‘Yoke The Joker’: The forgotten song Eminem labelled as “timeless”
How did Eminem become widely considered to be one of the greatest rappers of all time? The Detroit born MC has always been honest about his struggles to force his way into a genre which was created, and is still dominated, by Black people. Brought to the fore in his 2002 biopic 8 Mile.
Gaining notoriety through the freestyle rap battle scene, the ‘Not Afraid’ rapper would become synonymous with controversial bars that cut through his opponent’s core, often leaving audiences in fits of laughter. Clearly, he’d been putting the work in.
It might not come as a surprise that the man born Marshall Mathers knows his hip-hop history. Raised in an environment in which hip-hop artists are commonly created, but outside of the culture, Slim needed to be considerably better than the competition in order to be taken seriously, given his lack of pigmentation.
Whilst there may be some key differences between his journey to the top and that of his fellow MCs, it could be argued that the discrimination he was subject to because of the colour of his skin is what drove him to produce such authentic content. Content that we have been blessed to consume for the best part of three decades.
Producing hits which fit into the traditional mould of hip hop music, such as ‘Til’ I Collapse’ and ‘Like Toy Soldiers’, to softer, yet still powerful, ballads such as ‘Stan’ and ‘Mockingbird’, to the straight up outrageous with ‘Fack’ and ‘Just lose it’, it’s apparent that inspiration was sought from a wide variety of sources.
On the Crooks Corner podcast, Em flexed his knowledge by citing a flow which has fallen off most people’s radars. Paying his respect to Naughty by Nature’s ‘Yoke the Joker’ he enthusiastically raps Treach’s second verse before heaping praise on the bars, “‘Get the fix he needs? Remember how blistery? / You ain’t ready for the Freddy of rap / You can’t kill me, I step into your dreams, you feel me / Slicing your life away, just like my mic today’. Man, he was killin…There are some in this genre that have not even caught up to that. All this time has passed and those verses are so timeless to me.”
There aren’t many in the game better placed to comment on the quality of flows than Eminem, given his propensity to “kill” his fellow MCs should they square up to him. As such, his endorsement is worth its weight in gold.
The trio, hailing from New Jersey, produced hits such as ‘Hip Hop Hooray’, ‘Feel Me Now’ and ‘O.P.P’ which sampled The Jackson 5’s ‘ABC’. But it was the first track of their debut, self-titled album, which caught the eye of the hip-hop legend.