DJ Breeze details Eminem vs Otherwize in the 1997 Rap Olympics.
As we all know, before Eminem became “Rap God,” he had to grind hard in the 90s, participating in rap battles and selling CDs in his car. Eminem even participated in the 1997 Rap Olympics, where he sees the defeat in the finals, against rapper Otherwize. The battle is included in the new documentary “Where We’re From: Rise of LA Underground Hip Hop” which is created by DJ Breeze and DJ Bonds. In a new interview with HipHopDX, DJ Breeze recalls the time when Eminem went up against Otherwize at the Red Lion Hotel in Los Angeles.
“Eminem held his own as well,” he says. “The battle with Wize had to go extra rounds because these dudes were going at it. The battle had also a slight racial overtone to it. Obviously ’cause there were few white rappers at the time. So it definitely started to take on the feel of Black versus white. I will say this, the battle between those two guys was phenomenal. It had to go extra rounds because at one point it just seem like they were so evenly matched.”
“Even though you could feel the crowd wanting Otherwize to win, you couldn’t deny Eminem’s skill set. But I do feel confidently 100 percent that Otherwize did win the battle. Did he blow them out of the water? No, he did not. But he did win. It also adds a kind of lore to Otherwize’s name considering Eminem bought all the footage so nobody could see the battle.”
The epic battle is included in the documentary film Where We’re From: Rise of LA Underground Hip Hop, which has been put together by Element co-founders DJ Breeze and DJ Bonds, both of whom were key in founding the underground Hip Hop culture. Otherwize and Eminem square off in the video, with Em spitting lyrics like, “I got so many ways to diss you that I’m playful with you/I let a razor split you until they have to staple stitch you … Damn, all your white jokes just backfired.”
“At that time, it was rare to see white rappers, and we all knew that was also a reason why Dre was working with Em besides his skills as an MC,” says Breeze. “To be quite honest, these out-of-towners came in and really underestimated these L.A. MCs. Why? Because at that time, Los Angeles’ underground Hip Hop scene was still just getting warmed up. So, I think these guys came in and thought they could just run over these guys. But MC’s here in our city quickly let it be known that this was not gonna be an easy battle.”
The Detroit rapper also addressed the final battle loss in Rock The Bells Radio, which is included in the documentary. “I don’t remember one line he said, but he was screaming in my face and I’m like, ‘Oh sh*t,’” Em said. “And everybody’s like, ‘Oh, he’s killin’ him, he’s killing him,’ but I had already choked. So it didn’t really matter what the guy did. And I lost. So I was like, ‘F**k’.”
DJ Breeze then recalls how the loss ends up Eminem getting a deal with Dr. Dre. “I think it was just a couple of months after the Rap Olympics that we heard the song ‘My Name Is’ and the rest is history. But I do know this, Los Angeles MC were certainly taken seriously after that battle,” he says.
In a recent interview, Wendy Day also revealed how she helped Marshall get the Aftermath Deal after the 1997 Rap Olympics. “After Twista, Eminem was on my radar,” said Wendy. “His bars were crazy. I knew he was gonna be big but I didn’t know he was gonna be as big as Eminem got. Nobody knew. When I was shopping for his deal, the reason I did Rap Olympics is I could not find a label who would sign a white boy who could rap. They just kept playing him to the left. The real funny thing is when I first started shopping his deal, I burned CDs in my home of his demo (meaning writing songs on the CD) and I dropped off packages to every label. Something that went wrong while burning CDs was that I burned blank CDs. All of his demo CDs were blank. I did not know that.”
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“We tried getting him to write up in The Source but that didn’t help. We did Unsigned Hype, that didn’t help. At that time, music was going from being lyrical on the underground like backpack-type rap to Gangster and mainstream. More like bad boy-type rap. So I decided to do an event called ‘Rap Olympics’ to bring attention and press to real lyrical guys to show the world that they are still there and to showcase Eminem cause he is lyrical and it worked. It got him signed to Dre, to Interscope, to Aftermath.”
During an interview with Mike Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast in 2020, Eminem revealed how the event led to a deal with Dr. Dre “I went to the Olympics, got all the way to the end, and then lost to the last guy. The guy who won was Otherwize, from LA. It was a local thing. They had a bunch of crowd support there. When I rapped, he went and hid behind a video screen. He walked away while I was rapping. I didn’t have anyone to battle! I’d never been in a situation like that before. I went through a lot of people to get through to the end, and then he walked away while I was rapping. I’m like, ‘What the f**k do I do?’ I was devastated.
In an interview with Mike Tyson on his podcast, Eminem also revealed that Wendy Day helped him with participating in 1997 Rap Olympics. “I met Wendy Day, and she put me on her battle team. She had this battle team that was at the event in LA called the Rap Olympics, and she put me on that team. I went out to LA, and we got in that battle at the Rap Olympics, went all the way to the end and lost again to the last dude. And I was super discouraged, I just got evicted from my house, had to break in through the back of the house. The dude that we was paying rent to, he wasn’t paying the rent with it. So one day, this is literally the day before I go to the Rap Olympics. Thank God for Wendy Day because she paid for my plane ticket.”
“I went to the Olympics, got all the way to the end, and then lost to the last guy. The guy who won was Otherwize, from LA. It was a local thing. They had a bunch of crowd support there. When I rapped, he went and hid behind a video screen. He walked away while I was rapping. I didn’t have anyone to battle! I’d never been in a situation like that before. I went through a lot of people to get through to the end, and then he walked away while I was rapping. I’m like, ‘What the f**k do I do?’ I was devastated.”
“I come off stage. I’m like, that’s it. It’s over for me. This kid from Interscope, Dean Geistlinger, walks over and he asks me for a copy of the CD. So I kind of just chuck it at him. It was The Slim Shady EP. We come back to Detroit, I have no f**king home, no idea what I’m gonna do. Then, a couple weeks later, we get a call. Marky Bass said, ‘Yo, we got a call from a doctor.’”
In his rap story to NY Times on Hip-Hop’s 50th anniversary, Eminem said: Tuesday night I would go to the Ebony Showcase on Seven Mile. Wednesday night would be Alvin’s. Friday night would be Saint Andrew’s. And then Saturday would be the Hip Hop Shop.
“Proof was hosting open mics at the Hip Hop Shop, and they started having battles. The first one that I got in — it was actually the first battle there — I won. And then the second battle, I won it again. I realized maybe I should try to go out of state. So I would hop in the car with friends and drive down to Cincinnati for the Scribble Jam.
“Back then, you had to go off the top of the head. If you didn’t you’d get booed offstage. So I learned from watching Proof that you can freestyle, but just have a couple lines in the back of your head, a couple of punchlines you know you want to use, and then freestyle around that.
Coming up in the battle scene was the greatest thing to happen to me because I knew what lines were going to get a reaction from the crowd. That’s what I would focus on. So when I got signed with Dre, I was trying to translate that to record, to get that reaction. I would picture the listener sitting there and what lines they might react to. I just used that as a formula. Like, “How you gonna br–stfeed, Mom?/You ain’t got no ti-s.”
[VIA]
