Eminem’s “Walk On Water” Apparently Ought To Feature Adele

The U.K. singer’s vocal chord issues prevented the collaboration.

When Eminem dropped “Walk On Water” leading up to his new album Revival, he surprised everyone with a guest appearance from Beyoncé. As it turns out, however, the song could have turned out very differently. The Detroit rapper’s longtime producer Mr. Porter originally had another superstar in mind for the track, too.

In an interview with Thisis50, Eminem’s right-hand man revealed he had a vision for the track featuring both Beyoncé and 15-time Grammy winner Adele:

I had a whole different idea that [still] included Beyoncé being on the song… The first person I heard when I heard it was Adele… I think something had happened with her voice and you know, she couldn’t do it… There’s only a couple people who could pull that [hook] off.

Adele has a history of vocal issues. In 2011, the British singer had vocal chord surgery to remove a benign polyp. More recently, Adele canceled the final two shows of her 2017 world tour after damaging her vocal chords.

Elsewhere in the interview, Mr. Porter confirmed that 2 Chainz was originally featured on “Chloraseptic,” and explained why Brooklyn rapper PHresher ended up on the song instead. According to the producer, the Atlanta rapper’s verse was “incredible,” but it didn’t fit their vision for the song:

When Em gets locked into a song a certain way, I try not to touch that… We had 2 Chainz come out and he was working on a hook but then the hook didn’t turn out the way we wanted it but the verse was incredible… The song kind of leads up to another song, so we didn’t want to change the verses that was on the original version, so we did have PHresher do the hook… It turned out we used his hook but there’s another version of the song.

Revival is out now, and also features Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys, X Ambassadors, Skylar Grey, Kehlani, and P!nk. Production is handled by Rick Rubin, Alex Da Kid, Mr. Porter, Emile Haynie, and more.