Eminem's First 'Recovery' Single "Not Afraid" Coming Soon

Eminem dropped onto Twitter yesterday to deliver a message — "I'm 'Not Afraid' " — which fans quickly deciphered to mean that Em's first single off his upcoming album Recovery will be titled "Not Afraid." The MC didn't elaborate on when fans can expect the single, but according to Nah Right, the track is confirmed to hit radio this Friday, April 30th. That means we're only three days away from hearing what Slim Shady has in store on the album that will replace Relapse 2 . Recovery is due in stores June 22nd.

While the bulk of Relapse was produced by Dr. Dre, Recovery finds Em recruiting help from outside the Aftermath family, scoring tracks from Boi-1da, Just Blaze and DJ Khalil. "Not Afraid" was reportedly produced by Jim Jonsin, the Miami beatmaker behind hits like T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," Beyoncé's "Sweet Dreams" and Lil Wayne's "Lollipop."

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Eminem originally planned to release Relapse 2, the sequel to his 2009 comeback album Relapse, last year, but opted to scrap the project to move in a different creative direction. "As I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album," he explained. Between Relapse and Recovery, Eminem also released Relapse: Refill, an album meant to tide fans over that also allowed the rapper to purge the remaining tracks from his difficult Relapse era, during which he admitted to struggling with prescription pill addiction.

It's a busy time for Aftermath as Dr. Dre has promised that his long-delayed Detox will also be released in 2010. Fans are still waiting for their first listen to Dre's new single with Jay-Z, "Under Pressure," which the producer promised would arrive in the next several weeks.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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