eminemEminem has recently spoken to complex.com on a variety of topics, ranging from addiction to Lil Wayne, as rollingstone.com reports.

Despite the release of Relapse: Refill later this month, the rapper still plans to release Relapse 2, the follow-up to his comeback CD, Relapse.

“When I finished Relapse, I had a whole album of material that didn’t make it that I wasn’t ready to throw away, so that was going to be Relapse 2,” he told Complex. “But then I got with Dre in Hawaii and started recording more, and now the new material has knocked out all the old songs.”

“Making Relapse, I was still working the drugs out of my system, so there was a lot of…just jokey shit,” he continued. “It was a lot of punchline-y, funny, shock value – kind of going back to The Slim Shady LP. And that was cool, but I’ve kind of flipped the page. Now I’m going for songs instead of one-liners.”

Eminem said he found similarities between his own addiction and the death of Michael Jackson. Eminem does not shy away from talking about his reliance on prescription drugs on Relapse, and said that being a celebrity with the amount of fame Jackson had to deal with could be deathly.

“I definitely can relate, and it’s a shame if he didn’t have anybody there to just say, ‘Michael, you’re an addict, you need help,’” he said. “It’s one of the pitfalls of fame.” Eminem famously poked fun at Jackson in his 2004 video for his song “Just Lose It.”

Battling addiction also led Eminem to go back to his natural hair colour. After being platinum blond for a decade, he returned to his natural brown hair.

“Once I got sober I was like, ‘What the fuck am I doing? I’m like 35 years old, am I going to keep dying my hair fucking blond?’ Also it was about letting go,” he said. “The hair reminded me of my addiction, and I hated myself when I was in my addiction. I hated myself worse than anyone could ever hate me.”

As for fellow rapper Lil Wayne, who joined Eminem on the song “Forever,” Eminem said it took him a little while to appreciate his co-worker’s talent.

“There was the hype about him, but I didn’t see what all the hype was about,” he said. “I felt like he was good, certainly above average from his singles, but it was like, ‘Is he that dope?’ Then I listened to the whole album and was like, ‘Wow! My man is that dope – Lil Wayne is fucking dope!’ You’ve got to listen to a Lil Wayne song four, five, or six times to actually catch everything he’s saying.”

Lil Wayne is rumored to have recruited Eminem for a track on his upcoming album Rebirth.

Relapse: Refill is due out Dec. 21.






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