Wendy Day recalls how she helped Eminem at the start of his career.
Wendy Day, one of the helping hands to Eminem at the start of his career, talks about how nobody wanted to sign Eminem. She is a mentor and consultant for hip-hop artists, including the likes of legendary 2Pac, Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Master P, and more. Wendy founded the non-profit organization Rap Coalition, helping artists navigate the industry more advantageously. Wendy Day organized the Rap Olympics in 1997, where she also invited the young Marshall, which helped him earn a deal with the Interscope. The 59-year-old recently sat down with B High Atl for an interview on The Forward Culture where she talks about the whole process.
“After Twista, Eminem was on my radar,” says 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.”
“I took them to every label and only one label called me. Which means, only one label listened to that CD and it was Rich Isaacson’s Loud Records. He called me and said: ‘Yo, did you mean this CD to be blank?’ It was so embarrassing. I hat to burn new CDs and take them back to everybody but they all passed. Because at that point of time Milli Vanilli just been stripped off their Grammys and Vanilla Ice was not doing as great as people wanted him to in the black community and for white rappers, it was very hard and labels were like ‘no, we do not want to be the one.’”
“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.”
Last Year, she acknowledged the Detroit Rapper for showing her love in the podcast with Mike Tyson, and also named him as one of her Top 5 Rappers. Last year, Eminem told Mike Tyson on his podcast this tale: 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.
Eminem did not win the Olympics, but he did meet Dean Geistlinger, who was so pleased that he sent Eminem’s CD on to Jimmy Iovine, who played it for Dr. Dre. After that, the rest is history.
Wendy Day elaborated on this on Rap Coalition’s Instagram in response to Eminem: In 1996, I took your demo to every label. I tried like crazy to get you a deal for months. Because you were white, in that time and era, I couldn’t get any label to even consider signing you. I had JUST done Twista’s joint venture at Atlantic and was extremely well connected then, and I never expected it to be soooo difficult to get someone so talented (you) a deal. I created RapOlympics to showcase YOU, and to ring national attention back to lyricists in a climate of gangsta rap (reality rap… I hate term gangsta rap).
Wendy arranged the 1997 Rap Olympics, at which Eminem, who was asked to perform by Day via his demo tape Infinite, signed with Interscope Records. Among others, Day has worked with Lil Wayne, B.G., Juvenile, the Hot Boys, C-Murder, Fiend, Do or Die, Boosie, Webbie, David Banner, Ras Kass, Trouble, and Young Buck. Day’s clients have sold over $1 billion in sound recordings in total.
Day now heads the music consultancy business PowerMoves, which advises artists and independent record labels on alternatives to major label sponsorship. PowerMoves can also help bands find direct investors other than record labels. Day penned the book How to Get a Record Deal, which was revised in 2016 and is available as an audiobook narrated by Slick Rick.
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