Eminem and Juice Wrld Talk About How To Start A Rap Career
“Money doesn’t equal happiness, but at the same time, being financially stable knocks off some stress in your life.
So it damn near adds on to happiness. But it doesn’t equal it, obviously.
I mean, people don’t have anything and be, I mean, I wasn’t all sad when I had no money. I made the best of my situation.
But being financially stable is one less thing to worry about.”
Juice Wrld on How To Start A Rap Career With No Money
In this clip we see Juice Wrld discuss the importance of being financially stable in order to have a better quality of life, but he is equally new artists a window into how start a rap career with no money by not letting having no money stop an up-and-coming musician from developing their craft.
In a minute, we’ll see rappers like Eminem and 2Pac discuss demonstrate similar visions of what it looks like to start a rap career with no money while on their journey to become some of the best-selling Hip-Hop artists of all time…
But Juice Wrld’s clip is step #1 on the road to mastering the art of rapping, even with no money:
#1 Becoming An “Obsessional Artist”
Think about the type of artist Juice Wrld was known for being.
Not only was Juice Wrld known for his massive hits such as “Lucid Dreams”, “Hear Me Calling”, and many others…
But Juice Wrld was such a prolific creator that he was known as one of the greatest if not THE greatest major label freestyle rapper the world had ever seen.
Along the way through his journey of becoming a dynamic and inspirational writer of actual songs, Juice Wrld taught himself to be so good “off of the top” he went viral several times over JUST for being able to freestyle about things around him.
Getting to be a world-class freestyler on TOP of being a prolific songwriter is double the work, but because Juice Wrld was an obsessional artist, he was able to do it.
In fact, Juice Wrld got SO good at freestyling that he was able to (and well-known for) also freestyling entire songs on the spot. You can see this demonstrated on shows such as his “Fire In The Booth” performance, but probably the most well-known anecdote is when he told The Breakfast Club that he wrote his biggest song, “Lucid Dreams” in about 15 Mins.:
“It’s funny because I wrote “Lucid Dreams” in like, 15 minutes and on the original mixtape that it was on, I didn’t that was gonna be… it was just another song.
Obviously I liked it enough to put it on the project, but I didn’t think that was going to be the smash… I had a song called “Moonlight” on the tape and I thought that was going to be the smash, but…
I didn’t know that many people were going to be related to heartbreak, it surprised me how many people related to that song you know…”
Juice Wrld On Writing Lucid Dreams In 15 Mins.
These are the words of an OBSESSIONAL artist… someone so focused on improving their skills and not just “rapping” but BEING a rapper…
Think of BEING vs. DOING as a philosophical concept…
That he was able to master the art of freestyling to a point that he would maybe Billboard topping singles by JUST going off of the top!
If you yourself are an artist interested in mastering the art of freestyle rapping to the point of being able to freestyling entire songs, click HERE to check our video course “How To Master The Art of Freestyle Rap In 2 Weeks or Less”, but…
Let’s check out Eminem talk about his relationship with how to start a rap career with no money by discussing step #2:
#2 Music Over Money
Anderson Cooper: Do you like spending money?
Eminem: Not particularly
Anderson Cooper: I heard a story that you wanted to buy a watch and at this point, you sold millions of albums, and you called up your manager to see if you could afford to buy the watch.
Eminem: Yeah, that’s true. I think it was a Rolex… it was a Rolex, and I asked him if I could afford it? They make fun of me for it, but I’m for real. The whole money thing, all that stuff, it was brand new to me… I still have that Rolex. I don’t wear it ‘cause I don’t want to get a scratch on it…
Eminem and Anderson Cooper On How To Start A Rap Career With No Money
Make no mistake about it… Eminem grew up in poverty in the difficult slums of Detroit. Although there are many songs and even a film that you probably know called 8 Mile which discusses his tough upbringing…
Perhaps his most synthesized vision of his relationship with money is his early track, “If I Had” which discusses his visions of what he would do if he “had a million dollars”…
Interestingly this was a track that written while he still in poverty, since although it was featured on his debut studio album The Slim Shady LP from 1999, it was notably featured on his 1997 Slim Shady EP which created before the fame and thus was written while he was still broke and unsigned.
The thing to understand here is that Eminem, even after the fame and fortune, still has that underdog mentality that money isn’t nearly as important as his music.
Make no mistake, when you think of Eminem you can think of his obsessional discussions in interviews about how he wants to “be the best rapper”… and how he loves words, but not about how he wants to be the “richest” rapper.
Much like Juice Wrld’s obsessional nature in step #1… Eminem should be a guiding principle for new artists that if they want to start a rap career with no money…
Don’t beat yourself up for not having the best relationship with money, beat yourself up for not making the best music. Shady is a living, breathing example that the music can often outweigh the money when it comes to knowing what to focus on.
Now, you’re probably wondering, what’s the best way to develop that “obsessional artist” attitude demonstrated by rappers like Juice Wrld and Eminem?
You have to look no farther than the sickeningly inspirational work ethic of Tupac Amaru Shakur and make momentum your muse.
#3 Make Momentum Your Muse
Narrator: On that last night, ‘Pac was relaxed and having fun… the engineer Scott couldn’t believe how relaxed he was
Engineer 1: Then the food comes in, everyone’s have a good time, eating… drinking… then the song’s done. ‘Alright, I already got the lyrics done, let’s go’ bam, does more lyrics on this other song…
Engineer 2: One thing I thought was interesting… sometimes people would write the lyrics down and I’d look at the lyrics… there was never a misspelled word and nothing ever crossed out… he’d be writing and have all the lyrics spelled out correctly.
Engineer 1: Boom, boom, alright that’s 2 songs, let’s do another one…
2Pac’s Work Ethic Documentary
The importance of being in creative momentum is not discussed enough when people think about how to start a rap career with no money.
Most articles and YouTube videos will tell artists in 80 million ways out to get on a Spotify playlist, how to “market” what a rapper has written, and more…
Pretty much everything except HOW to master the creative process to make the best music.
Here we see the actual people who have worked with a rapper at the stature of 2Pac saying that that momentum was his muse…
Not necessarily money. Of course money and being financially stable is absolutely crucial, as Juice Wrld talked about in step #1, but really it’s all about that momentum to get to the momentum where music just starts FLOWING out of a musician’s mind where the magic really starts to occur.
Pro-Tip: Time Your Songwriting Sessions
Again if you’re an actual rap artist reading this, one of the best things you can do as your develop your craft is to actually time your writing sessions so that you can determine how long it takes you to create a song from start to finish.
Once you have that locked in, it will be come infinitely easier to speed up the process and get more done in a short amount of time because you’ll begin to see patterns.
One of the most common patterns that holds up-and-coming rappers is back is the Verse 2 Blues as we call it.
That is where a rapper hears a beat they love and crushes the first verse and maybe the chorus, but then immediately gets low-level anxiety and/or writer’s block when verse 2 needs to be written because they’re fearful that their second verse won’t be as good as their first.
This can additionally happen during the writing of the chorus for artists who don’t struggle to create the bars but have trouble with creating a dope hook.
In any case, by timing out writing sessions, artists can quickly identify WHEN the verse 2 blues come (or the chorus blues) and then take steps to focus on speeding up THAT part of the writing session quickly to make it easier on them.
After a bit of practice in areas such as this, someone can vastly improve their chances of mastering knowledge around how to start a rap career with no money… and start getting one step closer to their dream of becoming a rapper like a Juice Wrld, Eminem, or 2Pac.
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Now, if you’ve enjoyed this article and want to hear more, check out artists such as 50 Cent and Dr. Dre discuss the art of rap songwriting and creating a rap album by clicking HERE and HERE… and don’t forget to check out the freestyle course HERE.
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