Yelawolf talks about his time at Shady Records, friendship with Eminem.
Yelawolf recently sat down with Riff Raff for a live session where he talks about his time with Eminem and Shady Records, which he left last year. “Marshall’s the Homie,” says Yelawolf. “For the 6 years I was with Marshall, he showed nothing but respect, and hats off to Marshall because it takes a lot of balls to allow an artist like me to do a record like ‘Love Story’ under Shady Records. So my hats always off to Shady and Marshall for allowing me to spread my wings and do something creatively that, otherwise some of the labels might have been scared to do so I got nothing but love for Shady Records, always.”
“Do you and Em have some unreleased material,” asks Riff Raff.
Yelawolf continues, “I wish we did. Everything that Marshall and I recorded actually came out. Those sessions were very private, I don’t have a single photo of us working in the studio. For the 6 years, I was there was very private so the memories are just my own. It’s just something that I passed down as a story to my kids and to people interesting in hearing about it.”
“Some of the vibes very super super good because I’m so stubborn. You’d imagine me coming up at the studio, having an ideas and maybe at some point even disagreeing with some of the creative direction and it’s really hard to do to look at Marshall and say ‘I don’t know about this, I have a doubt about this’ and he’s like ‘yo trust me!’ This allowed us to built something special but it took a lot of heart to say what I don’t agree with but I trusted his creative vision.”
“There was one record that I really really didn’t believe in but the rest of the crew believed in it so I put it on blast that I was like ‘yo Marshall, if you want me to do this you gotta give me a drive. Intro for this song. So at the beginning of the song ‘Good Girl,’ Marshall gives me a drive.”
Despite his ability to establish himself in the creative process, Yelawolf believes that talking to someone with such iconic stature is difficult. “I’m a fan still,” Yelawolf continued. “It’s hard to set out of being a fan and saying, ‘I really need to make a decision for Yelawolf, right now.'” “It had a lot of f**king unnecessary outside influence outside of Marshall and I,” Yelawolf said. “It was like, ‘Oh Marshall signed a white boy.’ Everybody wanted a piece of that f**king project. Producers were coming out of the woodworks, writers were coming out of the f**king woodworks, and all these songs were being pitched to me and Marshall.”
This isn’t the first time the two have worked together; we heard them on Yela’s most recent album, Radioactive, for example. “Throw It Up,” on the other hand, had a very different vibe than “Best Friend.” The two Shady MCs perform frenzied lines filled with double-time flows on the tune, which also includes Gangsta Boo. “It’s the perfect record for him and I for this album,” he added. “Because its me standing my own ground creatively and where I’m at on it creatively, and Marshall being Marshall. To not rap — I thought it created a really cool vibe, and no one’s heard us like that musically, and content-wise no one’s heard that, either.”
Watch the interview below.
