As Eminem celebrates winning an Emmy for his Super Bowl performance with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and 50 Cent, he’s also reflecting on one of the darkest times in his career.
Slim Shady appeared on a podcast hosted by his manager, Paul Rosenberg, and recalled nearly dying from a drug overdose in 2007.
Eminem was battling an addiction to prescription pills and was hospitalized after accidentally ODing on methadone.
“It took a long time for my brain to start working again,” the “Lose Yourself” rapper said.
“You literally were coming off of an overdose, and they had to sort of stabilize you with a few medications,” Rosenberg explained. “And some of them took you a minute to adjust to—let’s just leave it at that. So, you’re learning how to rap again almost literally, right? Because it’s the first time, probably, you were creating without having substances in your body in…however many years, right?”
The Detroit MC, born Marshall Mathers, remembered Rosenberg worrying about the long-term effects of the overdose.
“Didn’t you ask the doctors when I first started rapping again, didn’t you say, ‘I just wanna make sure he doesn’t have brain damage’?” Mathers asked.
“Yeah. I thought you might have some permanent problems,” Rosenberg responded. “Yeah. I was concerned, for sure.”
Now, 15 years later, Eminem is healthy, and he just dropped an animated video for his 50 Cent collab, “Is This Love,” off his new greatest hits collection, Curtain Call 2.
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