Eminem Covers XXL

In the June edition of XXL magazine, Eminem claims that hip hop was going downhill during his absence, but T.I. and Lil' Weezy helped to raise the bar:

"I stayed up on the music, and obviously I watch TV and saw what was going on.....And without naming any names, it just felt like hip-hop was going downhill. And it seemed like kinda fast. You know, in them three years, it was like everybody just cares about the hook and the beat; nobody really cares about substance. But with this new T.I. album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now. You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know. Or T.I., where you hear sh-- and you're like, 'Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that!' You know what I mean? Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more."

He also speaks on a drug addiction:

"I didn't really think I had a problem. Basically, I went in, and I came out. I relapsed, and I spent the next three years struggling with it. Also, at that time, I felt like I wanted to pull back, because my drug problem had got so bad. I felt like, 'Maybe if I take a break, maybe this will help.' I started to get into the producer role more. ... I can still be out-there with my music, like with the Re-Up album, but I don't have to be in the spotlight the whole time."