Samples and Interpolations
Trivia
- “Yellow Brick Road” serves as Eminem’s in-song response to the “racist tape” — an early recording of him using racial slurs that was uncovered and publicized by The Source magazine’s then-CEO, , in November 2003. During the height of their feud, Scott, better known by his rap name , held a major press conference to unveil the tape as part of a highly publicized effort to destroy Eminem’s career.
- The song’s background harmony vocals were generated using Vocal Planet, a vocal library produced by Spectrasonics.
Words from Eminem
“Me and a couple of my other white friends [did have African medallions]. […] I’d be tryin’ to explain to my black friends who didn’t really feel like I should be wearin’ it, like, “Look, I love this culture, I’m down with this.” […] I remember I had the Flavor Flav clock. It was fuckin’ huge. And me and my boy are in matching Nike suits and our hair in high-top fades, and we went to the mall and got laughed at so bad. And kinda got rushed out the mall. I remember this dude jumpin’ in front of my boy’s face and bein’ like, “Yeah, boyyyeee! What you know about hip-hop, white boyyyeee?!”
I’d go in my man’s basement and do goofy freestyles, and we’d call ’em sucker rhymes, and the whole point of the “[racist]” rap was to be as wack as possible and warm up before we actually did songs that we wrote. And that ended up just happening to be the topic that day. I just broke up with a black girl, and the rest of the story I address on the album. I’ve got a song called “Yellow Brick Road,” and it basically explains the whole story from beginning to end, how the tape derived.
I don’t know [how The Source got their hands on the tape]. The tapes kinda floated loosely. I never had control of them. It was something we just did and forgot about.
I was angry at myself. I couldn’t believe that I said it. The tone that I’m using, you can almost tell that I’m joking, but the words are coming out of my mouth. If there was never no Eminem, it wouldn’t be so shocking, but given who I am and what I stand for today, then what else could be Eminem’s Achilles’ heel?
When the shit came out I owned up to it. I apologized for it. But I can’t keep apologizing for something I said when I was sixteen years old.
In our generation the word “nigga” is used by black and white kids as an expression of love, but even now you won’t say it. Yeah, it’s just a word I don’t feel comfortable with. It wouldn’t sound right coming out of my mouth.