How do you split your time between New York, Detroit, and L.A.?

Me personally? I have homes in the New York area and the Detroit area. I spend about half my time in New York, a quarter in Detroit, and a quarter in L.A. or wherever travel needs to take me.

Eminem has been very forthright in the press about his years of addiction. What has that been like for you as both a friend and a business partner?

For the period where things were really bad, I'd lost both. I didn't have much of a business partner and my friend certainly wasn't acting like my friend. So it was a really tough time.

**Addicts famously push away those who are trying to help them get clean. How did you balance wanting to help him with not wanting to mother him? **

Yeah, well, that's what the addiction does. The addiction causes the person affected by it to protect it. And part of protecting that addiction is pushing away the people who are telling you that it's wrong and telling you that you need help. Because the addict doesn't want to hear that. So it's a balancing act, really—to figure out how far you can push somebody.

It's really tricky with someone who's in a position like Marshall's. Because it's not like it's easy for you to have him reach bottom, which is typically what has to happen before an addict decides to get help. It's a really tough balancing act because nobody wanted to leave him in the lurch, which is what recovery specialists tell you. They'll tell you, you know, Give him an ultimatum—you're either enabling him or you're not. But with a guy like Marshall, it's not like he's going to run out of money, and it's not like he's going to run out of people who will do what he wants them to do. It was really tough and through it all I just had to be really honest with myself and with him and the relationship. And that's what got us through it.

Had everything basically ground to a halt business-wise, from his career as an artist to the radio station to the record label? How did that work in the really dark period?

Again, it was a lot of balancing. I think the greatest thing we had going for us is how talented he is. We always believed in that talent and hoped that things would turn around. And that belief in him and that hope are what got us through it.

Obviously Eminem has a hardcore fan base to rival anyone's—he's bound to sell records. But with Relapse, there was a lukewarm side to the reception as well. What was the atmosphere inside the team when it wasn't an immediate critical smash?

Well, first of all, we were just happy to have him back as a person. So we wanted to make sure that, when he did decide that he wanted to record again—if that's what he wanted to do, because nobody knew at the time—it would have to be at his own pace and on his own terms. So we gave him space and let him focus on staying sober and doing what he wanted to do. And it turns out that what he wanted to do was be an artist, because that's what he cares about. So it's just a matter of being supportive.

He's said before that he felt like he had to learn how to create again. He was coming through many years of creating under the influence of whatever substance. Now all that's gone, and he's just been through an overdose, so suddenly he's under all these totally new conditions. And you have to figure out your balance. How do you get back in the booth? The lighting looks different, the room looks different, things sound different. You know. But once he got his footing we were just so happy that his ability to create was intact.