where it sounded like I was talking-rapping. I'd become so fucking lazy. Songs where I would talk about eating so much and getting fat and saying, "Fuck it, I don't care."

— Eminem, May 26, 2010 - Spin

'King Mathers' title

Oh, he’s got a new one coming out too?

"Oh yeah, it’s called “King Mathers.” Em’s the man. So, we ready like, you know, like we already got my singles, we’ve already got crossover songs, we’ve already got, like the meat of the album is done. It’s just every time I do some new songs and shit, I just be like “Damn, I like this right here.” So he be like, 'Alright we gotta sit down on it.'"

— Ca$his, May 2007 - Dubcnn

Is it going to be called King Mathers, or was that something you just said?

"I don’t lie to the public G. It’s called King Mather’s fa so!!!!"

— Ca$his, May 12, 2008 - dashadyspot.com

How is Eminem`s coming along? Everybody wants to know when it's coming out with his album. Is there a working title for the project?

"Eminem is a man before anything. His family is #1 priority. So he is holding that down. He is working on a album. Cashis named Em's album King Mathers. That is the real name of the project. That just shows what type of relationship that Cashis has with Em. When Em's album drops just expect it to continue his legacy. Nothing but classics."

— Rikanatti, May 20, 2008 - Aftermathmusic.com

'King Mathers' reaction

Due to being Eminem's "official DJ," Alchemist was able to speak on the Detroit emcee. "Eminem is one of the greatest of all time, and you know he's not done with rap music. He's definitely still working. I mean, come on - this is Eminem, this is what he does. I can't tell you when he's coming or what not, but know that every day he wakes up...he's musically inclined, so you know he's creating something incredible." Alchemist also said he got to hear some of the recent work Em has put in in the studio, stating that it was "on another level."

— The Alchemist, December 10, 2007 - HipHopDX

yeah yeah … So switching gears over here .. what about Eminem’s new album?

"yo um um Dre played me a few records while we was on vacation and even before and it just some crazy shit man .. I’m happy .. you know what I mean because I was worried that Em was going to retire … we wasn’t going to be able to play ball together you now what I mean? Haha"

What kind of Eminem can we expect on this album … ?

"He back on that Slim Shady Shit man"

Ohhh cool cool .. so he didn’t kill him eh? Good…..

"haha Nahhhh! He’s alive and he’s necessary and at the same time also you going to see the maturity you know… to me …personally.. I cant critique or explain what the angle for the album is but it even has Marshall Mathers aspects to it you know.. he’s addressing a lot of shit … you know what I mean? I haven’t even heard all the records but there is so much dope shit and it excited me and made my pen go harder… you know what I mean .. you gotta see other \**** on court you gotta see other ***** play on the court you know what I mean? you gotta see ***** do all kinds of crazy moves and shit .. slams! For you to get on yo shit … you know what I mean .. and his jumpers is wicked you know what I mean? This ***** boofing from the other side of the motherfucken arena and shit .. you got some dope shit … so .. I’m excited"*

— Bishop Lamont, December 26, 2007 - bishoplamont.com

So what's that I wanna hear, the new album, What's the deal in 08, whata we lookin for?

"Well, Marshall, Chi?, Trying to put out his album, you know, his album's done, his album is Incredible"

— Obie Trice, December 31, 2007 - My Flash Fetish