Dr. Dre and Eminem have been revered for their rap skills for decades. Dr. Dre rose to prominence as a member of N.W.A., one of the rap groups Eminem fell in love with growing up, before becoming a solo rapper and producer in his own right. Em, meanwhile, started rapping as a teenager, and got his rap career off the ground at the turn of the millennium. But before Eminem became a household name, his rap skills, according to Dre, left much to be desired.

Dr. Dre knew Eminem in the early days of his rap career

Eminem started rapping when he was growing up in Detroit in the late 1980s and early ’90s. He worked hard to get his name out there, handing out his own tapes and hoping they ended up in the right hands.

In the 2017 HBO docu-series The Defiant Ones, Dr. Dre and Eminem discussed the early days of their working together. It all started when Dre got his hands on one of Eminem’s tapes, which was given to him by Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine.

For his part, Eminem was starstruck when he linked up with Dre. “I’m looking at Dre like, ‘Dude, I see you on TV all the time — you’re one of my biggest influences ever in life,” he said.

Later, when Dre heard Eminem rap in person, he knew he was the real deal.

“I had a studio in my house at the time, and I went and I put some samples together and did a couple of things in the drum machine and I did a lot of recording,” Dre recounted. “I was like ‘Man, listen. I put this sample together. Tell me if you like it.’ And I hit the drum machine, and maybe two or three seconds went by and he just went, ‘Hi! My name is… my name is…’ Like, ‘Yo! Stop.’ S***’s hot. That’s what happened our first day in the first few minutes of us being in the studio.”

“My Name Is” would become Eminem’s breakout, serving as the lead single on his sophomore album The Slim Shady LP.

Even though Dre came to respect Eminem as a rapper from their early days recording together, Dre didn’t think so highly of Em’s rap skills when he was first starting out.

“It was some very awkward s***,” Dre said of Em’s rapping, according to Music Spotlight magazine. “It was like seeing a Black guy doing country and western, know what I’m saying?”

Dr. Dre and Eminem remained close over the following decades. Dre produced the smash hits “My Name Is,” “Guilty Conscience,” and “Role Models” on his 1999 album The Slim Shady LP, as well as many of the songs on his 2000 breakout album The Marshall Mathers LP. Eminem also appeared on “Forgot About Dre” on Dre’s 1999 album 2001.

Dre continued to produce for Eminem on albums like The Eminem Show, Encore, and Relapse. Two decades after Dre helped launch Eminem to stardom, the two took the stage at the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show alongside fellow hip-hop icons Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar.