Eminem is a big fan of Tupac Shakur, but the connections between both legendary MCs run deeper than we initially thought. Evan "Kidd" Bogart recently joined the Behind The Wall podcast to talk, in part, about how he discovered Em as an Interscope A&R (artists and repertoire). First, he explained that he was an A&R "float" for a posthumous 'Pac album that Interscope was putting together. During that process, a DJ friend reached out to Bogart and invited him to check out a random young Detroit upstart at the Rap Olympics. Surely that couldn't be the best-selling rapper of all time, right?
"I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m gonna get fired. I’m supposed to not take my eyes off [the Tupac album],'" Bogart recalled. "But I played hooky because [my friend] Cassidy was dead serious. I went down to this freestyle contest in Inglewood, walked in and I proceeded to watch Eminem in this freestyle battle. It was 8 Mile-esque. I called my friend who I was in a rap group with, this kid Aristotle, to come down there. I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta come down here and see this s**t.’"
Evan "Kidd" Bogart Speaks On Eminem & Tupac Connection
Then, Bogart says he reached out to another friend at Interscope, and he and Aristotle eventually arrived to witness Eminem's lyrical prowess. "Kidd" approached the soon-to-be grandfather when he lost in the finals and introduced himself as an Interscope A&R. Afterwards, Marshall Mathers introduced him to his then-manager Marc Kempf and his then-lawyer Paul Rosenberg, who would eventually become Em's manager. Kempf gave Bogart the Slim Shady EP cassette, and he and his friends were blown away when they heard it in the car on their way back home after the contest.
Finally, Bogart recalled how he tried to get higher-ups at Interscope to sign Eminem for months, efforts that proved unsuccessful... Until they weren't. Eventually, he got the Slim Shady EP in the hands of Jimmy Iovine. The Interscope boss and Dr. Dre were interested and sent word to Bogart to set up a meeting with Mathers. When the "Temporary" creative finally got in a room with Iovine and Dre... Well, the rest is history.
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