In an interview from 2004 a young and more humble Kanye recounts feeling too nervous to approach Eminem, so instead he tried a sneaky manoeuvre.

Before Kanye became the world renowned recording artist we know today, he came up in the game as a producer, working with the likes of Common, JAY-Z and others.

Most will have heard the line in Spaceship where Ye references his determination to make it to the top, making “five beats a day for three summers”. One of his inspirations when plying his trade as a beat maker was Eminem.

Ye had produced the self-titled track on D-12’s ‘D-12 World’ and in a cover story with Scratch Magazine he revealed that he had huge admiration for Em and really wanted to get his hands on his drum kits.

He said, “I think Eminem s a dope-ass producer, so I wanted to ask him to trade drums, but I was intimidated because he was such a superstar and everything.”

He noted that during the studio sessions that resulted in the D-12 track he tried to copy Em’s drums before he came back into the room.

“I’m going to try and get as many sounds copied before they come in,” he said.

“I started copying them and next thing I know an engineer comes in and straight grabs the disk and leaves.”

“I’m going to try and get as many sounds copied before they come in,” he recalled. “I started copying them and the next thing I know an engineer comes in and straight grabs the disk and leaves.”

However, despite not getting a hold of his precious drums he did learn a lot from him.

“I started seeing how he do, doing shit I wouldn’t do because I still had certain rules,” he said.

“If somebody’s a new producer they’ll do sh-t like speed the snare up +8, and that’s shit I wouldn’t do because I’m like, ‘I am sampling this snare.’ I was seeing how he truncated sounds, like chopping the air completely. It gives it a certain sound, the sound he wanted. I learned a lot going through Eminem’s drum set. Hopefully he’ll take it as a compliment.”

You can see the tweet below that allowed the interview to resurface.

My basement flooded last month and ruined my collection of Scratch Magazines so please forgive the quality. pic.twitter.com/VPyhUsxQ1i

— Howard “Treble” Cox (@Trebworld) March 19, 2020

Photography:  BY Harry HOW/GETTY IMAGES // Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic