*
Eminem talked about Proof and what it was like being a white kid doing black music. How Proof told people the white kid was cool. We talked about freestyle and he admitted that sometimes people wrote things down in advance. But, he said, “If a guy came back with something off the top of his head he’d always win the battle. You can tell if the lines are too perfect. Proof had such a big name and was so respected, not only in my neighborhood, but he was the best in the city—just for going off the top of his head.” He talked about rap battles as a sport—like boxing or football—how it was psyching out your opponent. He got butterflies when he used to do it, he said, and yes, he was crushed when he lost the Rap Olympics. “Losing a battle was absolutely crushing. But I took the feedback and put it back in my music. Yeah, I am white trash. I’m whatever you’re gonna say about me, I am that. I started taking the disadvantages and using them to my advantage.”
*
The previous year, Eminem had been arrested for a felony weapons charge following an altercation outside of a bar. His ex-wife Kim was in jail for drug possession. “It was the worst year of my life,” he told me. “I was never as scared as I was when I was standing in front of a judge with my life in his hands.” He talked about his daughter Hailie. She was born on Christmas and, he said, it was the best Christmas present he ever got. When he went on tour, she would line up items from the house as an obstacle path in front of the door. It was kind of a joke, he said, but not really. Once, when he was leaving to go on tour, she gave him a special coin. He had it silver-plated and put on a bracelet (“Like those Tiffany bracelets you see people wear”). He said that he had always been responsible, always had some sort of drive. “I had a job as soon as I was able to work,” he said. “I was thirteen years old when my little brother was born and I’ve always been a father figure to him. My little brother went through protective services and the court system—I wanted to pull him out of that. When Hailie was born it was another kick in the ass. I thought I had to do something because otherwise I’d be caught in that cycle of dysfunction that the rest of my family was in. I just wanted to be the one to make it.”
He told me he recently bought a big house from the man who owned Kmart, but he hadn’t moved into it yet, because he wanted his kids to stay in the school they currently attended. (In addition to Hailie, who was almost nine at the time, he had adopted a niece and his younger brother.) He said that as a child, he had to move, change schools and make new friends so many times, he didn’t want that for his daughter and his niece. “It’s a cliché,” he told me, “but I want them to have everything I didn’t have.” At one point during our talk, an assistant came in to ask if we wanted any food from Wendy’s. Eminem ordered a cheeseburger and another Mountain Dew—which he’d been drinking nonstop. I ordered french fries and a Diet Coke. When the food arrived, Eminem noticed immediately that there was no cheese on his cheeseburger. We discussed how we were both picky eaters. I then went off on a tangent about how it makes perfect sense that I don’t like to fly. If you can’t even get a cheeseburger the way you order it, I asked, how are we supposed to expect that airplane pilots know what the hell they’re doing?
I asked him why he still lived in Detroit. “Just to stay grounded. This is all I’ve ever known. All I ever wanted to do. I’ve seen the world, I’ve played all over. It’s great to visit, but this is where I want to live. I don’t want to go to L.A. and get caught up in the party scene. All I ever wanted to do was to make a living from music and be able to support myself and have a future for my daughter. Getting this big—I never planned it.” I asked him, now that he had gotten this big, what kept him going? “I just have fun with it,” he said. “And I like the feeling of being able to sign other artists and help people who had the same struggle as me. It’s not like I want to be some big-business monger and run a label. It’s more like putting a smile on someone’s face, when you see somebody with talent who deserves to get the same shot that Dre gave me. Just being able to do that adds to my drive.” Talking about Dre, he said, “He saved my life. Literally saved my life. Just by giving me a chance. I could never repay what he gave me. Dre was going to be OK regardless of whether he found me or not. If it wasn’t me, he would have found somebody else. I call him ‘bossman’—not in the sense that he’s my boss, but if he ever needs me for anything, I’m there.”
We talked about lyrics. I told him how Rosanne Cash told me her father, Johnny Cash, didn’t mean it literally when he sang, “Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” She said she thought everyone knew that he was playing a part. “Nobody ever thought Dad wanted to go out and shoot someone,” Rosanne said. Eminem said, “Everybody’s got a dark side to them, and there’s a sense of humor about me. When I get really comfortable and open and relaxed is when you see that come out. When people first meet me, they’re a little taken aback because I’m so laid back. But that’s a wall I’ve put up; like how much do I want to reveal to this person I may never see again? How much do I want them to know about me or what I’m like? I’m not very talkative until that door opens.” And, he added, “Sometimes it’s like how can I tap into someone else’s dark side, or sense of humor? Let’s see what kind of button I can push here. If you laugh at it, you’re just as guilty as I am. It’s just that I had the balls to say it.”
*
Given that his love of rap was so connected to language and to words, I asked if he ever regretted his lack of formal education. “I felt like I was too smart for school,” he said. “I hated everything about it. I hated crossing 8 Mile and going into Warren—which was hillbilly territory—and getting called a ‘wigger.’ And the fact that I lived in a black neighborhood but went to a white school. The names people called me; the way I was looked at—like I was trying to be something I was not. But hip hop gave me a voice. And now, being able to make music whenever I want to—it’s a dream come true.” I asked him if, given the slew of problems that came along with his success, would he take any of it back? “I would take a lot of it back,” he said. “I would take it back to where I would make a comfortable living. Where I would just make music that people would appreciate and still just to be able to walk to a mall, to a store.” We talked about love, and how hard it was for him to meet a woman he could trust. He told me that his ex-wife Kim had been there in the beginning; that no one ever could have gone through what they went through together. Now, he never knew if a girl liked him for him, or because he had money, or because he was Eminem. I suggested that perhaps he should date famous women. He said he tried that, they were crazier than he was. We talked about groupies on the road and he said he wouldn’t say he had never taken advantage of the situation, but that he thought it was all a bit . . . sleazy. He talked about his musical influences—Tupac Shakur, Rakim, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Masta Ace, Dr. Dre and NWA, Treach, Nas, Run DMC, Biggie Smalls, and Jay Z. I noted that he didn’t seem to be into the “bling” aspect of hip hop. He didn’t display an elaborate watch collection or show off his cars, personal gym or houses on MTV Cribs. He didn’t attend Puffy’s White Party. “To each his own,” he said. “But I can’t say that’s my lifestyle, it’s not the one I chose. I have a nice house, and Dre bought me a car for my thirtieth birthday. But I don’t like all the glitter and the glamour.”
We talked about his performance with Elton at the 2001 Grammys. “The idea just flew out of my mouth one day on the phone with Paul and Jimmy. I knew the notoriety of when Elton came out, and how people respected him for it. His attitude about it was almost punk rock. I mean there’s got to come a time when you stop worrying about what people think or it’ll drive you fucking crazy. The second I stopped caring what people thought about me, people cared about me. I figured out how to flip it. People said I was selling so many records because I was white. But I remembered there was a time I couldn’t get a record deal because I was white. If you got twenty people in this room, imagine how many people would have di
fferent opinions about me. At the end of the day you’re your own individual and if I were to say ‘rape your mother,’ and you’re crazy enough to do it because I said it, then you’ve got a problem to begin with.”
• • •
By 2005, after spending a year immersed in hip hop, there was only one rock musician who really interested me. Trent Reznor, who had been in Nine Inch Nails—actually he was Nine Inch Nails—was a big star in the 1990s. His music combined melodic metal, industrial, and hard rock. He had a bad reputation. He’d had a well-known alcohol addiction and was now sober. In early 2005, Dennis Dennehy played me NIN’s great new album With Teeth. On February 13, 2005, Dennis introduced me to Trent at a Grammy after-party at the then unopened Soho House in Los Angeles. I was surprised to discover that Trent was funny, charming, articulate. Totally unlike his public image as some sort of dark, scary drug addict visionary. A few nights later, Trent, his manager Jim Guerinot, Dennis and I went to dinner in L.A. at Madeo’s. I decided to do a story on him for Vanity Fair—I was going to call it “The Last Rock Star.” And then, months later, because of various in-house issues, the story never ran. But Trent was another one of those musicians who revived my interest. And, even though it was not the height of his youthful fame, he still mattered.
On May 15 and 16, 2005, I saw NIN at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Also in the audience were David Bowie—who had been Trent’s idol, mentor and friend—and Chris Rock—who agreed with me that it was the best live show of the year. Trent had the theatrical frenzy of Iggy and the rage of the hardcore/punk group Bad Brains. On June 5th of that year, Trent and I did the first of several very lengthy interviews at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We sat, both of us dressed in all black, in a beige room looking out at the hotel’s pink bungalows. A wedding was taking place on the lawn and I recall murmuring, “hope springs eternal.” Trent talked about his early classical music training. He talked about how, when he initially rented a house on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon in the early 1990s, he hadn’t known it was where the Manson murders took place. He talked about math and machines and how the record companies didn’t have a clue about how to exploit the Internet. It was the day after the MTV Movie Awards. Trent/Nine Inch Nails had been scheduled to perform “The Hand That Feeds”—a song critical of the Iraq War—on the show. But he pulled out when MTV wouldn’t allow the band to perform in front of a backdrop of President George W. Bush. His public statement at the time was, “Apparently the image of our President is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.” And I remember thinking that here were these two musicians—Eminem and Trent—who had come out with strong anti-Bush statements. Where the hell was everyone else?
*
On September 3, 2005, on NBC-TV’s live telethon to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims, Kanye West stared into the camera and, with a stunned Mike Myers standing by his side, said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Before that, Kanye had said, “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, they’re looting. See a white family—they’re looking for food.” What happened to New Orleans was a disgrace. The images on television were heartbreaking and enraging. And now Kanye was added to my very short list of those angry enough to take a stand. It wasn’t the 1960s, and probably none of this would really change anything. But when George W. Bush said a few years later that the worst moment of his Presidency was when Kanye said that on TV (really? the worst moment?), I was delighted that Kanye had caused this man even one bad minute.
• • •
On April 11, 2006, Proof was shot and killed in a fight at the CCC Club in Detroit on East 8 Mile Road. It was a place known for violence, but Proof always liked to hang out in local clubs. Eminem, already addicted to massive amounts of Ambien, Valium and Vicodin, was understandably distraught after Proof’s murder. Seizures, ambulances, hospital stays and stints in rehabs followed. This is a scenario I have witnessed too many times. It starts out innocently enough with an insomniac, or a light sleeper, who needs pills to fall asleep. It winds up with death. Or, in Eminem’s case, two hours away from death. When I saw him again, on October 15, 2008, it was at a launch party for his book at a sneaker store in downtown New York. In attendance were LL Cool J, the actor Michael K. Williams (who played Omar on The Wire), and 50 Cent. Eminem made a brief appearance and gave me that leaning into my shoulder, half-hug. I expressed my sadness about Proof. I told him how great I thought he looked. “Don’t believe everything you read about me,” he said, and disappeared into a back room with 50 Cent.
*
A few years later, in an email interview we did after the release of his Relapse and Recovery albums, he admitted he had to learn how to rap again after getting sober. “On Relapse,” he wrote, “I was more concerned with maintaining my ‘bugged-out’ subject matter. Whereas on Recovery, it was more about the songs. Right now, I’ve resolved a lot of my issues. I’ll always have conflict, but I’m more comfortable with that. See? More resolution right there. In the past, it’s been like okay, heard the song, joke’s over. This time I wanted people to hear the songs over and over and discover new shit every time.” I asked him what got him through his addiction, his overdose, Proof’s murder, and the past few years. “I’ve always had a close circle of friends who have stuck with me and looked out for me,” he wrote. “And of course I have my kids. If it wasn’t for them, things would be very different. I hate to sound corny, but they really were a big part of pulling through. I grew up without a father, and I couldn’t let that happen to them. No way.”
• • •
In 2009, when Kanye West left the country for a year following that infamous Taylor Swift MTV brouhaha, he emailed me that he was living in Rome where, he wrote, “there aren’t any paparazzi.” I emailed back that he ought to see La Dolce Vita, the Fellini movie that invented the word. When he was back in New York, I visited him on August 18, 2010, at Electric Lady studios in Greenwich Village. He told me that there was a time when he felt he’d replaced George Bush as the most hated man in America. I told him I still thought he had spoken the truth: George Bush didn’t care about black people, and Beyoncé’s video was better than Taylor’s. “Well, it was very punk rock and revolutionary,” he said. “And idealistic, and very angry in a way. But the timing was in poor taste, I realize that.” We talked about rap, and his musical goals. “I want to take it back to the essence,” he said. “Like the people who brought soulful knowledge—like RZA and Q-Tip. At a certain point, you’ve got to find a better way to do it. It’s like people in basketball who dunk and hurt their wrist and come down on their knees too hard. At a certain point, your knees are going to give out. Some of my social and public persona knees are starting to give up. I still want to run the game; I’ve just got to not get kicked up so hard.” And we discussed his penchant for award show onstage outbursts. I suggested that perhaps he took such shows too seriously. “But these things mean something,” he said. “You’d like them to have some accurate representation.”
And so, on February 11, 2011, at a Grammy rehearsal at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, I saw Eminem again. He and I were at the backstage Artist’s Entrance at the same time. The security guards wouldn’t let him in because he didn’t have his laminated pass. “I can’t get in because I don’t have my credential?” he asked. I offered to vouch for him. It took about two minutes before this was cleared up and he was allowed inside. I told him that I thought the Chrysler ad that had run on the Superbowl—the one with him at the renovated Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit, with the gospel choir, and the scenes of the city—was incredibly moving. It had made me cry. “I’m sorry,” he said. No, I said, it was a good thing. “I know,” he said, deadpan. Then he smiled. He looked extremely fit; he had been running eighteen miles a day on a treadmill. I also knew that Elton had helped him—quietly—with his sobriety.
This time, Eminem was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy for Recovery. It was, clearly, the album o
f the year. When Arcade Fire was announced as the winner, Dennis Dennehy and I, standing backstage in the wings, looked at each other, stunned. I couldn’t believe that once again, the best man did not win. First Steely Dan in 2001, now this—although you could hold a gun to my head and I wouldn’t be able to name that 2001 Steely Dan album. I told Dennis that Eminem just shouldn’t show up at the Grammy Awards anymore. The last time a rap artist won for Album of the Year was Outkast in 2004. They wanted Eminem on the show for the same reason they wanted Jay Z or Kanye West (both of whom had performed a standout version of “Swagga Like Us” in 2010 with M.I.A., Lil Wayne and T.I.). They needed them for ratings. They still wouldn’t give them the big award.
*
Seven months later, on September 13, 2010, I stood on the soundboard in Yankee Stadium at the first of two sold-out concerts Eminem did with Jay Z. It was not far from 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, where thirty-three years earlier, Kool Herc had started block parties with a turntable and a microphone—and hip hop was born. Eminem made note of this from the stage. He seemed grateful to be performing again. He had not lost one bit of his intensity or his power. It reminded me of all those other times something or someone had taken my breath away—the Clash in particular. It had been a long time since I’d seen anyone perform in a stadium who still mattered like this. Eminem’s set was stripped down, bare, intense, manic. I hadn’t seen anything quite that furious since the Bad Brains’ raging set at the Ritz in 1986. And considering that Eminem once told me he couldn’t sing when I told him he could sing, he sang the choruses on “Not Afraid” without sounding sappy. Despite the stadium show, the huge success of Recovery, and the fact that he was named the best-selling artist of the decade, I thought that Eminem probably felt the same way he did in 2004. I had asked him then if he still felt that he was an underdog. “Always,” he said. And I remembered something Jimmy Iovine said to me in 2000: “It’ll be ten years before another artist this talented comes along again.”
There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll Page 29