Eminem and Elton John’s performance of “Stan” at the 2001 Grammy Awards remains an iconic moment in music history, and the two friends linked up again today for a conversation about Em’s upcoming album Revival with Interview Magazine. Early on, the pair discussed Eminem’s creative process and how he approaches making a new album.

As Eminem explains, he wants each song he makes to be better than the last:

You’re not going to hit it every single time, and that’s why, when I record an album, I do probably close to 50 songs. Each song I record has to get better. If it’s not better than the last song that I made, it’ll usually linger for a couple of months, and then it’ll be put on the backburner, and then there’ll be another song that I do, and then it often doesn’t make it on the album.

The pressure that this creates came up on his recent single “Walk On Water” with Beyoncé, where he rapped:

And everyone who has doubt, remind

Now take your best rhyme, outdo it, now do it a thousand times

Now let ‘em tell ya the world no longer cares or gives a fuck about your rhymes

And as I grow outta sight, outta mind, I might go outta mine

The Shady Records founder also talked about how he listens to “pretty much everything” in terms of new hip-hop, naming J. Cole, Travis Scott, Kendrick Lamar, Royce da 5’9”, Joyner Lucas, and Tech N9ne as some of his favorites.

Later on, they discussed Em’s headline-grabbing cypher at the 2017 BET Hip-Hop Awards. “One of the things we were trying to mimic was Public Enemy’s ‘You’re Gonna Get Yours’ cover,” Em revealed. “I don’t know if anybody got that, but that’s kind of the feel that we were going for.”

The cypher took direct aim at Donald Trump, and Eminem further explained his motivations for going after the President. “We have a president who does not care about everybody in our country,” he said. “He is not the president for all of us, he is the president for some of us. He knows what he’s doing.”

Em’s new album Revival drops on December 15, and is set to feature Ed Sheeran, Kehlani, P!nk, Alicia Keys, PHresher, and more.

Read their full interview here and catch up on all the lyrics to Eminem’s “Walk On Water” on Genius now.