Eminem Samples ‘Kingdom Hearts’ Soundtrack on New Album

Eminem surprised fans with a sudden drop of his newest album Kamikaze recently, and it seems there are even more surprises on the album for Kingdom Hearts fans as one of the tracks samples its famous soundtrack.

In a interview with Rolling Stone, producer on the album Illadaproducer confirmed that the track “Good Guy” indeed samples Kingdom Hearts.

When asked about the sample behind “Good Guy,” Illadaproducer explains that it was him doing his “video game thing.” As for why it’s Kingdom Hearts specifically, he mentions that “It’s a Japanese videogame, and that’s the theme song from it. It’s one of the dopest melodies I’ve ever heard. Shout out Japanese videogames and Japanimation for inspiration.”

But if you listen “Good Guy” itself, then you’ll probably have trouble making out what exact track from the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack being sample. It’s because the sample was intentionally made harder to discern in the final album, “Filtered it, did some chops, did some processing to it. I basically made it unrecognizable, but I know they would have still found it. That’s why we had to deal with the clearance. But when I do anything I try to make it to where it’s not fully recognizable.”

As for what the sampled track could be, the lyrics and credits website Genius.com has the sample listed as the famous Kingdom Hearts theme, “Simple and Clean” by Utada Hikaru. There are indiscernible female vocals in the track itself (that aren’t from featured vocalist Jessie Reyez), and this could be a result of the warping and processing Illadaproducer mentions. So if you had a sneaking suspicion that you were hearing a Kingdom Hearts track in the background, you were right on the money

Eminem’s newest album also comes with a track for the new Venom film as well. Drawing comparisons with Spider-Man‘s famous foe and anti-hero and his own career, the track has received a mixed response. The same goes for the entire Kamikaze album as well, but this revelation will definitely warm the hearts of Kingdom Hearts fans.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is currently scheduled for a release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 29, 2019. It was original scheduled for a 2018 release, but was pushed back. Fans are honestly just happy to have a concrete release date after over ten years of waiting for a sequel.

via Rolling Stone