Back in Eminem's heyday, Shady Records had a strong stable including Em himself, 50 Cent, Obie Trice and Stat Quo. The latter recently sat down with HipHopDX and recalled he once picked a fight with Eminem over a chorus on his Statlanta album.
“There was a song called ‘Dance On It.’ Em wrote the chorus and Em wanted me to say the chorus," Stat Quo said. "I thought it was not good. If I would have said, ‘Yeah, that’s it! That’s the one we going with!’ I would’ve got my album out. But I tried to be on some ‘Nah, I don’t like that; that ain’t a hit.’ I was really arguing with [...] the top-selling rapper of all time on what a fuckin’ hit was. What a dummy idiot I was!”
Back then, Stat Quo said 50 told him that Shady Records was on such a good roll they could have made "blank CDs go platinum." Nevertheless, the Atlanta rapper got stubborn with his mentor and insisted on changing the chorus Em wrote.
"My exact quote was, 'I'll put it out if you stay on the hook.' And then I said, 'If you give me a million dollars, then I'll put it out.' When I said that me and Em went like this," Stat said miming two roads diverging with his hands. "It was a wrap."
Stat said Dr. Dre told him Shady got mad. The next day, though he tried to apologize with tears in his eyes, damage had already been done. He left the label in 2008.
“My album would have came out but I fucked up,” he said about Stalanta, which ended up dropping seven years later on Big Dream Ventures records.
Nevertheless, Stat said he doesn't regret his experience at Shady Records. He learned a lot and did make it on seven songs on Eminem Presents: The Re-Up album -- plus a bonus track.
“I came in there a certain kind of way then I started trying to make music to appease them instead of trying to make music to appease the people that got me in that door […]” he said. “All these people I talked about picked an identity: Game’s a Blood, 50’s a gangster, Kendrick’s an intellectual. You know who the fuck they rapping to when they rap. Stat Quo was all over the place. That’s not Dre’s fault, that’s my fault.”