Yelawolf Held an Eminem Demo Tape for 10 Years, Then Put It in Marshall's Hands. He Hasn't Spoken to Him Since Leaving Shady.

On The Truth Hurts, Yelawolf finally told the demo tape story in full, and ended it with the quietest line of the interview.

Near the end of his sit-down on The Truth Hurts, published on YouTube Tuesday, September 22, Yelawolf was asked whether he and Eminem still have a relationship. The answer took one sentence.

Yelawolf: "I haven't spoke to Marshall since I left Shady." (at 1:10:19)

Asked if it ended badly, he said no, and pointed to the respect that outlasted the contract: "I'll always respect and have love for Marshall. I mean, he put it out there for me. [...] He did plenty for me. I could ask for nothing more." Some of the early write-ups skipped that exchange entirely. It is the frame for everything else he said, because the rest of the interview is the story of how badly he wanted to get into that room in the first place.

The tape

The demo tape comes up twice. The first time (at 13:23) is in 2010, after Yelawolf refused to perform a live a cappella in L.A. Reid's office and went home to Gadsden, Alabama, with no deal. "Pop the Trunk" was spreading, and he says he was fixated on one question: where is Eminem?

Yelawolf: "I had a tape that I had stolen out of an office in New York of one of his demos, from someone that passed on him. [...] I had a mission to put this in his hand." (at 13:23)

He names the person who passed. YouTube's auto-captions render it as "Mark Seagull," and that spelling has been repeated in coverage. We could not match it to any documented executive from Eminem's pre-fame years, so treat the name as unconfirmed until someone who was there spells it.

The second time is the payoff. After signing, he says, he went straight to Las Vegas with WillPower and pop writer Poo Bear and recorded most of Radioactive before Eminem knew an album existed. Then came a Super Bowl party in Los Angeles tied to Eminem's Lipton commercial (Em's Brisk spot aired during Super Bowl XLV in February 2011), with Dr. Dre, Slaughterhouse and the rest of "Shady 2.0" around the table. Yelawolf told Em he had an album. Em's reply, as Yelawolf tells it: "Paul, book a studio tomorrow. I got to hear this."

Yelawolf: "I did take that tape that I held on to for 10 years and put it in his hands [...] right there, like, straight up." (at 21:45)

So, to settle a small dispute in the coverage: one version puts the handoff at the Super Bowl party, another at studio sessions. In his telling, the party is where the album came up, and the tape changed hands at the listening session Eminem ordered for the next day. Eminem recognized it immediately, he says, remembered where he recorded it and gave him the backstory, including an apartment he was sharing at the time with (as the captions have it) Royce da 5'9", which would put the tape in the same early era as the Bad Meets Evil partnership. Yelawolf did not ask for a photo. "I think handing him that tape was more important to me than signing a deal personally, because I made it happen."

Set to 18:08, the "Making Radioactive and returning Eminem's demo tape" chapter. The handoff itself is at 21:45.

How "Pop the Trunk" actually reached Em

His executive producer KP never played it for Eminem, despite being begged. The person who did was producer Jim Jonsin (some transcriptions have him as "Jim Johnson"), who has production credits on Trunk Muzik 0-60. By Yelawolf's account, Jonsin played "Pop the Trunk" for Em around the time Em was doing "Airplanes" with Hayley Williams, the B.o.B record Eminem appears on in its Part II version. Someone in the room filmed Marshall watching the video on a phone. "A couple days later, Jimmy made the call" (at 16:00): Jimmy Iovine, saying Marshall was interested.

The Iovine meeting is the best-told scene of the episode. Straight from South by Southwest, Yelawolf sat on Iovine's couch for 45 minutes before Iovine sat down beside him and said, "Listen, we're not going to do none of that L.A. Reid [...] around here." A checkbook came out. "How much?" Yelawolf did not take it, preferring to let someone else negotiate, and Iovine drove him courtside to watch Kobe Bryant. Iovine promised he was the kind of CEO who pops into the studio. "That's the last time I ever saw Jimmy Iovine," Yelawolf said, to laughter.

The "Good Girl" fight

The creative-compromise chapter (at 22:08) is where the Shady era gets complicated. Everyone wanted a piece of the album, he says, because "Marshall signed a white boy. [...] From Alabama." The song he never wanted on it was "Good Girl," written with Poo Bear.

Yelawolf: "I begged KP not to play it for Marshall. When I got to the studio, Marshall turned around in his chair. He's like, 'Yo, that "Good Girl" record though.'" (at 23:18)

Yelawolf's condition for keeping it: Eminem had to tell everybody he made him do it. That is the origin of the album's skit in which Em, on the phone, suggests the record is missing a song for girls. It did not work, and the label's next idea was a 50 Cent remix. "I'm not using my 50 Cent card on 'Good Girl,'" he said.

One correction on the numbers floating around. "Good Girl" was never a single; Radioactive's singles were "Hard White (Up in the Club)" and "Let's Roll." A claim that the song sits under five million Spotify streams circulated without a source. It holds up: Kworb's September 17 update has it at 4,525,650, against 76.9 million for "Pop the Trunk."

He does not frame it as bitterness. Losing that fight, he says, bought him total freedom on the next album, Love Story, which he made in Nashville on his own terms.

The advice, and 45

Asked for the best advice Eminem ever gave him (at 1:09:24), Yelawolf offered two. The first came the day after a hungover ESPN appearance went badly: "If you don't want to do it, just don't, just walk away. It's better to not than to have a bad look." The second is a writing rule: "Turn your 'me' into a 'we' when you're writing," so the song can hit everybody.

The present tense is 45, his album with Malay, which he says contains zero rap verses. Singles roll out through the fall, with the album due in November. He also produced Everlast's comeback album, the one where the old Eminem beef never came up.

Which leaves a neat symmetry. He spent ten years carrying Eminem's past around in a cassette case so he could hand it back. He has now spent roughly seven years not calling, and still talks about the man like someone who got exactly what he came for.