With the 15th anniversary of Shady Records approaching, Eminem and his gang are putting out Shady XV, a two-disc set that will include several of the label's greatest hits.
Paul Rosenberg, Em's manager (and frequent punching bag on earlier albums) helped get the label going as an offshoot of Interscope in the early 2000s.
He recently sat down with XXL to discuss Shady XV and the label's history.
"One day we were sitting talking about what we're gonna do this year," Rosenberg said. "We've started rolling out the Yelawolf album, that's gonna continue this year, and Slaughterhouse is still working on their project. So we were like, alright, we want to get something out this year 'cause it's the 15th anniversary of the label, and then it dawned on us that this would actually be the 15th project we'd be releasing, which just sort of lined up nicely.
"So we thought it would be a good time to go back and do a retrospective on the 'greatest hits,' quote unquote. And they're not gonna all just be hits like 'Lose Yourself' and 'In Da Club,' these massive songs, but some of the sort of favorites of the fans and ourselves as well. And then also the chance to put out some new music, as well, because we just want to keep releasing stuff. So there's gonna be a compilation of new music from the artists on the label as well."
Asked why the label came into being, Rosenberg pointed to Eminem's desire to get his buddies – D12 – into the mix.
"Well the first thing Marshall wanted to do was to give the guys that he came up with a place to be able to release music, and he was eager to do that from the beginning," Rosenberg said. "So after he was established and he had the ability to do that, he went back to the guys that he came up with, namely the guys from D12, and said, 'Hey, let's put the group back together and release it on my label.'
Besides D12's multi-platinum debut, Devil's Night, the label also had a mega-hit with 50 Cent's debut album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin', in 2003.
"It was game-changing," Rosenberg said. "We kind of knew what we had in 50, and when we brought him to Dre to see if he wanted to do it with us, Dre immediately got it as well. We all knew it was gonna be big and it was gonna be sort of a land shift in the culture because of what he was doing, but we didn't know just how massive it was gonna be."
Another nugget from the interview: Rosenberg anticipates Eminem sticking around the music game for a long time, no matter the capacity.
"We don't plan on stopping anytime soon," he said. 'Marshall's always said that if [he] ever does decide that [he] doesn't wanna be in the front, then [he's] going to definitely always sort of focus on producing and releasing music. And don't make that sound like he's doing that now, because he's not. But it's something that we're planning to continue; there's no end date for us, it's an indefinite thing as far as we're concerned."
Shady XV drops on Black Friday, Nov. 28.
