Eminem covers XXL; Comments on T.I., Lil’ Wayne

Eminem is on the cover of next month’s XXL after a 3-year hiatus since his last album and the death of his best friend and D12 group member Proof.  Below are the covers (based off the Marvel Comic’s character The Punisher) and an additional pic from the feature. He speaks on a number of things and had some surprisingly great comments about T.I. and Lil’ Wayne and where he thinks Hip-Hop is heading.  Read for yourself:

On T.I., Lil Wayne & Hip-Hop

“I stayed up on the music, and obviously I watch TV and saw what was going on. And without naming any names, it just felt like hip-hop was going downhill. And it seemed like kinda fast. You know, in them three years, it was like everybody just cares about the hook and the beat; nobody really cares about substance. But with this new T.I. album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now. You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know. Or T.I., where you hear shit and you’re like Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that! You know what I mean? Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more.”