Eminem worked with 2Pac's estate to put together Loyal to the Game, which the celebrated rapper spoke about with Paper magazine for their "Nowstalgia" issue. The Detroit emcee also revealed that it was 2Pac that inspired him to use more emotion in his music.
"Whatever he was rapping about, it was urgent. If it was a sad song, it'd make you cry. But there were a lot of different sides to him: fed-up, angry, militant, having a good time. His spirit spoke to me because it was like you knew everything that he was going through, especially when he made Me Against the World. You just felt every aspect of his pain, every emotion: when he was happy, when he was sad. His ability to touch people's lives like that was incredible."
He added, "Tupac was the first one to really help me learn how to make songs that felt like something."
Eminem also spoke about how grateful he was to work on 2Pac's posthumous album, which he thanked the rapper's mother, Afeni Shakur, for letting him contribute to the project.
"When his mother, Afeni [Shakur], let me produce one of Tupac's albums -- the Loyal to the Game album -- I wrote her a letter thanking her for letting me do it. You wouldn't be able to tell the 18/19-year-old Marshall that he would ever be able to get his hands on some Tupac vocals and have that opportunity. It was such a significant piece of history for me and so much fun. I'm like a kid in a candy store; going nuts with the fact that I'm putting beats under his rhymes."
Source: Paper Magazine
