Renegade

Album: The Blueprint (2001)
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Songfacts®:

  • Originally recorded as a collaboration between Eminem and Royce da 5'9" for their Bad Meets Evil series, Royce was later replaced by Jay-Z. Hova's two verses find him recalling when he was selling drugs on the streets (thus becoming a renegade to society).

    Eminem, meanwhile, explains that he considers himself to be a renegade because of the public perception of his music and criticisms that he is a bad influence on children:

    See I'm a poet to some, a regular modern-day Shakespeare
    Jesus Christ, the King of these Latter-Day Saints here
    To shatter the picture in which of that as they paint me as
    As a monger of hate, satanist, scatter-brained atheist


    Eminem said in an annotation for the above four verses on the Rap Genius site: "When I'm writing, I'm in the syllable game. I'm connecting 5-6-7-8 syllable phrases where every syllable rhymes. I get heavy into that. When I start rapping something, and I think of more syllables that connect with it, sometimes I want to just keep the scheme going forever."

    "I've done it before in songs, where the syllable scheme of the first verse ends up being the syllable scheme of the second verse, and the third verse — all the way down. I do it because the lines start connecting and making sense. Once I find something and lock in, it comes out pretty quick."
  • This was included on Jay-Z's 2001 The Blueprint album. It was later included as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Eminem's 2005 greatest hits album, Curtain Call: The Hits.

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