Credit: Alamy

One thing that music can do is cross borders, and whether it’s rock, hip-hop or house, music can make waves anywhere. However, one strange quirk of the industry is that people who are entirely uninvolved can end up becoming part of someone else’s musical story, and that’s precisely what happened when Eminem and a small Argentine family crossed paths in 2019.

In January 2020, Eminem released his eleventh studio album, Music To Be Murdered By, to mixed reviews. However, while he was recording it, The Alchemist was sifting through music. Then he stumbled across an interesting piece from Pescado Rabioso, a band formed by Luis Alberto Spinetta.

Spinetta is widely considered one of the pioneers of Argentine rock, and the Buenos Aires native has acquired legendary status in his country. However, few know about his amazing music outside of South America.

As such, one could forgive Spinetta’s daughter Catarina from being more than slightly shocked when, in 2019, she received a call from Eminem, Shady Records, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing asking if they could use Pescado Rabioso’s 1973 track, ‘Amame Peteribí’.

The track was not only composed by her father, Spinetta, but it was also written by him for the band’s 1973 sophomore album, Pescado II. According to Catarina, she simply screamed to her sister, “Eminem wants to sample our dad!” She once revealed in an interview that, when the family found out, “We were just surprised.”

It’s not unusual for hip-hop producers to find obscure samples. However, this one was not one of many Arabian samples used by beatmakers; it was a rock sample from further afield. Although it was exciting for Catarina, during an interview with Vibe she admitted that the label didn’t tell her exactly what it was going to be used for, recalling, “We didn’t know the name of the song or when it was going to come out. I asked them to send me the track before I gave the final approval, but they told me that it couldn’t be done — that the only way was to call me and let me listen over the phone.”

‘Ámame Peteribí’ would eventually find itself neatly interwoven into the instrumental of ‘Stepdad,’ the 12th track on the rapper’s Music To Be Murdered By project. Reflecting on what it was like initially hearing the song over the phone, Catarina Spinetta detailed, “I got excited! It was crazy to hear [Eminem] rap over Dad’s music. The Pescado riff played the whole way through, in a loop.”

Still, out of respect for her brothers and sisters, she admitted that, in a bold move, she didn’t just confirm it with Em but instead deliberated with her family, admitting, “I talked it over with my siblings [and] we thought it was a great idea. Eminem, being one of the toughest in the [hip-hop] scene… and also produced by The Alchemist!”

She continued, “It makes me very proud that Pescado Rabioso is still getting spins. Mixed with urban music, it’s so rough. It’s a classic Eminem rap, over a more rockera track… ‘Peteribí’ was very lethal, very funkera.”

It remains a mystery why The Alchemist decided to sample an old Argentine rock song. In fact, Catarina still has questions and told Vibe, “There are a lot of questions that we also have. We don’t know how much he knows about Spinetta, but they asked for information about who he was. Over there, they must have found something that caught their attention and decided to use it.”

Many have assumed that it was a suggestion made by Luis Resto, a producer and keyboard player of Latino descent who helped Em with his 2002 smash The Eminem Show. Still, the Spinetta family get royalties when ‘Stepdad’ is used commercially and get money every now and then from Shady Records.