Eminem surprised Saturday Night Live fans earlier this month when he popped up during a spoof of his own “Stan” video.
Starring SNL actor Pete Davidson, the skit featured a deranged Santa Claus-obsessed man name Stu who’s begging for a Playstation 5. When letter after letter to Santa goes unanswered, he hops in his car and attempts to take matters in his own hands, only to meet his demise.
During a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Eminem was asked about the skit and he revealed he was impressed by Davidson’s delivery — but wasn’t so sure he’d be into the idea at first.
“I remember they sent me the lyrics to it and I was reading them on paper and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if this is going to be that good,’” he explained. “And then the weight, when he said it, I was like, “Holy shit.” He said it so good that he sold every single thing. You can’t… First of all, everybody’s raps look terrible on paper, right? Because you don’t necessarily know unless you’re a rapper yourself.
“You don’t necessarily know where… Even if you are, you don’t know where they’re going to hit the beat at, what pocket they’re going to choose. Yeah. And he was in a ill pocket. He was like, he was kind of going and he’d go a little faster and then he kind of slowed down so you could catch what he just said the first time you hear it. Yeah. His delivery was for sure really on point because it was not what I expected when I saw it. I was like, ‘Man, this is actually really good.’ The whole thing was great.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Eminem broached several other topics mostly related to ’80s and ’90s Hip Hop — from Run-DMC and Rakim to Naughty By Nature’s Treach and 3rd Bass.
“Hip Hop, I feel like in its infancy stages, as much as it’s evolved and it’s went through all these transitions and shit, I feel like a lot of these kids won’t understand the experience of Hip Hop in its infancy stages,” he said. “And everyone … the younger kids are going to … everyone’s going to think their era is the best era, but this really was to me … the golden era of Hip Hop was the best era to me just because it was so new.”
Dove deep into my cassette collection with @zanelowe! #Athomewithapplemusic @AppleMusic https://t.co/PArzzdxQnb pic.twitter.com/F4XOuSVis1
— Marshall Mathers (@Eminem) December 30, 2020
Eminem continued, “You’d never heard it before. I know that I saw and heard a lot of people say that it wasn’t going to be anything. You know what I’m saying? Like it wasn’t going to last or whatever. Here we are what, 40, 50 years later? It’s crazy. And it’s the biggest music. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the biggest genre.”
Watch a clip of the interview up top and revisit the original “Stan” below.