There are many bromances in hip hop, despite the combative spirit of the genre, and there’s a cute one that few pay attention to. Eminem has never shied away from sharing his love for LL Cool J as both an artist and a human. Now, Shady has shared a beautiful story about LL treating him to a chain.
On Paramount+’s Behind The Music, Slim has opened up about how he dreamt about owning a chain since he was a child and how his rap hero, LL Cool J, made this a possibility.
“Since I was a little kid, I always wanted a chain,” Eminem said in discussion to LL’s famous gold chain he wore in the ‘I’m Bad’ video. “I was recording with Rick Rubin and I was like, ‘Yo, can you ask LL where he got his chains from?’ So he had these made and sent them to me.”
He added: “He was the first rock star of rap. I’m like, ‘Yo, I wanted that.’ That is what made me actually want to rap.”
In an appearance on LL’s radio show some years ago, Shady discussed how much he aspired to be him when he was younger. “I wanted to be like you; I hope that doesn’t sound weird,” Eminem explained.
“I absolutely wanted to be like you,” the rapper continued, “I wanted to be like Run-D.M.C. It was something about the energy to just say what you want to say, and you could talk about your life, and you could talk about shit that bothers you. I just gravitated towards it, and I never strayed from the first day that I heard a rap song.”
Check out LL Cool J’s iconic ‘I’m Bad’ video, and admire his chain just like Shady did.
