Eminem: ‘Macklemore Is Dope’
For Eminem‘s fellow rappers, getting in his sights can be highly dangerous: Just ask Everlast and Benzino, or what’s left of them. But Slim Shady can also be unexpectedly generous to his peers, as revealed by his unabashed endorsement of Macklemore in this excerpt from his cover-story interview with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt:
Look back at Slim Shady’s life in photos
Have you heard “Same Love”?
Have I heard what?
“Same Love,” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis?
What song is that?
It’s, um, the gay-marriage song.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard Macklemore’s whole album.
What do you think of it? He’s probably the most successful white rapper since you.
Uh, he’s really dope. Macklemore is, yeah, he’s dope.
You won respect in part by being technically amazing – I’m not sure everyone in hip-hop sees him that way yet.
I think there’s very technical shit that he does. He’s a really good songwriter, too. Conceptually, the shit he does is pretty fuckin’ incredible.
Macklemore was psyched, to say the least, when he read Eminem’s comments in his copy of the magazine. “I really want to Instagram that quote, but Ryan told me I shouldn’t,” Macklemore tells Rolling Stone. “I think I still might. What meant the most to me out of all that shit, is what he said about the technical stuff, and the songwriting. Because I think a lot of people do, for whatever reason, think that there’s not a technical skill set to what I bring to the records. And to have Em validate that – I mean, that’s like the technician of technical rap. So that was super fresh to me. And obviously he’s Em, he’s one of the best rappers ever.”
Additional reporting by Simon Vozick-Levinson.