Eminem and Dr. Dre’s new artist Ez Mil has said that despite the nerves that came with being introduced to one of the greatest Hip Hop duos ever, Slim Shady opened their dialogue by cracking a bad dad joke.
In an interview with YouTube channel RX931 over the weekend, the Las Vegas rapper — who inked a joint deal with Interscope, Aftermath, and Shady Records in July — recalled meeting Em and Dre for the first time, describing it as a life-changing experience.
“Meeting them, it was a whole trip, man,” the 24-year-old said of his trip to L.A. “Even going through the lobby. Like, Dre was sitting right there in the lobby of the studio. I was peeking through the door and my brother and mama all went in.
He continued: “I shook his hand and when I saw Em, I almost fainted. Thank God I stood up and just kept it firm. And then just going up there, he stood up and said, ‘Ezekiel, where you been for the last 20 years? Oh right, you were four.’”
Eminem announced the signing of EZ Mil on Instagram on July 26, writing: “Me and Dre back at it. Check @ezekielmiller aka Ez Mil out- link in bio.”
He then took to Twitter to reveal that the rapper’s “Up Down (Step & Walk)” music video, which he dropped earlier this year, convinced him to do the deal. “This is why we signed him,” Em tweeted alongside a link to the video.
Ez Mil is currently gearing up to drop DU4LI7Y: REDUX, a deluxe version of his 2022 album, on August 11. The revamp will include the song “Realest” with Eminem, which dropped last week.
The collaboration found the Detroit native unleashing a firestorm of deadly bars at some of his critics, including Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five pioneer Melle Mel, who earlier this year questioned Em’s status as an elite rapper.
“Hip Hop has been good to me, huh/ But when they say that I’m only Top 5 ’cause I’m white, why would I be stunned?” Eminem spit. “My skin color’s still working against me/ ‘Cause second, I should be, to none/ Bein’ white being why they put me at five (Nope)/ That’s why they can’t put me at one.”
Later in his verse, he added: “Shoutout to Furious Five and Grandmaster Flash, but boy/ There’s someone who really is furious/ Stay out his path, his wrath avoid/ I’ll be the last to toy with a juice head whose brain is half destroyed, like a meteor hit it/ Now with Melle Mel, he lost his ass to ‘roids.”
In February, Ez Mil released the video for his DU4LI7Y single “Up Down,” which gained traction after fans noted stylistic similarities to Eminem. About a month later, the self-proclaimed Rap God heard the song, and Ez Mil drove from Vegas to Los Angeles to link up with Em and Dre for the first time.
“We’ve never been out there signing a lot of artists, and one of the great things about how we built Shady is how selective we’ve been,” Eminem said in a statement of his new signee (via Shady Records).
“And it’s even rarer that Dre and I sign something together — but I heard Ez’s music and was like, ‘This is really special’. So I took it to Dre. We both agreed it would be a great fit and we wanted to work with him right on the spot.”
Dr. Dre added: “I’m really only interested in working on shit that sounds different from anything else going on out there, and only then if I feel I can really bring something to it. Em played me Ez and I had that feeling…that thing that happens when we both know we’ve found something special. And that was it….let’s get to work.”
