Trivia
- “Fast Lane” was released as the EP’s lead single, peaking at No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 66 on the UK Single Chart.
- The song’s producer, , initially didn’t have Eminem in mind when he made the beat. He originally intended it for and even sent him the beat.
- The song is featured in the 2011 film Real Steel and on its soundtrack album, along with the Eminem song “’Till I Collapse.”
Words from Eminem and Royce Da 5’9”
“Royce da 5’9“ had beat CDs that he was getting from various people at the time, mostly for his own shit. I was getting my own beat CDs for ideas. I was just getting beat CDs from Shady, the A&Rs at the label. I was just going through them and I think that was one that was on a beat CD somewhere.
I liked it and I wrote the hook. But when I wrote the hook I was thinking of someone else to sing it. I didn’t want to sing it. So I got Sly Jordan, one of Dr. Dre’s artists. Sly writes his own shit, and he’s sick with the pen, melodies, and with the delivery, everything. I just heard his voice on it.
So it was just like, “Yo, what if we put Sly on it?” Dre was coming in town to work on Detox, but in between that we were like, “Let’s do some stuff for this other record.” We work on music basically five days a week. There’s always something.
“Eminem pulled the beat up and asked me what I thought about it. I thought the beat was crazy and he was like, “You trying to do something with it?” I was like, “Yeah, why not?” So he took it in one room and I took it in another room.
I just so happened to get done writing before him. I ran my first rhyme by him and he was like, “Okay, well shit, you gotta go first.” So I laid mine down while he wasn’t in the room and he came in and heard how I ended mine.
Em told me how he was gonna come in on the first line of the second verse, so I actually changed my last line to run into his first line so it would make sense. After that, it was the same thing with the second verse.