The pair has appeared on three tracks together: 2009’s “Forever” with Drake and Kanye West as well as 2010’s “Drop the World” and “No Love”
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Even Lil Wayne gets nervous before calling up a superstar like Eminem.
In an interview with The New York Times for a feature on the 50th anniversary of hip-hop last week, Weezy spoke about feeling “scared” about the prospect of asking Eminem to collaborate for the first time.
“I was scared, actually, when I called Eminem for a song,” Wayne, 40, told the outlet. “That is a monster.”
“He must have the same thing I have with words. Like, we can’t get them out of our heads. Every meaning, every aspect of them. Things that rhyme, we hear it,” continued the “A Milli” rapper. “I already know the gift and the curse that he has. And I love to hear the way he puts it together.”
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At the time, Wayne had already collaborated with fellow rappers including Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Drake and Nicki Minaj — but as a fan of Eminem, it felt different to approach him.
The rappers first collaborated on Drake’s 2009 track “Forever,” which also featured Kanye West. Their first song as a duo was “Drop the World” from Wayne’s 2010 Rebirth album, and they reunited for “No Love” from Eminem’s Recovery album the same year.
His daunting call to Eminem proved to be worth it, as all of their collaborations have become hits. “Forever” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Drop the World” reached No. 18 and “No Love” landed at No. 24 — with all four songs eventually going multi-platinum.
Elsewhere in Wayne’s NYT interview, he spoke about his admiration for JAY-Z. “To me, Shawn Carter, Jay-Z, was the god of words. He could’ve rewritten English books,” said the rapper.
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“I was introduced to Jay by listening to Biggie. ‘Lucky Me,’ from In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, I learned backward and forward. I put it in songs, and I actually start off every show, still, saying words from that song.”
He then quotes lyrics from “Lucky Me”: “And I swear to everything when I leave this earth/it’s gon’ be on both feet, never knees in the dirt/you could try me, [expletive]/but when I squeeze it hurts/fine …”
Wayne continued, “And what’s crazy is we stop the music on that part and the crowd sings the rest of it with me as if I wrote that. But that’s all Jay.”
