Eminem has penned a new essay on his adoration and genius on the music from one of his musical icons - Tupac Shakur. Drawing from his experience as a kid and a young man with the opportunity to work with the "California Love" rapper's music, Mathers, writes about what Tupac's discography meant to him and the brilliance captured within each single.
Written in Paper Magazine, Eminem recalls the first time he ever heard Tupac. The Detroit rapper was just 18 or 19 at the time, hearing a Pac verse Digital Underground's "I Get Around." The piece that really moved Em was Me Against The Word, which Mathers, "would probably put that up against anything as far as a classic hip-hop album goes."
"He was taking things further than a lot of rappers at the time -- pushing it to the next level as far as giving feeling to his words and his music."
There was something about Tupac that made him special. He was versatile and he had an ability make you feel something, which was different from other MCs at the time who had potent pens and deliveries, but maybe didn't always make you feel something.
"The school I come from growing up, we spent a lot of time studying rappers, everyone from N.W.A. to Public Enemy to Big Daddy Kane to Kool G Rap to Rakim to Special Ed, taking all these bits and piece from each one. Tupac was the first one to really help me learn how to make songs that felt like something."
"But when you make songs like Tupac did, songs that feel like something that feeling never goes away."
He wraps up the full essay with a poignant four word sentence, "It was true genius."
Read the full essay here.
