Steve Miller says Eminem released the sample of “Abracadabra” two days before the release of “Houdini” | Eminem.Pro

Legendary rocker Steve Miller recently chatted about collaborating with Eminem on the hit “Houdini.”

Miller revealed to the San Diego Union-Tribune that Eminem contacted him about using “Abracadabra” on a new song. After listening to it, Miller was on board and even sent Eminem the original stems to work with. In the interview, he said the following:

I really love that Eminem used “Abracadabra.” That’s a good use of it! […]He called and said he'd like to use “Abracadabra.” He said, “I wrote a couple of verses and we made a track. I'll send it to you.” I listened to it, called him back and said, “Yeah, that's fine, man. It's great! And if you want, I'll send you the stems (individual audio files).” So I sent him my actual recorded stems for “Abracadabra” for him to work with.

What blew Miller away was how quickly Eminem's music reached people. It was a demonstration of the power of social media and streaming:

Then I realized what social media did to the record business. When I released 'Abracadabra' in 1982, it became the No. 1 record in the world, and that lasted about 12 months. Two days after we signed our deal, Eminem released 'Houdini' at 12:01 a.m. on a Friday. Within 30 minutes, 60,000 people had watched the video on YouTube. By 10 a.m., it was 3 million. In the first week alone, almost 50 million people streamed it worldwide. I'd never experienced anything like that. It was crazy, just instant. So that was a real lesson. And Eminem was very cool. I put out a little release (saying) that I appreciate it being real. It feels good that a whole different group of people are listening to my music (through Eminem) and liking it.

Miller is perfectly fine with Eminem using his song. That wasn't the case when the Ghetto Boys sampled his version of Johnny “Guitar” Watson's “Gangster of Love” on their 1989 song. At the time, Miller got into a legal battle with a group that used a sample without permission or credit and in a song that Miller couldn't endorse. Since then, his songs have been sampled by NWA, Public Enemy, OutKast and others. Still, none of them are as successful as “Houdini” is currently.

Watch Eminem – Houdini [Official Music Video] below: