The Dark Story of Eminem Read online

  Others were not so conciliatory – like Champtown, who claimed Bassmint “were rolling with [my] Straight Jacket Records from ‘91 to ‘95. Eminem was stiff with it at first. I definitely was responsible for his humour. I gave him the confidence to be funny. I used to be a jokerman back in the days. When I see Eminem, that was a part of me.” From most of these people Marshall once knew, there was the same tone of hurt confusion. Head, Eminem’s DJ for years, whose productions were retooled by Dre on The Slim Shady LP, and was then cast aside, was simply bitter. It seemed likely The Source‘s tape originated with him. Manix had meanwhile angrily played Champtown the “moon crickets” recording, and the two men had hundreds more tapes stashed, their intentions for them unclear. Others cursed Eminem for not signing them, for hurting Detroit, not helping it; for leaving them behind.

  They were like vengeful ghosts from Eminem’s past clawing at his feet, as a closet he’d thought locked suddenly yawned wide. But it was too late for them. Marshall had been the one with the strength to succeed. And as Eminem, his responsibilities were not to the past. At the 54 Sound Studio, still in the heart of his old home, he was making a new album. The future was waiting.

  15

  MOSH

  Eminem fully re-entered the fray in 2004, momentum building month by month. First, he fulfilled his responsibilities to D12, whose second album D12 World was released on April 27. His more mainstream fans still reluctantly tolerated the group as their star’s indulgence. But the perception that D12 were just his lucky lackeys was addressed head-on with the album’s first single, ‘My Band’, a daring dramatisation of everyone’s worst suspicions of the group’s true relationship behind backstage doors.

  The amusing video showed Eminem being pampered, pawed by groupies, massaged (naked, he let it be known, if you froze the frame and looked really closely) and stealing the spotlight on stage, while the others gripe helplessly behind his back, in their cramped dressing room. “I think everybody’s all jealous and shit, because I’m the lead singer of the band,” Em egotistically confides. “This rock star shit – it’s the life for me, and all the other guys, they just despise me.” When the others try to summon the nerve to confront their meal-ticket about their shoddy treatment, a very white, bratty Eminem asking, “You got something to SAY?” from stage-left shuts them up. Real simmering slights are also confronted, from D12’s steep drop in popularity when, as usually happens, they tour without their star attraction (“they say the lead singer’s rock, and the group is not”), to interviewers’ disinterest in anything except Em (“fuck Marshall, ask us the questions!”). ‘My Band’ ends with lardy scatological supremo Bizarre revealing he’s the real talent and going solo (actually, an appetising prospect).

  The enduring contradictions of D12’s existence were brought out more seriously in interviews. “We get asked about Eminem a lot,” Kon Artis complained to Hip-Hop Connection with unfaked hurt. “I understand that. I mean, we’re on his label after all, but sometimes they ask 10 questions and nine are about Eminem. I’m like, ‘So why are you even interviewing me then?’ “

  The answer was obvious, if unflattering. D12 were like a girlfriend only Eminem knew why he loved, but who others had to tolerate to get to him. Kuniva had no illusions about the relationship’s imbalance. But he also knew it was co-dependent, in a way outsiders missed. “There’s a million things Em could be doing besides doin’ an album with D12,” he admitted to Rolling Stone. “But we’re the only real friends he has. We grew up together, lived together, flipped burgers together. There’s a bond between us that nobody can break. And there’s a whole thing with him feelin’ like he owes it to us. He knows without D12 there wouldn’t be a Slim Shady.”

  The depth of that adolescent loyalty was revealed when, for the first time, Bizarre recalled Eminem’s desperate efforts to fulfil the group’s blood oath that whoever made it out “alive” would return for the rest. In his first weeks in LA after being signed in 1998, as Dre was magicking his life of poverty away, and the pressure to repay the Doctor with great work had begun, Eminem was begging his saviour to sign D12. “Marshall was tryin’ to force us on Dre,” Bizarre said. “‘This is my boys! D12!’ And Dre said, ‘Wait a minute – it’s about you!’ Dre told him, ‘Build your house before you have your friends walk in it.’”

  “They’re my foundation,” Eminem said simply. “If I lose my foundation, then what do I have? Just to be myself on a big-ass mountain, a little lonely rich bastard? Not only are these guys my friends, I don’t trust nobody new that I meet. At all.”

  His bond with Dre was equally fierce. “Dre saved my life, literally saved my life, just by giving me a chance,” he told Vanity Fair. “To me he’s ‘boss man’; if he needs something done, whatever I am doing is dropped – my loyalty always goes that way with him.” The men who had stuck with him when he seemed doomed, and the man who scooped him from the abyss – all were loved not like colleagues, but family. Like Hailie and his half-brother Nathan (as well as his 8-year-old niece via Kim, Alaina, also living with him now), they were part of the ad hoc emotional core he had built to replace his parents, and help withstand his fame’s crushing pressure. The unchecked, innocent force of Eminem’s loyalty to this tight inner circle, inside which he could be himself, dwarfed vagaries of career and critics’ opinions. Betrayed in his own mind almost since the womb, viewed by every new acquaintance through a star-struck prism, he’d stop a bullet for any of them, because they kept him alive. In the face of this, whether Kon Artis was good enough to share the mic with him was a pathetic consideration.

  To anyone buying D12 World, though, it was deeply pertinent. Eminem was of course well aware of the disparity between his standing and his friends’, and went deeper than ‘My Band’ to deal with it. First, he used himself as a commercial lure. Second single ‘How Come’ was again dominated by him, as he lamented a Detroit friendship that hadn’t survived his fame. Proof took a verse. But it was an Eminem single in all but name.

  ‘How Come’ helped float D12 World in its star’s slipstream. But further listening showed Eminem stepping back, as if he now wanted D12 to sink or swim on their own. Only the irresistible pop rush of ‘Get My Gun’, with its Sixties cop theme brassy bounce and Slim at his snarling best, was worth his fans’ money. And though he produced nearly half the tracks, he absented himself altogether elsewhere. Only Bizarre’s reliably disgraceful outbursts, raping grannies over the sink and raising crackhead pimp kids, papered over the longueurs. Rapid sales of 3 million, though, made D12 more than a charity case. As they conclude on ‘Keep Talkin’’: “We ain’t stoppin’. We ain’t got to prove shit to y’all.”

  Eminem’s first new solo output in two years, ‘Just Lose It’, released November 8 with an album, Encore, scheduled for the next week, then suggested its maker was past “proving shit” too. So similar to his previous poppy first singles from albums that it excerpted ‘Lose Yourself’ and ‘Without Me’, even Eminem sounded bored as he asked once more: “Guess who’s back? Back again?” With an LP title implying a brief coda to his initial extraordinary trilogy, the omens stank.

  When XXL queried his choice of single, a man who had by now sold 50 million albums, and was by far Interscope’s most valuable asset, showed an unwillingness to flex his power bordering on cowardice. “Well, you know, we had discussions about that – me and Dre,” he hedged. “And it’s not just me running that food chain. It’s not just me calling the shots. I’m not necessarily my own boss, so to speak. Between me, the label and Dre, it’s got to be a mutual decision. Do we come out with [a serious single] right out the jump, come out so serious and dark to where people don’t even know the album’s out because it ain’t getting played on the radio?” As if, even in the ultra-conservative world of US airplay, the new Eminem single could ever be excluded. The gratitude that lingered to those that had signed and so saved him in 1998 mingled with the engrained cautiousness of a man who had once been unable to support his family (he still talked in 2004 ab
out Hailie’s college fund, though by now he could found her a college). He remained a frustrating mix of fervent radical and meek company man.

  ‘Just Lose It’’s video also recalled the playful style of ‘Without Me’, as Eminem employed MTV-notorious heiress Paris Hilton to slap him, and impersonated fallen Eighties stars Pee-Wee Herman, MC Hammer and Michael Jackson. “What else could I possibly do to make noise?” he wondered aloud, “I’ve done touched on everything except little boys.” Accompanying images of Eminem dressed as Jackson with his nose falling off, hair aflame (Jackson’s fate on a Pepsi commercial), and bouncing on a bed with kids naturally left the ex-King of Pop, mired in accusations of molesting children at his Neverland ranch, apoplectic. He dubbed the video “demeaning and insensitive”. Fellow ageing Detroit legend Stevie Wonder, who had supported Eminem in earlier controversies, went further, all but calling him racist: “I was disappointed that he would let himself go to such a level. He has succeeded on the backs of people predominantly in that lower pay bracket, people of colour. So for him to come out like that is bull.”

  The tape of Eminem rapping “nigger” was almost audible beneath Wonder’s words, which implied everything black was off-limits to the satire of a white man still under suspicion. Eminem contented himself with disposing of Jackson’s complaints. “I thought it was blown way out of proportion,” he told MTV. “Michael Jackson sitting on the edge of a bed with little boys jumping on it – that ain’t nothing he didn’t tell us.”

  A second track out just prior to Encore taunted a far more powerful enemy. ‘Mosh’, released as a video over the internet seven days before the US election on November 2, was the culmination of The Eminem Show‘s anti-Bush vitriol, the most daring political statement by a major pop star in years, and proof Eminem’s power as a lightning rod for his country’s stormy subconscious still sparked.

  The 2004 election was the most bitterly divisive since Nixon steamrollered the idealistic liberal George McGovern in 1972, when Vietnam still staggered on, anti-war protests outside conventions were violently squashed, and Watergate waited in the wings. The Iraq war and Bush’s Nixon-like venality had similarly schismed America. And so, although the Democrats’ John Kerry was a weak candidate, the chance to unseat Bush partially unfroze the post-9/11 paralysis of the nation’s allegedly radical rock stars. Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Neil Young, Creedence Clear-water Revival’s John Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, and token young person Bright Eyes combined in the Vote for Change tour, timed to sweep through swing states as the campaign climaxed. The intentions were laudable, but the constituency of these mostly ageing, “classic” rock stars was narrow. And R.E.M.’s recorded reaction to the times, Around The Sun, like Springsteen’s The Rising, saw them windily hem and haw, too mildly agonised to alter minds. The dormant tradition of protest songs – as anti-war protests once more swept the world – was revived in powerful, personal work from indie underground figures like Bright Eyes and Willy Mason. And previously apolitical old punks Green Day hit number one globally just after the election with American Idiot, a concept album about alienated adolescents in Bush’s America. Generally, though, at this vital moment, rock arthritically fumbled its chance to make a stand, and a small difference.

  By contrast, Eminem just plugged into his rage and let rip. ‘Mosh’ moved to a martial beat, galley-slave chants and lightning-lashed, rain-whipped ambience. It sounded implacable and apocalyptic. Its lyrics’ “final hour” could equally refer to the election countdown, or the “end days” Christians Bush and Eminem would both recognise. As in ‘White America’, it re-imagined the frustrated burger-flippers of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ finding a purpose beyond spitting in food, becoming a revolutionary army led by Eminem’s “spark” to the gates of the White House. There he wondered if the storm breaking over their heads was God’s curse that their country had voted Bush inside, before delivering this seditious address: “Maybe we can reach al Qaeda with my speech/ Let the President answer our high anarchy/ Strap him with an AK-47/ Let him fight his own war/ Let him impress Daddy that way … no more blood for oil.”

  ‘Mosh’ raised the stakes as high as a pop song could reach, Eminem taking a generation’s leadership upon himself and promising “I won’t steer you wrong”, even as he asked them to give him “hope” and “strength” as they marched shoulder to shoulder. This was no ‘We Shall Overcome’ passive protest, instead describing insurrectionary “mosh pits outside the Oval Office”. “Stomp, push, shove, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home, COME ON,” Eminem exhorted, his unfaked fury on the final words hitting harder than polemic. His patriotic love for his country, its citizens and the free speech it guaranteed – tested by him for so long – struggled directly with the McCarthyite poisons the War on Terror had let loose, a battle he saw ending in his own assassination: “No more psychological warfare to trick us into thinking we ain’t loyal/ … Look into his eyes it’s all lies the Stars and Stripes have been swiped/ washed out and wiped and replaced with his own face/ Mosh now or die/ If I get sniped tonight, you’ll know why.”

  ‘Mosh’’s video made its intentions still more explicit. At first distributed from the Guerrilla News Network website, and made by the avowedly left-wing Ian Inaba, Eminem’s collaboration with such brazen radicals took him far outside normal corporate channels. Only his fellow working-class Michiganite Michael Moore stood so far to the left, while in America’s media mainstream. The animated video showed Eminem angrily reading a board pinned with clippings reporting Bush’s declaration of war and tax cuts for the rich, then pulling on a black hoodie and taking to the street. In other corners of America, a black man was harassed by cops, a young soldier was reassigned to Iraq, and a single mother was evicted from her home. All yanked black hoodies over their heads and joined a mass march on the White House, a new army of the night. The video ended with them crashing through police lines, and voting.

  “We all honestly believe it could have a significant impact [on the election],” one of its makers, Steve Ogden, told NME. Co-artist Kevin Elam added: “I think this video has very little to do with pushing Encore. My belief is that Mr. Mathers is rightfully bringing an anthem to the fight against the corrupt system and secretive Bush administration.”

  “Most of it is in the song, and I would prefer to leave it at that,” Eminem told Vanity Fair. “But my personal opinion – and I’m just one person who happens to speak to a lot of people – is that we live in the best country there is, and this guy is fucking it up. There’s people over there in Iraq dying and we can’t get a straight answer why. My personal take is that when 9/11 happened, you had bin Laden. It was an attack on America from one guy, and all of a sudden we’re going after someone we haven’t heard about in fucking 10, 12 years. It’s like two people are standing here and one punches you in the face and you don’t do anything back to him – you punch the other guy in the face.”

  “We got young people over there dyin’, kids in their teens, early twenties who should have futures ahead of them. And for what?” he asked Rolling Stone. “I’m not 100 million per cent on Kerry. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I hope he’s true to his word about his plan to pull the troops out. I hope we can get Bush out of there, and I hope ‘Mosh’ wasn’t too little, too late. That it can sway some of the voters or open people’s minds and eyes up to see this dude. I don’t wanna see my little brother get drafted. Every motherfuckin’ vote counts.”

  Of course, when the votes were counted, Bush did win, with a substantial majority. Even if Eminem had fully followed through on his radicalism, and made ‘Mosh’ Encore‘s first single, the result would not have changed. He had anyway participated heavily in Detroit voter registration drives earlier in the year, so could hold his head up. But the final failure of nerve in the release of ‘Mosh’ still haunted him, when he spoke to MTV.

  “I feel like the election was a big let-down,” he said. “We did our best to get ‘Mosh’ out as soon as we could. But do I wish it cou
ld have come out two weeks earlier? Yes.” That showed hardened resolve, after this damning admission to XXL: “We were trying to get ‘Just Lose It’ out there. We didn’t want to get ‘Mosh’ out there and be too political. Eminem’s never been too political.” No one believed that now.

  The ‘Mosh’ story was not quite over. The song finished with a dedication to “the future of our next generation”, and children’s voices giggling, “Can you hear us?” The majority of young voters had sided against Bush, and a re-shot ending to the ‘Mosh’ video spoke to them. Instead of voting, Eminem’s hooded army now marched into the Supreme Court, with placards protesting everything from the war to First Amendment infringements. Vice-President Dick Cheney appeared to suffer one of his regular heart attacks, while Donald Rumsfeld impotently grimaced, and John Kerry cried tears of joy. “Voting was only part of the video’s message,” director Ian Inaba explained. “It was a larger call to arms for a generation alienated by a system that only sees young people as consumers, criminals or cannon fodder. In this alternate ending, we remind those who were inspired by the first version to not give up the fight. In our corporate-controlled duopoly, you have to take other measures to have your voice heard.”

  ‘Mosh’ had seen its writer glowingly compared by the Asian Times’ terrorism expert to those on May ‘68’s Paris barricades, and was declared “the most important piece of mainstream dissent since the ‘60s” by New York magazine. Though compromised in its release and maybe ineffectual, it still gave Eminem, so recently a feared folk devil, fresh respect.