Akon recalls how Eminem ended up producing ‘Smack That’

Akon shares a blast from the past as he recalls the hit collaboration he did with rapper Eminem.

In an episode of The Bootleg Kev Podcast, Akon talked about his collaborations with Eminem and Dr. Dre.

“It’s interesting because every record I ever put out, I actually produced, except Smack That. Eminem produced that record. Isn’t that crazy? He always had them small little sounds, it was something minute, but it felt like Eminem.”

Akon also recalled that he didn’t expect Eminem to be this good at production. Akon approached Eminem in Detroit for a collaboration. The Lonely rapper told Slim Shady he wanted to come into his world.

“He gave me a folder with, like, 30 tracks in there. And out of 30, I picked five. And I recorded all five, and the one that stood out was Smack That. I was like, ‘Bro, this is it’,” he told.

“Once he heard my concept to it, he was like, ‘Yo, I’m jumping on this one’. And I said, ‘You know what, if he jumps on this one, this will be a single’. And that’s the only one we ever had together, besides all those we did. But I still have them. I literally still have those records today. These are all the records that’s gonna drop in the future.”

Released in 2006 for Akon’s album Konvicted, Smack That has over 570 million streams on Spotify and over 950 million views on YouTube. It is the 15th most streamed track in Marshall’s catalogue and Akon’s most streamed song ever.