While it may not have been all that noteworthy to most readers of Rolling Stone, one excerpt from an interview they did with Illa Da Producer about Eminem‘s ‘Kamikaze‘ album stood out. When talking about the sample for the song “Good Guy“, the producer credits the ‘Kingdom Hearts‘ theme.
That’s me doing my video game thing. Kingdom Hearts. 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. 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.
Hmmm.
The theme to ‘Kingdom Hearts’ is only performed by one person: Utada Hikaru. It’s either “Simple And Clean” from ‘Kingdom Hearts’ or “Sanctuary” from ‘Kingdom Hearts II‘.
Thing is, if you look at the credits for “Good Guy“, the Japanese names that show up are Yamada Yutaka, Aono Norio, and Gomamoto Lisa, who are nowhere to be found on the credits of either “Simple And Clean” or “Sanctuary”. A quick search will show a connection to the soundtrack of ‘Tokyo Ghoul‘, which had a song called “Glassy Sky” performed by Donna Burke that became noteworthy.
Regardless of where the sample was from or what the inspiration was (maybe it was taken from both, honestly), it’s definitely an interesting choice if nothing else.