Video: Eminem feat. Beyoncé - 'Walk On Water'
Eminem shows his vulnerability in the powerful video for “Walk On Water,” the Beyoncé-assisted lead single off Revival.
Premiering exclusively via Apple Music, the stunning clip opens with a beam of light shining down on a mic stand. A pensive Marshall Mathers takes over from there, performing the song in an old theater, where snow falls all around him. Light trails and visions of his late friend Proof pop up behind him, while he bares his heart on the piano-laden track, which was co-written and produced by Skylar Grey and co-produced by Rick Rubin.
After seeing a version of himself drowning, Marshall Mathers walks on frozen water in a snow storm. Meanwhile, a crew of frantic Slim Shadys appears in front of old typewriters, click-clacking away, but none of what they’re writing makes any sense until one of them writes “Stan.”
Eminem also stars on the latest cover of Complex, standing in front of “The Spirit of Detroit” monument. Inside of the issue, Em opens up about his evolution as an artist and how it’s become harder to make songs.
“I feel like one of the things that’s happened to me over the years is rapping getting harder, but rhyming gets easier, if that makes any sense,” he said. “One of my drawbacks I feel like that I did on the last album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, was long verses, because I couldn’t get the rhyme to end. In other words, when I think of a couple phrases or whatever it is, I think of so much shit that rhymes with it and connecting the syllables and doing all that, but by the time it’s all said and done, is this different than anything I’ve done before?”
He also revealed how he feels about being publicly criticized by rappers like Vince Staples. “The reason I don’t trip off that is because I feel like regardless of whether you rap or you don’t, or you’re in the game or you’re not, I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” he said. “I don’t really trip off people critiquing what I do. In some cases, I feel like there are peers that don’t really listen to my music anyways and they’re not fans, so I’m not making my music for them. I’m making my music for me first, obviously, so I can be happy with something. At the same time, try to give the people that do appreciate my music, give them something to listen to basically and try to meet whatever expectations are placed. I figured it out a long time ago. It doesn’t matter what I do, what I say, what album I come with, it just doesn’t matter.”