"Em was certainly gaining his footing after not being sober for awhile. It took him a bit to get on stable ground and figure out what he wanted to do. After almost overdosing, everything looks and sounds different to you. He was really thrust back into the game and had to adjust."
-Eminem manager Paul Rosenberg, talking about his client's big comeback with his new chart-topping album Recovery. Speaking to HITS magazine, Rosenberg discussed the motives behind Eminem's work on Recovery, including his feelings about his previous work. "With respect to Relapse, we were just excited that he was focused and recording music again, that we could get the record out there and not make the fans wait any longer," Rosenberg told the magazine. "And I think we accomplished that. He's a little hard on himself. Even at his worst, Eminem is still far better than most. He wants everything he does to be received on that level of excitement, wonderment and anticipation as his first couple of albums."
Rosenberg also talked about how the plan for the album evolved from a sequel to Relapse to its own identity. "When Em started working with Dre on sessions for the second record in Hawaii, he turned a corner artistically," Rosenberg explained. "And at that point, he wanted to keep moving in that new direction. So it was an evolution. ... By the time Marshall started focusing on making a new album, Dre was already working on his own stuff. So we reached out to Just Blaze first, worked on several tracks with him, and that opened the door to the other producers — Boi-1da, DJ Khalil. Those three are the guts of the record. It was a natural progression, a matter of timing."