How Juice WRLD Got That Real Respect from Eminem
In the rap game, getting respect from Eminem ain't something you can just ask for, you gotta go out and take it with sweat, struggle, and straight fire bars. For a long minute, the "Rap God" was like the bouncer at the door of real lyricism, always throwing shade at that "mumble rap" wave that was flooding the game back in the late 2010s. But there was one young dude from that new school who figured out how to cross that line and leave Marshall Mathers straight up shook, and that was the late great Juice WRLD.
The
Crown Gets Passed: How Juice WRLD Got That Real Respect from Eminem
The story of how these two came to respect each other ain't just about dropping a hot song together, it goes way deeper than that. It's about a crazy 50-minute radio session that showed the whole world that Juice WRLD was one of the most naturally gifted freestyle killers this culture has ever seen.
The Hour of Madness: The Tim Westwood Freestyle
The moment everything changed for Juice WRLD and how real hip-hop heads looked at him went down in October 2018. He pulled up to Tim Westwood TV over in the UK, and this young cat from Chicago did something most veteran rappers wouldn't even think about trying. He asked for nothing but classic Eminem beats and then just went off, freestyling straight from the dome, no pen, no paper, for more than 50 minutes straight with no breaks.
He was flowing over legendary tracks like "The Real Slim Shady," "Just Lose It," and "My Name Is," and Juice WRLD showed everybody this superhuman ability to keep those complex rhyme patterns going without ever stopping to catch his breath or fall off beat.
"That mean I got cheat codes / Guns sing like the leader of the Glee show / Bape on the cape, no I'm not a hero / VVS cold, no Sub-Zero / Get money like Robert De Niro..."
This wasn't just about lasting a long time on the mic,
this was a straight up showcase of a "freestyle muscle" that Juice
had been building since he was a little kid playing instruments like piano and
trumpet. For Eminem, who came up battling in the rough streets of Detroit, this
was the ultimate proof that the kid had real skills.
Eminem
Got Shook
Eminem ain't the type to be easily impressed by what the new school is doing, but that Westwood session Juice did made him stop and pay attention. After Juice passed away, Eminem started talking in interviews with this mix of amazement and real sadness about how much talent that young man had and what he could have become.
"Shout out to Juice too, man," Eminem said back in a 2020 interview. "That kid was so talented. His freestyle he did on Westwood where he rapped for an hour, I'm like, 'What the fk?' To be so young, he mastered that so fking quickly. His potential was so off the charts."
When Eminem cosigns you like that, it means something
real because it proved Juice WRLD was way more than just another
"SoundCloud rapper" or some dude who made catchy hits. It put him
right in the family tree of lyrical greats, the same tree Eminem himself helped
grow.
"Godzilla": When the Crown Got Passed The connection between these two came full circle on the 2020 track "Godzilla," which dropped on Eminem's Music to Be Murdered By album.
Real talk, the song came out after Juice WRLD had already passed away in December 2019, which made it hit even harder.
Juice WRLD had always said Eminem was his favorite rapper and the reason he started taking music serious in the first place. Getting to lay down the hook for his idol was like a dream come true for him. On that track, Eminem spits his fastest verse ever recorded, breaking his own record, while Juice comes through with that melodic, spooky chorus that sticks in your head. The music video, which Cole Bennett directed, ends with this touching tribute where you hear Juice's voice talking about how he wanted to use his platform to do good things for people.
A Legacy Written in the Rhymes
Juice WRLD's time in the spotlight was short, like a shooting star, barely two years in the mainstream before he was gone, but he left behind a whole vault of thousands of songs that never dropped, and most of them were recorded as one-take freestyles with no second chances.
His bond with Eminem stands as a major chapter in Rap
History. It shows that even when the styles change and new sounds pop up, the
real foundation of hip-hop, stuff like improvising on the spot, playing with
words, and having that technical control, stays the universal language that
separates the greats from everybody else. In the eyes of Eminem, Juice WRLD
wasn't just some new artist he did a song with, he was a real master of the game
who got called home way too soon.
