Eminem
Photo: MTV News

Mixtape Daily Special Report

Eminem has been a beast since his demo tape. We all know that. He's told us the good, the bad and the disgusting in his life and never held back any punches. He throws haymakers on the mic, from guest collaborations like "Off the Wall" with Redman and "Renegade" with Jay-Z to the album cut "Marshall Mathers." He's one of the best to ever to do it, and he's made a return to spotlight with his new LP Relapse.

In honor of King Mathers coming back, we're coming double-fisted. First, we have an exclusive, vintage freestyle that Em recorded right here in the MTV offices about a decade ago. As you'll see, Em was still rocking the blond 'do and was a monster, coming off the dome back then. He laid his raps while visiting DJ Stretch Armstrong.

Speaking of DJs, we've assembled some of the best in the game right now to give us their tracks for a fantasy Slim Shady mixtape. Before you have a heart attack, we couldn't include all of Em's greatest songs in one article, but feel free to tell us which ones we should include in part two. Big-up to Alchemist for getting the gig as Em's DJ while he's doing this promo run.

"Just Don't Give a F---"
"It was the first record that really introduced me to Eminem. It was unlike anything I ever heard. When I first heard that, I was an instant fan. When I heard that song, I was a complete nobody at that time. I fooled the world by pretending that I had an online Internet radio show. I got in touch with Eminem and [his manager] Paul Rosenberg and their camp when they was doing promo shows. Back then, I got them to come to my mom's basement, because I was such a fan and I couldn't wait to hear more stuff from this guy. I got them to my mom's basement, and we hung out. He was definitely drunk. ... Definitely, you could tell he was kinda a live wire. He actually came with Royce Da 5'9"." - Clinton Sparks

"The Way I Am"
"To me, Eminem is the ultimate personable artist. He always brings you in his life. 'The Way I Am,' he was already dealing with so much, really coming into his iconic status. For him to deliver that record and deal with what was going on ... it's amazing that a record like that could be a single. Lyrically, he's one of the greatest of all time. That's one of my favorite Eminem records. The flow was ill, as it always is. He delivered quality and gave his Eminem angry approach to it. You could feel the hostility in the record." - DJ Drama

	MIXTAPE DAILY Who's next and who dominates — right here, all week long!.
	»Mixtape Daily Main Pick: Eminem
	»Other Notables: Tony YaYo
	»Celeb Faves: Green Day, Alchemist
	»Firestarter: New Boyz, DJ Whoo Kid

"Love Me" (featuring 50 Cent and Obie Trice)
"That was a hard record right there. I guess it was so much sh-- going on, they didn't concentrate on that record. It was one of those records we should have done the video and pushed it more, but at that time, Eminem didn't need no pushing. He was already moving millions of units. It's hard when you're moving millions of units — 8 million, 10 million units — what's the purpose of concentrating on promoting separate records? Everybody heard it, it was poppin', but I felt they should have put a little light on the record. I think that was the first time we heard Em and 50 together." - DJ Whoo Kid

"Hello"
" 'Hello,' it's Em saying he's back. You could tell Dre mixed that record because of the sound. I like some of the cuts and scratches on the hook. That's the classic Em we love. He's been away for a second. It's Em. His flows on the new album, me personally, I like how he rapped on 'Hello,' the 'Beautiful' record is ill. 'Bagpipes Over Baghdad,' I like the style he raps on that. For my personal taste, I like the introspective Em." - DJ Skee

"Underground"
"When I first heard [Relapse], that was the song I said, 'This is gonna shut mutha----ers up.' Straight up. It would not be an issue. Nobody would be like, 'I didn't like this, I didn't like the flow.' ... When we perform that song, Em takes a spot on the stage, and that's it. He picks a spot and dumbs out. There's not a lot of moving. When we're rehearing the song, you know, 'This is gonna be something crazy.' He says, 'Turn the lights down,' they put the spotlight on Em, and it's just snap rap. In the current day and age, you don't hear songs like that. It doesn't seem like any of that other sh-- going on in the world or in the music industry was going on in his mind when he [made the song]. He was strictly into the craft. I don't think anybody is f---ing with that." - the Alchemist

"Insane"
"The first thing I thought when I heard it was, 'Oh, word? Another thing that happened to him that we're just finding out about?' I was like, 'This guy's life is worse than people think it is.' It's great that he's not afraid to say it or tell the people. There's a lot of people out there that sh-- happens to them that they feel embarrassed or they don't know how to do it. Nobody can tell a tale of tragedy better than Eminem and make it f---ing interesting and cool to listen to and make fun out of it. He's not saying it like 'woe is me.' He's saying, 'This sh-- is f---ed up. F--- it! This is who I became because of it. F--- you.' " - Clinton Sparks

"The Real Slim Shady"
"Em doesn't get much club play [in the U.S.], but when I go overseas and play 'The Real Slim Shady,' that's a classic over there. When people hear it overseas, they be buggin' the f--- out. The beat is hot. It's a long verse, but when the hook comes on, everybody is screaming. It's kinda like 'Jump Around.' I did it recently in Beirut, Lebanon, and parts of France. Those songs connect to the rich people and young kids." - DJ Whoo Kid

"We as Americans"
"That was an old record. That's when he said, 'I don't rap for dead presidents/ I'd rather see the president dead/ It's never been said, but I set precedents.' Sh--, man! He always figures a way to step beyond what other mutha----ers are doing with the bars. I always like that beat too." - the Alchemist

50 Cent's "Patiently Waiting" (featuring Eminem)
"Classic! 50 and Em over an Eminem beat. 50 in rare form, Eminem in rare form. Both on top of the world at the time. A monster who created another monster. That was just classic. Eminem beats at that time was such gold and had such rich sound. 50 fit the beat perfectly on that. Just the hook alone — 'I been patiently waiting for a track to explode on' — summed everything up." - DJ Drama

"8 Mile Road" and "Lose Yourself"
"That whole '8 Mile' soundtrack, even though it wasn't Em on the whole thing, it was ill. 'Lose Yourself,' that was Em's best. That's my favorite commercial Eminem single. That was Em in his prime. It was a great new direction for him. What the people in the mainstream knew him was for some of the funny stuff and all the crazy stuff with Kim. But the inspirational side was great motivation music. I've used it to motivate me. To show a white boy from the 'hood in Detroit can come out and do it, it's inspirational." - DJ Skee

Notorious B.I.G.'s "Dead Wrong Remix" (featuring Eminem)
"That was hot too. Em held it down very well. Nobody complained about that. You would never hear Tupac or Biggie doing songs with 60 percent of the artists that are booked on those remix albums. But Eminem, it felt like B.I.G. would have done a song with Em. With the remixes with dead rappers, I don't pay attention to them, but I wanted to see how Em would alter his lyrics to f--- with Biggie. He hung with him." - DJ Whoo Kid

For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines.

• Mixtape Daily Video: Eminem, Cool & Dre, Tony Yayo, Red Cafe & More
• The Eminem Collection
• Eminem: The Return

• Eminem
• DJ Drama
• The Alchemist
• DJ Whoo Kid

50 Cent
Photo: MTV News

Artist: Prodigy

Representing: Mobb Deep

Independent Album: H.N.I.C. 2

411: If we have the technology to increase a woman's bra size to a D cup, even though she was born to have a pair of As (shout out to "Double A" Arn Anderson), people shouldn't be surprised that we have the technology to make Prodigy's voice rap in Chinese, even though he's not bilingual. His new album, H.N.I.C. 2, is the first LP that will be available in over 1,400 languages.

"Voice translation," Prodigy said of Voxonic, a machine that can copy the tone of his voice rapping and reproduce it in just about any language. "When I heard it, I was like, 'That's not real.' I couldn't believe it. That's crazy."

But the only language we Mobb Deep allegiants really want to hear is the Dunn language. Last week in New York, Prodigy gave a farewell concert, in which he performed both of his solo opuses, as he prepared to go to jail for anywhere between one and three years. P said that besides his kids, the person who is probably taking his sentence the worst is his partner, Havoc.

"Hav feels like he's getting locked up," P said. "Me and Hav have never been apart for more than two weeks, probably three. We never let three weeks go past without us in the studio working on a new song — new Mobb Deep song, new Prodigy song, new Hav, whatever — in our entire career! ... It's definitely something new to us, and we'll have to adjust to it.

"Me and Hav always talk about how we could never break up," V.I.P. added. "Our goal is to break the record for longest-running group in hip-hop. Our goal was to have the most longevity. ... We think about that all the time. We always try to keep Mobb Deep relevant and up there."

No new Mobb albums until P comes out (although the duo have a million unreleased records in the stash). He is leaving us with H.N.I.C. 2, though, the follow-up to his 2000 solo debut, which spawned one of our all-time favorite cuts, "Keep It Thoro" ("Doin' it past yo' delf you way out your jurisdiction.")

The independent album comes out on March 25, and he'll soon be releasing a DVD with a video for each song. He was inspired by watching "Heartless," a movie by Queens group the Live Squad that tells a story through six music videos.

Joints To Check For:

» Dirty New Yorker." "Return of the Mac, that was me playing," P explained of the difference between last year's mixtape and his real album. "That's me on my downtime, me and Al[chemist] f---ing around. Less than a month we made that. When it comes to H.N.I.C.2, I don't play no games at all. I'm real serious. I recorded about 30-40 songs for this album. I picked the best 14 or 15. I decided to put lot more information in the album than I did before. I can articulate myself better."

» "Real Power Is People." "Soon as you put the album on, the first song is called 'Real Power Is People," P said. "It's incredible. The chorus goes 'F--- jewelry./ F--- rims./ Let's spend on our protection./ Get armor, get cameras./ Get with it, little n---as. This is man's sh--./ Real power is people./ Real strength is in the street.' When people hear it, they're gonna be like, 'P is on some sh-- right now.' "

» "Illuminati." "[When] we did 'I Shot Ya,' I was planting little seeds of information," P said. "I said, 'Illuminati want my mind, soul and my body.' ... That was it. Then I jumped into something else. I left people like, 'What is P talking about?' I left it for all these years. A lot of people started saying it after that. Pac called himself 'Don Killuminati.' DJ Clue has 'Cluemanati.' Jay-Z samples my voice on 'D'Evils.' I could tell I sparked something. I was like, 'Yeah, it's working. People are interested.' That's where I tried to take it on this album. Put more secret government, the illuminati sh--. Racial issues. Real factual sh--. People will be like, 'What are you talking about right there?' They'll want to research that."

Don't Sleep: Other Notable Selections This Week

» DJ Obscene - Poe Boy Radio, vol. 1
» DJ Delz and Snatchatape - Quality Over Quantity, Vol. 4 (hosted by Termanology)
» DJ Kronik and Flo Rida - Freestyle Kronikles
» DJ Whoo Kid and 50 Cent - Return of the Body Snatchers, Vol. 1

'Hood's Heavy Rotation: Bubbling Below The Radar

» Rich Boy featuring Nas, Lil Wayne and John Legend - "Ghetto Rich" remix
» DJ Felli Fel featuring Kanye West, Fabolous, Ne-Yo and Jermaine Dupri - "Finer Things"
» Jim Jones featuring the Game - "Love Me No More"
» Usher featuring Young Jeezy - "In This Club"
» Focus featuring Busta Rhymes and Bishop Lamont - "Shine"

Fire Starter: DJ Scream

In the ATL, he's as respected as Drama when it comes to breaking new acts. He's backed Shawty Lo and Rocko in the streets with mixtapes, and he worked with Soulja Boy Tell'em before he was the digital king. He just dropped a collabo mixtape with J.Kwik, featuring Gucci Mane, titled Trap-tackular. With new mixtapes on the way featuring Big Kuntry, Young Dro, a sequel to the Soulja Boy project and the return of his signature Heavy in the Streets, now on Volume 13, Scream is poised to make a lot of noise in 2008.

Celebrity Faves

"Crunk" doesn't always mean fast. Lil Jon has been taking his time preparing his Crunk Rock album for years. While building what he feels will be a classic, Jon has been enjoying spending his side time in the club, carrying out the job that let him break into the industry: DJing.

"It's fun to just rock a crowd," the Atlanta music maven said. And what's his bread-and-butter song every night, no matter what club he's in?

"Flo Rida! Get 'Low,' " he answered. "If the crowd ain't really moving, and you wanna get on and just attack 'em ... take it to another level right way, you drop the Flo Rida. Yeah, man, they just wanna dance. That's a universal record. Any kind of crowd, they gonna get up and move. Tempo has been down a lot lately. Now the tempo is getting back up. It was just the West Coast doing it with all the hyphy stuff. Now on our side, the South, we're bringing the tempo back up."

The Streets Is Talking: News & Notes From The Underground

50 Cent didn't expect to win a Grammy this year. He felt he deserved it, but winning wasn't even a thought.

"I did say, 'Kanye gets the trophies, 50 gets the checks' [in a previous interview]," Fif recalled. "I was saying that because when the awards shows came, they overlooked me, forgot to acknowledge my accomplishments. Anytime the Grammys came, every time the award shows came, they overlooked me. You know why — because of where I come from and how I was raised. They project that to middle America. Oh my goodness, their kids might wanna be like me!"

The Mixtape Monday fam has been playing a lot of the G-Unit's Return of the Body Snatchers mixtape the past week ("Ohhhhh--K. Ohhhhh-K"), and 50 already told us there's a part two coming in a couple of weeks.

"We still got the respect, but we got the hate/respect," DJ Whoo Kid said last week. "Some people hate 50's success so bad, they don't wanna give him his props. I guess he's assuming that he has to bust his again in 2008 and get it poppin'. If you hear how some of these songs sound like album cuts, imagine how the album is gonna be. He's not playing. He's making sure the G-Unit album is on point. He's pressing Yayo and Banks to give 150 percent. He's not accepting any wack records. Even when I heard these joints on Body Snatchers, I was like, 'Are you serious?' I fainted twice. A lot of these joints sound like they need to be on the album."

The Unit are about to go another tour, this time in Canada and Australia, and Whoo Kid says they'll have another Stateside run around May.

"We're praying to God that Eminem gets his album done, so it can be some incredible sh--," Whoo said. "A [Dr.] Dre, Em and 50 tour. That would be a good look right now." ...

Rick Ross was recently in town to shoot the video for "The Boss," featuring T-Pain, and the Miami kingpin did it up large in the Big Apple. Double R shot the clip at the Trump World Tower in Manhattan, high (high!) above the city on the 72nd floor.

"We just wanted to do something new, something refreshing," a shirtless Ross told us from his trailer. "The album is incredible, so we wanted to bring them incredible visuals. Between the movement, Ricky Ross, DJ Khaled, Poe Boy [Entertainment], we shoot so many videos in Miami that we cover so much ground. And I been in so many videos in the last year, I wanted to do something different. So I only thought it would make sense to come to the birth place of hip-hop and put it down like a real boss — suck up the atmosphere, the Manhattan skyline. That's what bosses do, we migrate. We're spreading our hustle up here in New York City, and it's just incredible."

Ross is putting the finishing touches on his Trilla album, which is now due March 11. The Florida heavyweight has more singles than Pacman Jones in a strip club, but he said most of the tracks released so far were to keep his buzz going amid album delays. He's had the tracks for Trilla laid out and sequenced almost from the beginning.

"I didn't just come back and format a regular album," Ross explained. "I drew from Pimp C, UGK, Bun B; them my uncles in the game. I drew from trill, which is a down-South term for being real. And I took from Michael Jackson's Thriller, and I came up with Trilla. And we did some different things. Meaning, like, before I even wrote a song, I actually put the music in order [the way] I would want to hear an album musically, and that's the order I wrote the records. I did a lot of different things."

"Maybach Music," featuring Jay-Z, and "Luxury Tax," featuring Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, and Trick Daddy, are "gonna be the biggest records in the streets," according to Ross. But even as he's pushing Trilla, he's already at work on his next project, a street movie and album collaboration with Birdman from Cash Money. "It's called 'H,' " Ross said. "It's about honor, homicide, hustling, and it's about heroin. Think a next-level 'Menace II Society.' " ...

Even Marlo Stanfield said himself: It's just "not possible" for Omar to jump four stories off a balcony and not have gone to his final glory. The controversial shoot-out scene on "The Wire" a few weeks back is still being talked about.

Michael Kenneth Williams' character Omar had the tables turned on him and was ambushed by henchmen working for Marlo Stanfield (played by Jamie Hector). Seeing he had no way out, Omar took a literal leap of faith.

"These things are taken from real events," Hector told us last week about Omar's dramatic plunge (turns out, Omar suffered a severely injured leg in the fall but is still robbing and killing). "When you have somebody determined to survive, he's gonna survive. It's like, when you got somebody determined to win, they're gonna win. Some people may keep it moral and ethical, spiritual. This cat looks at his man [dead] on the floor that was giving him the blueprint of how to get Marlo. [Omar] had four guns coming at him. Big guns. What he did was remarkable. Real talk, I probably would have done the same thing."

Hector said he and the cast are definitely not enthused that "The Wire" is ending in just a few weeks, but he has loved working in the ensemble.

"It's fun, we enjoy it," he beamed. "When you get a chance to jump into some shoes you would like to portray as actor, you always wanna get a part that has meat. The entire script, though, not just your part. You want a script that has weight [for] the entire ensemble. Meaty, good, it makes you wanna watch everybody's work. The writing was off the chain, the casting was done properly. The actors bring it. It was a blessing and still is. The blend is a beautiful blend.

"Snoop? Felicia Pearson will crack you up," he continued, getting more specific about his character's accomplices Snoop and Chris. "There's always something funny coming out of her mouth. Once you meet her, it's like meeting Tupac. That energy. Ahhhh! That thing that you can't fake. I'm just laughing thinking about it. She has the set on edge everyday. It's just comedy. Gbenga Akinnagbe, who plays Chris, he's knowledgeable. His mind is always working beyond the set. You sit back and watch the kid. He's working, trying to figure out the next thing. He does an amazing job."

Hector also laughed about all the jokes Method Man cracks on the set.

"You saw what he did to his uncle?" Hector says about the betrayal exacted by Meth's Big Cheese character on Prop Joe. As all "Wire" fanatics know, Joe was set up by his nephew Cheese to get his head blown off by Marlo and Chris.

"Cheese was the one who put him there for $50,000," Jamie began to explain. "It was beyond $50,000 though. It was the principle. He felt his uncle didn't have the water to carry the organization. I was with Method Man yesterday. The streets hate him now. The streets can't stand Marlo. They love you, they love the character, but his actions. ... That was [Cheese's] blood. His kin. His uncle wouldn't even turn on him with Slim Charles."

Meth concurred last week, while in Chung King studio previewing some of his new tracks with Redman. "Yeah, man, I'm getting a lot of flak over that character too, 'cause he's so cold-blooded, boy," he said.

"All those seasons on there, if you really watch, Joe's been holding [Cheese's] hand, man," Meth continued. "He's protected me from getting killed or locked up. But at the same time, he's been holding my hand. He's been like, 'Nah, don't do that.' 'Nah, don't punch him in the face.' 'Nah, don't spit on him' You know what I mean? And after awhile, you know, you just want to come from up underneath that and do your own thing. He's so cold-blooded. Yo, stop stopping me in the street, asking me why I did that to Joe. It's a television show, man!"

"Method Man, that's my dude, though," Hector added. "He's naturally funny. He's also a good business man. He's where he's supposed to be, when he's supposed to be there. I enjoy working with him."

Hector said that around five or six episodes into his tenure with the show (he's been a menacing fixture for the past three seasons), the producers told him that they had plans for Marlo to stick around for a long time.

"I'm trying to catch that ball and keep it, like the [New York] Giants did,' he said of his new popularity. "Catch it like my man Tyree did at the last minute."

• Mixtape Monday Video: Prodigy, Method Man, Rick Ross & More

• G-Unit, DJ Obscene, Flo-Rida and more

• 50 Cent
• Rick Ross (Hip-Hop)
• Prodigy of Mobb Deep
• DJ Whoo Kid

Doubling Up? DJ Whoo Kid says 50 Cent is working on a double LP, but 50's not talking.

• 50 Cent
• Dr. Dre
• Game
• DJ Whoo Kid

50 Cent and Michael Jackson
Photo: Bryan Bedder/Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

DJ Whoo Kid wants to bring Michael Jackson and 50 Cent together, there's no doubt about that — it's just not happening as soon as reports might lead you to believe. Thanks to an announcement seemingly released by Jacko's new record label, which stated the singer's dream team was a done deal, several media outlets ran with the news, not realizing the press release was a prank.

There had been enough news in recent weeks to suggest that the press release was the real thing. Whoo Kid revealed earlier this month that Jackson had chatted him up about a possible collaboration with 50 (see "DJ Whoo Kid Spends An Evening In Bahrain 'Chillin' ' With Michael Jackson"). Whoo Kid had just come back from Bahrain, where he said he had arranged a phone conversation between the two artists.

The phony press release, sent Sunday as an e-mail claiming to be from Two Seas Records, claimed this was now happening. "I do not know who put this story out, certainly not us," Two Seas spokesperson Sue Harris said. "But it doesn't surprise me!"

Media outlets such as Billboard and Rolling Stone picked up the hoax on Monday, reporting details that Jackson and 50 were joining forces on a song called "Now That I Found Love," featuring up-and-coming singer Lucy Diamonds, and that it would be out November 21.

"I don't know who made that up," Whoo Kid said, regarding those reports. "I don't know who Lucy Diamonds is."

"How are they saying it is a 50/ MJ/ Lucy song?" Diamond's spokesperson Jonathan Hay said. "This whole thing is freaking strange."

Reports stated that the song would also be on a Whoo Kid mixtape called MJ Unit - The Takeover, which would supposedly feature five unreleased Jackson songs and mash-ups of his prior hits with songs from members of the G-Unit camp, including Lloyd Banks, Mase, Young Buck, Mobb Deep and M.O.P. This was most likely "borrowed" from the fact that Whoo Kid is planning to work with Banks, Mase and Mobb Deep. But "Now That I Found Love" gives shout-outs to 50's rival, the Game, as well as DJ Skee, Nu Jerzey Devil and Black Wall Street.

"This isn't good because Lucy is talking to Game, she's been talking to Game for a while," Hay said. "So she won't be on that [MJ Unit] mixtape, not unless they stole her song."

As for Jackson, his camp refuses to give any information about the singer's upcoming projects, even to correct fake reports or press releases.

"As far as we are concerned, details regarding the recording of Michael Jackson's albums are being kept under wraps," Harris said. "We will not be making any comments as to who may or may not be working with Michael Jackson in the studio. We will not be making any announcements, nor will we be reacting to any speculation or reports in the media."

A spokesperson for 50 Cent did not elaborate on the prank.

• 50 Cent
• Michael Jackson
• DJ Whoo Kid