Eminem and Jay-Z Are Both on “God Speak.” Neither of Them Raps. Here Is Exactly What It Is.

The first Eminem and Jay-Z tracklist credit in twenty-five years arrived Friday. Before the reunion headlines run away with it, here is precisely what is on the record.

The Godbody LP, the collaborative album from Rakim, Kurupt and Masta Killa officially titled "DPG WU-TANG, WU-TANG DPG -THE GODBODY LP-", dropped Friday, September 18 via Virgin Music Group distribution. Track 6 is "God Speak (Interlude)," and the credited artists are Eminem and Jay-Z. On paper, that is their first shared track since "Renegade" on The Blueprint, September 11, 2001, the reunion we flagged when the tracklist was announced in June.

So let's be precise about what shipped, because "Eminem and Jay-Z collab" is doing a lot of work in some headlines. "God Speak" runs 70 seconds. Neither man raps on it. Neither recorded anything new for it. It is two pieces of archival interview audio, laid back to back over a beat produced by Rakim and Nick Wiz, in which each of them explains why Rakim matters. It is a tribute collage, and a genuinely well-built one, sequenced to set up the next track: "A Different Kind," Rakim's first self-produced solo song in fifteen years.

The official audio. All 70 seconds of it.

Where the audio actually comes from

Eminem's half, roughly the first thirty seconds, is from his February 2020 Crook's Corner interview with KXNG Crooked, his first sit-down after Music to Be Murdered By:

Eminem: "To me, greatness is not only how well you do something, but if you were the first to do it. Rakim was the first person that I heard that started using, like, inside rhyme schemes and coming back at the end and hitting it. [...] He did something that hadn't even been thought of yet, and he single-handedly pushed the genre forward to be more complex lyrically."

Jay-Z's half is from his August 2017 Rap Radar Podcast interview with Elliott Wilson and B.Dot, and it is built around one Rakim bar he says he still lives by:

Jay-Z: "Rakim, man. 'Constant elevation causes expansion.' I live my life by that right now. [...] He gave you the jewel, the jewel of all jewels."

That line is from "I Know You Got Soul," Eric B. and Rakim, Paid in Full, 1987: "Constant elevation causes expansion / I write my rhyme while I cool in my mansion." Some coverage has attributed it to "In the Ghetto"; it is not from that song. Thirty-nine years later, the two biggest students Rakim ever had are on his tracklist reciting his homework back to him, which is the entire point of the record.

The wrinkle: Em's camp said nobody called

Here is the strange part of the paper trail. Back in June, when executive producer M80 Markoff announced the tracklist, a representative for Eminem told Rolling Stone that no outreach had been made to the rapper's team about the project. Three months later the track shipped anyway, with Eminem and Jay-Z listed as credited artists and composer-lyricists in the official metadata. M80 said at the time that the interlude would be an official release and confirmed neither artist has verses on it.

Rakim, for his part, has been transparent that this was curation, telling Vibe: "Even with the Jay-Z and Eminem interview, M80 felt that was something he wanted to show people and highlight." And about hearing it: "Two people that I admire and respect crazily, Jay and Eminem. To hear your peers show you love and speak on you in their moment is very humbling." Whatever licensing conversation did or did not happen between June and Friday, the finished product is a respectful use of public statements both men would presumably stand behind, since they said every word on the record.

So does the 25-years thing count?

Strictly: this is the first time "Eminem" and "Jay-Z" have appeared together on an official tracklist since "Renegade." (The 2011 leak "Syllables" never counted; it was never released.) But as a collaboration, no. They do not interact, they were recorded nine years and three years apart in different rooms, and "Renegade" remains the last time the two actually performed on the same record.

The better 2026 data point for that relationship happened onstage: Jay-Z brought Em out to perform "Renegade" at Yankee Stadium in July, the Blueprint anniversary moment we covered, the first time they had done the song together live in over a decade. Two legends trading verses in front of fifty thousand people is a reunion. Two interview clips over a beat is a tribute. Both are worth having; only one of them is news about their relationship.

The album around it deserves the attention

None of this precision should read as a knock on The Godbody LP itself, which is a serious record with a heavy backstory: sixteen tracks, Snoop Dogg, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, KRS-One and Kool G Rap on the guest list, and a posthumous executive production credit for Wu-Tang's Oliver "Power" Grant, who died in February. The framing, per the artists, is the East-meets-West unity project Tupac talked about and never got to make.

"A Different Kind," the track "God Speak" exists to introduce. The full album is on Spotify.

And the sequencing logic is airtight. Before Rakim's first self-produced solo statement in fifteen years, you hear the two most decorated lyricists of the last three decades explain, unprompted and years apart, that he built the machine they both drive. As an argument, it needs no verses. That was the idea.