Wendy DayCEO/Coach, PowerPlays Coaching, LLC · Helping rappers make money with their music. Building millionaires in the urban music industry since 1992.

The story of Rap Olympics and an artist you might have heard of...

22 Jan 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief recollection, Wendy Day explains how she organized the Rap Olympics to spotlight lyrical rappers and deliberately used the event to promote Eminem, then an underground Detroit artist. She describes distributing his early demo EP, Infinite, at music conventions over a nine‑month period, continuously seeking a record deal for him. The effort eventually led to Eminem signing with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label, though his debut release was delayed another two years, highlighting the lengthy and challenging path from underground promotion to mainstream success.

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So I decided to do an event called Rap Olympics to bring attention and press to the really lyrical guys to show the world that they're still there. That's right. And to showcase Eminem 'cause he's lyrical. So he was in Detroit, I was in New York. He was still trying, so he pressed up, I think it was called Infinite. It was an EP with, it was basically his demo. It was an EP with like 5 or 6 songs and he was giving them out everywhere he went to music conventions, I mean, this is a 9-month period of time from when I met him to Rap Olympics. So it wasn't like we just said, oh well, and sat back and did nothing. We kept trying to get him a deal. And then finally, he finally got a deal at Aftermath. And then it took like another 2 years before he came out. Like, it seemed to take forever. Damn. Yeah, it was crazy how long it took.