Legacy

Album: The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Eminem talks here in detail about himself as a child as he wonders how he came to be his introverted self. He raps:

    "I used to be the type of kid who would always think the sky is falling
    Why am I so differently wired, am I a Martian?"

    Slim explained to Rolling Stone: "I always try to make my music relatable to the kid who people said, 'He ain't s--t' or bullied or whatever. It felt like one of them self-empowerment songs. Everybody, I believe, wants to show the world that, 'One day I'm gonna be this. One day I'm gonna be that.' Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them. Like, if you haven't been kicked or whatever, if you never went through. . tribulations and s--it like that, then you're perfect and f--k you anyways."

    "So everybody has been in that place where they just have been counted out or not even counted," he continued. "Like, 'You don't matter.' 'Oh yeah? I'm gonna show you.' So it was about incorporating that idea into the idea of my legacy – into what I leave behind when I'm gone. And I always looked up to other rappers for the words that they gave me. There's many, many songs that got me through a lot of s—t."
  • The rhyming words in the song follow a pattern. Eminem told Rolling Stone: "That's just one of the things that I do to try to challenge myself. I wanted to try to make a whole song where the rhyming words never changed."
  • The hook is sung by Russian born, New-York based singer-songwriter Polina, who co-wrote Sean Kingston's 2011 hit single "Sleep All Day (Party All Night)."

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