Em - "No Punches"

[GoodGirlsGetGutted]

he punches on Drop The World & 'Till I Collapse. he is yelling & rapping very fast in both of those songs & he'd run out of breath before he finishes the verse so he has to punch in. you can tell he punches in DTW, he had to take a few breaths performing it live.

he also would've punched in Underground & third verse of Stay Wide Awake

& Abram is right in that eminem is making a pun on "punch."

I'm not going to say he didn't use punches in those particular songs, but your reasoning isn't necessarily true.
Em probably has the lung capacity of an opera singer, given all the vocal exercises he's done over the years.
Listen to the "you started getting moody on me..." part in Spend Some Time. That's all in one breath, no punches. Not many people can do that.
Live is a different setting. Since he's moving and dancing around the stage, of course his breathing technique won't be immaculate.

[Emadyville]

He doesn't seem to punch in at all anymore, hence why his recent verses sound exactly the same live.

this ^

[da r star]

he punches on Drop The World & 'Till I Collapse. he is yelling & rapping very fast in both of those songs & he'd run out of breath before he finishes the verse so he has to punch in. you can tell he punches in DTW, he had to take a few breaths performing it live.

he also would've punched in Underground & third verse of Stay Wide Awake

& Abram is right in that eminem is making a pun on "punch."

Eminem punches a lot more these days, and I think it's the case for most rappers. I think in Relapse you almost never hear Em take a lil breather before lines. But, i know audio plug-ins that remove the gasping sound. And even at that, in DTW it's just plain impossible some parts, where a word ends and the other starts.

There's nothing wrong with punching in, as long as you can do your verse live.

@Amadeo You must be a rapper, cuz I think people who don't rap (i do) can't really understand those kind of thing.

[GoodGirlsGetGutted]

i was blasting SFTM and he punches in it a lot, never noticed it till last week

edit, actually im not familiar with the term, but i mean you can hear him take his breath before his next lines :O

If you hear that breathing, that mean he's definitely NOT punching.

[SliK]

Em uses punches, he says so in his book. He never did BEFORE The Eminem Show though. I personally don't think he really needs to, but he said it makes it a lot easier. The man has the lung capacity of a whale, listen to his Microphone Fiend freestyle, the shit is fire and he did it live.

[GoodGirlsGetGutted]

What's punching in? Is it when you record your vocals in separate takes and put them together because you can't do them all at once? I've never heard of this term before.

Say you get halfway through a verse no problem, but then you fuck up. Instead of rerecording the entire verse, you can keep the good first half of the verse and press record ("punch in") to start at the exact spot where you messed up and finish the second half.

[EminemInsider]

To my knowledge he only punches once in Till I Collapse...in the 3rd verse (ever deserve/but I'll never be served).

He also did it for "won't spare the rod" in Drop the World. You can hear how winded his delivery of that was live.

He doesn't punch on S4TM--he has 1 track where he raps everything, and then 2 layer tracks where he emphasizes certain parts with either one or both.

[EminemBase]

It's less than obvious because he says "No punches pulled", which is a reference to the other interpretation. While I agree that the preceding line does indeed place it into the context you are speaking of, it's not exactly a closed case. Beyond that, since he does use the "punch" function, one can't help but wonder why he would say something like that, unless he wanted it to have multiple meanings.

Well it's quite obvious to me that he's saying

"I make mistakes just keep it / no punches"

That bit ends. That's him like bragging about using no punches.

Then, he continues...

"No punches pulled - That's weak shit / fake shit"

Either way, he's bragging about not using punches when he does. Odd.

[EminemBase]

hehe, you got me whole wrong. if you look closely, you might just notice what I'm talking about. I'm talking about YOU, not knowing if he punches on till I collapse. I too got the a cappella, and I can't hear it.


edit: btw, I know he punches in, just not so often.

Well no offence but maybe you're not so good at spotting punch-ins because it sounds blaringly obvious to me. I can hear the punch-ins throughout.

Click Here...

At 0.34 you hear an almost seamless punch-over. Then there's many throughout, he's just edited them very closely / well and masked them with the music.

[da r star]

Yup, you're right EminemBase. And EminemInsider, he does punches in SFTM, go listen to the Acapella. But man, in Till I Collapse, I never knew that it was Nate Dogg doing the OOOoooo Ooooo at the end of the verses, cuz I always thought it was a choir synth.

He punches a lot in Till I Collapse, no wonder he never did it live. Still, even with the punches, just listening to the acapella, his performance his AMAZING.

[EminemBase]

Yup, you're right EminemBase. And EminemInsider, he does punches in SFTM, go listen to the Acapella. But man, in Till I Collapse, I never knew that it was Nate Dogg doing the OOOoooo Ooooo at the end of the verses, cuz I always thought it was a choir synth.

He punches a lot in Till I Collapse, no wonder he never did it live. Still, even with the punches, just listening to the acapella, his performance his AMAZING.

hell yes it is amazing. he is screaming @ the top of his lungs. there is no way he can rap a whole verse screaming like that. just because it doesn't SOUND punched in doesn't mean it isn't. he has an amazing studio with amazing capabilities, of course he can make it all sound like one take

Yep. That whole song is him on his A-Game. It's wonderful.

I don't believe he punches because he has to though but it's an album so why not make every line sound perfect. I think he does it with songs like that to reduce any sounding of... Breath-taking or inconsistency between lines. In the interest of perfection.

[Spyder]

im pretty sure he was talking about that one song, and probably hes talking about real life punches he wants to keep it to battling because thats their profession and it should be won there.

dont read to much into shit

[EminemBase]

^ Yeah I know he is calling it weak to pull punches in the metaphorical sense as in holding bars.

I made a point to emphasize that.

But he still denounces using punches as in the literal sense on a track too. So it's odd to do that when he so clearly uses them... Even saying so himself, a lot lmao.