This is where I'll include any journey-related information. Music-specific information will go in
We had pressed up The Slim Shady EP and it was doing pretty well in Detroit. At some point, Wendy Day called me and said “I want you to be on the battle team. I got you a ticket to the Rap Olympics in LA.”
I went to the Olympics, got all the way to the end, and then lost to the last guy. The guy who won was Otherwize, from LA. It was a local thing. They had a bunch of crowd support there. When I rapped, he went and hid behind a video screen. He walked away while I was rapping. I didn’t have anyone to battle! I’d never been in a situation like that before. I went through a lot of people to get through to the end, and then he walked away while I was rapping. I’m like, “What the fuck do I do?” I was devastated.
I come off stage. I’m like, that’s it. It’s over for me. This kid from Interscope, Dean Geistlinger, walks over and he asks me for a copy of the CD. So I kind of just chuck it at him. It was The Slim Shady EP. We come back to Detroit, I have no fucking home, no idea what I’m gonna do. Then, a couple weeks later, we get a call. Marky Bass said, “Yo, we got a call from a doctor!” (Source)
“My Name Is” was the first song we recorded. We recorded three or four that day, in like six hours. One song was called “Ghost Stories” and one was “When Hell Freezes Over.” I feel like there was one more but I can’t remember what it was. We always have this discussion, because Dre says it’s four.
Paul used to live in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. He had an apartment he shared with three roommates. I was over, sleeping on the couch. We didn’t have money yet, really. We had already filmed the video, and we saw it for the first time on MTV. It came on really late at night. I was sleeping on the couch when Paul saw it for the first time.
That’s when it was like, “Okay, this isn’t a joke anymore.” We had kind of felt that, being in the studio with Dre and shit. But once that single came out, my life changed like that. Within a day. Just going outside. I couldn’t go outside anymore. In a day. It went from the day before, doing whatever the fuck I wanted to do, because nobody knew who the fuck I was, to holy shit, people are fucking following us. It was crazy. That’s when shit just got really — it was a lot to deal with at once. (Source)