Black Thought talks “Yah Yah” with Eminem.
One of the great MCs Black Thought did a new interview session with KXNG Crooked on ‘Crook’s Corner‘ where they talked about all the Hip-Hop Greats and more. At around 54:00, Crooked asked Black Thought about his recent collaboration with Eminem on ‘Yah Yah‘ off his album ‘Music To Be Murdered By‘ and how did it all come up.
“Yah Yah” from Eminem’s new album Music To Be Murdered By features Royce Da 5’9,” Black Thought, Q-Tip, and Denaun Porter, and was produced by Porter himself. Eminem takes a few jabs at Machine Gun Kelly in the song. He raps: “I’m a sight to see, but you can see from the ring I’m wearing / Me and this game, we got married already / Had the prenup ready, f**k, all that’s ever seen her belly / She barely was three months pregnant / Bi**h had to give me a baby, we named it Machine Gun Kelly.”
The new episode of “Crook’s Corner” featured a deep and thought-provoking conversation with one of the hip-mainstays, hop’s who recently appeared on Eminem’s album “Music To Be Murdered By.” Naturally, Crook wanted Black Thought to walk us through the recording process so we could learn how “Yah Yah” came to be. Black Thought is certain that it was Royce da 5’9″ who first introduced him to Tariq.
Black Thought pays tribute to and acknowledges the cultural significance of the eye patches worn by Slick Rick and Hex Murda, two legendary figures in the Hip Hop genre.
Hip-hop aficionados mistook the referred-to “bad lieutenant” for Malik B. (A.K.A. M-Illatant), who created the renowned hip-hop group The Roots with Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson in the late 1980s.
Before departing in 2001 to focus on his solo career, he was a part of the band’s first four albums. For several subsequent albums, like Game Theory in 2006 and Rising Down in 2008, he made a comeback as a featured artist.
“How ‘Yah Yah‘ happened? That was all Royce.” said Black Thought. “It’s been great to have Royce as the comrade. We just got different kind of mutual respect. High-level respect from one another as artists. Anytime we get together it’s competitive but it’s competitive in a way that’s gonna bring out the best in artists. No matter if we are in the studio, we are on a stage, we send us back and forth via text. We have done a song together for one of Royce’s joint called ‘Rap On Steroids.’ When it came out, I think the last, maybe bar and a half, he had Em say like two rods on that joint. And that had everybody on hype like ‘yo, Em’s going to do a verse on the remix of ‘Rap On Steroids’ remix and its gonna be Black Thought, Em and Royce,’ that was something that people were buzzing about but it never came to be.”
Black Thought continued, “Royce played a more integral role in his most recent Em album. He was in the studio working with Em and it’s not like Em had never known what’s up, it’s not like I was never on his radar as an artist but he had never really really dealt with my evolution in the way he did during this recording process. I feel like that’s because Royce has shown the sh*t. He was like ‘this is the joint he did with Statik Selektah, this is the joint he did with Benny The Butcher.’ He showed Em a bunch of features of mine and when Em seen them he was like ‘we gotta get him on a record.’”
“We all want to be on a record with Eminem. We all want to be on a record with Hov.” said Black Thought. “These are the people who are on top of our field. That’s the type of exposure that you can’t buy that sh*t. So this was a call like ‘yo it’s that time’ so you gotta get busy and that being said, I was not having my verse, I was not done, my time was up (Laughs). But they were like its done we gotta mix that sh*t, everything else done and I was like ‘alright I guess you can roll with it.’ But I was still trying to tweak it make it just as best as I could because I felt like these are whole different demographical people who aren’t familiar with me but they familiar with Eminem and that’s gonna be the introduction to what it is that I do. There’s a whole demo of people who you know are from that date can put two and two together and realise that Black Thought from The Roots is Tariq from The Tonight Show.”
Eminem collaborates with fellow emcees Royce da 5’9 on “Yah Yah.” “, Black Thought, and Q-Tip for a posse cut over featured artist dEnAun’s peppy boom-bap instrumental. The rappers pay respect to inspiring hip-hop veterans and demonstrate their lyrical ability during an almost five-minute length.
Royce da 5’9 is a member of a different rap group than the other featured musicians “is a member of Slaughterhouse, Q-Tip is a member of A Tribe Called Quest, Black Thought is a member of The Roots, and dEnAun is a member of D12, where he was also known as Mr Porter and Kon Artis.
It’s been more than a decade in the making for the two to collaborate on a single tune. The Roots backed Eminem as a band during his Grammy performance of “Lose Yourself” in 2003. Eminem also collaborated with The Roots on “Won’t Back Down,” off his 2010 album Recovery, and Black Thought and Marshall collaborated in 2009 to rap LL Cool J’s “Rock the Bells” in celebration of his honouring at VH1’s Hip-Hop Honor Awards. Em, Tariq, and Mos Def (aka Yasiin Bey) collaborated on a cypher during the 2009 BET Hip Hop Awards presentation (embedded below). That cypher, like many others, featured Gang Starr’s DJ Premier on the turntables.
Watch the full interview below and Eminem part at around 54:00.
