Bad Meets Evil Hookman Was 'Starstruck' By Eminem And Royce

Singer Sly Pyper has already made quite the name for himself. After lending his vocals to Dr. Dre's first Detox single "Kush," Sly had many fans thinking the Doc had unearthed a recording of the now late Nate Dogg. But now, thanks to Bad Meets Evil's "Fast Lane" video, folks can put a face to the soulful voice. MTV News caught up with Sly on a recent trip to Detroit and got the scoop on how he landed the high-profile feature.

"It's part of the many years I've actually been working with Dr. Dre," Sly said of his involvement on "Fast Lane," the first single off of Eminem and Royce Da 5'9'' 's EP Hell: The Sequel, which dropped on Tuesday (June 14). "Recently, we came out to Detroit, and [Dre] was doing some collabs with Em already. Em had part of a hook that he asked me to come and just lay my vocals on, lay the velvet on. So I got involved, wrote a couple of pieces on the hook as well."

Even after laying the chorus alongside Akon on Dre's "Kush," Sly admits that his nerves started to get the best of him while he was in the studio with Slim Shady. "It was a little nervous at first, I could admit that," he said. "But I kinda felt like I knew them already just from the music. I kinda felt like we were from a similar place, so I let that stand out more than my nervousness about being starstruck. That just won everything over, made it easier for everybody."

Hell: The Sequel reunites Eminem and Royce Da 5'9", who originally recorded together as Bad Meets Evil for Em's Slim Shady LP and for the independent single "Scary Movies" back in 1999. After a rift between the two, Bad Meets Evil seemed like a pipe dream for rap fans. That was until Em went and signed Royce's quartet, Slaughterhouse, to his Shady Records earlier this year. With the fences mended, Royce and Em began working on Hell: The Sequel in a most organic fashion.

"We didn't get together and say, 'Hey, man, let's make a Bad Meets Evil record,' " Em said in a interview with MTV News. It was more so along the lines of us making amends and repairing our issues that we had, and then one day, Bad [Royce] brought a song to me and wanted me to jump on it, and the way it ended up coming out, it was pretty easy to do. It didn't take a lot of time. It was fun to do it. The way we knocked that record out kind of quickly ... it just morphed into this."