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Eminem has long cited 2Pac as one of his favorite artists, but it turns out he shared a remarkable connection to the late rap legend long before he blew up — according to the Interscope A&R who discovered him.
Evan “Kidd” Bogart recently sat down with the Behind the Wall podcast and detailed his decorated career in the music industry, which began in Interscope’s mailroom in the 1990s.
Talking about his road to discovering the self-proclaimed Rap God, Bogart — a Grammy-winning songwriter who has worked with the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez — explained that he was working as an A&R “float” on a posthumous 2Pac album that Interscope were putting together.
While working on the project, he got a call from a DJ friend to come check out an impressive young artist at the Rap Olympics.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m gonna get fired. I’m supposed to not take my eyes off the reels [for the 2Pac album],’” Bogart recalled, explaining that there was a looming threat of Death Row Records trying to steal the music.
“But I played hooky because [my friend] Cassidy was dead serious. I went down to this freestyle contest in Inglewood, walked in and I proceeded to watch Eminem in this freestyle battle. It was 8 Mile-esque.”
Bogart was blown away by what he saw: “I called my friend who I was in a rap group with, this kid Aristotle, to come down there. I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta come down here and see this shit.’
“Then I called my other best friend, who I had just hired to replace me in the mailroom when I got promoted to A&R floater, this kid Dean Geislinger.”
He added: “They showed up a couple of hours later. It was the semifinals and Em was saying crazy things like, ‘Don’t make my facial tissue a racial issue,’ all this crazy shit that was mindblowing […] He ended up losing in the finals.”
Despite Eminem failing to win the contest, Bogart still introduced himself to the soon-to-be legendary rapper: “Em was pacing backstage, muttering under his breath, angry, teared up a little bit. I went up to him and I was like, ‘Hey, I work at Interscope, I do A&R.’
“He introduced me to his manager at the time, a guy named Marc Kempf. Paul [Rosenberg] was there, too, but Paul was Em’s lawyer; he wasn’t his manager.
“Marc Kempf gave me the Slim Shady EP sampler cassette. I drove home with Aristotle and Dean and popped the cassette into my car. We literally drove home with our fucking jaws on the ground. I had never heard anything like it in my whole life.”
Bogart went on to explain that he spent the next several months attempting to convince his seniors at Interscope to sign this unknown kid from Detroit, but was “largely ignored or ridiculed.”
It wasn’t until he slipped Eminem’s demo tape into Jimmy Iovine‘s possession, with the help of his friend Dean who was temping as the Interscope chief’s second assistant, that the powerhouse label finally took notice.
“Saturday morning, I get a page on my pager [from] Dean’s number. I call Dean and I’m like, ‘What’s up?’ He’s like, ‘[Dr.] Dre and Jimmy heard the tape. Is Eminem in town? […] They want to set up a meeting.’
“I was like, ‘Cool, I’ll make it happen.’ So I connected them with Em’s people, set up a meeting for Monday. Em came in and they struck a deal.”
The fact that Eminem was discovered by an A&R who was working on a 2Pac album at the time is made all the more special by his vocal admiration of the All Eyez On Me MC.
Slim Shady has previously said that ‘Pac “might be the greatest songwriter of all time” and even even went on to produce his own posthumous album for the late rapper, 2004’s Loyal to the Game.
