The Dark Story of Eminem

by Hasted, Nick

  Though John’s own creative vitality seemed long spent by 2001, he had a pop scholar’s interest in fresher talent, and had not been slow in supporting Eminem – “ELTON TELLS EMINEM: I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU”, as The Sun tastefully put it in August 2000. “It feels like the nuclear bomb has just hit,” he said of Marshall Mathers. “This is really hardcore stuff – funny, clever. It’s poetry and also musically interesting.”

  John’s willingness to share a stage with an accused homophobe, though, brought instant fury on both their heads. In America, Eminem’s old critics swiftly regrouped. Of his nominations, GLAAD spokesman Scott Seomin declared, “What this says is a little scary. It’s about murdering, stabbing, slitting throats, and putting women in the trunks of cars. It’s about violence.” As to the duet, “GLAAD is appalled that John would share a stage with Eminem, whose words and actions promote hate and violence against gays and lesbians.” Senator Lynne Cheney, wife of the current US Vice-President, turned her latest attack on John. “Elton John has been good in the past about speaking out on issues of equality for gay people, on issues of being against violent language against gay people,” she noted. “I am quite amazed and dismayed that he would choose to perform with Eminem.” Peter Tatchell, of British gay rights protest group Outrage, was more succinct, and vicious: “It’s a curious alliance – a bit like a Jewish performer doing a duet with an avowed Nazi.” Only Ed Robertson, of fellow nominees Barenaked Ladies, could see the positive side: “Wow, Sir Elton! Eminem is going to call him a fucking fuck, kick him, and walk off the stage – it’s going to be great!”

  The ability of a gay pop star to enjoy The Marshall Mathers LP, and his willingness to then support its maker, seemed to be the real hook under the skin of Eminem’s detractors this time, more than anything he had done himself. It revealed the enlivening, unpredictable nature of his words and possible reactions to their potency, the point of his work at its best, but one which was anathema to the pious, literal-minded pressure groups he so easily inflamed.

  John’s reaction was unrepentantly open-minded. “I don’t know why everyone is getting so crazy about this – it’s just pop music,” he reasoned. “As a gay artist, I’m asked by a lot of people, ‘but what about the content of Eminem’s music?’ It appeals to my English, black sense of humour. When I put the album on for the first time, I was in hysterics. If I thought for one minute that he was hateful, I wouldn’t do it.” John’s disgust at real homophobic violence would be confirmed the next year, with Songs From The West Coast‘s strong protest song about a gay student’s murder, ‘Wyoming’. But his reported promise to “have a word” with his new partner about toning down his musical message sounded unlikely. Eminem for his part declared he hadn’t even known John was gay when their duet was suggested. But his reaction to finding out showed a tentative maturing of his suspicion of gay men. He told Q, of John’s support: “I think it’s hilarious and I think it’s fucking great, because it shows that Elton John gets it. He understands where the fuck I’m coming from. My music is about what goes on in the world, I don’t say one thing on my record that doesn’t happen.”

  Hundreds of gay and female protesters demonstrated outside the Grammys, anyway, when they were finally awarded at LA’s Staples Center, on February 21. Inside, Eminem won his three rap nominations. Dre was heard to mutter afterwards that the controversy had denied them the real prize of Best Album: “I think we was robbed.” When Elton and Eminem walked on for their party piece, its more musically minded critics had their own fears confirmed. The waddling, hair-transplanted Briton, dressed for the occasion in a pink-polka-dotted yellow suit, looked ludicrous next to the new pop king; and his grandiose boom was no substitute for Dido on ‘Stan’ (his designated, gender-bending role). Plans to release the episode as a single in aid of musicians’ charity Musicares were wisely shelved. But it spoke well for the sense of absurd, fearless theatre in both parties that it happened at all. On TV and newspapers around the world the image of a determined looking Eminem holding the raised fist of a clenched-jawed John, each looking as if they’d achieved something, sent a message quite apart from the music.

  “I would say, ‘Why?’ to both of them?” GLAAD’s Scott Seomin said when it was over. To which Eminem’s press conference that night sent a clear reply: “If I didn’t make a statement tonight, I don’t know what else to do. I came to make an impact, I came to make a statement, and I guess I came to piss some people off.” He felt, he added, that Elton’s on-stage presence was the only way to answer the criticisms of the likes of GLAAD. “I didn’t know anything about his personal life. I didn’t really care.” Before they performed, John added this: “I’ve met Eminem and I can say absolutely that he is not homophobic.” Eminem had somehow managed to retract his homophobic reputation even as he enraged those it offended even more. He enjoyed his characteristic trick so much that he and John repeated their duet at the Brit Awards, in London on February 26. Returning to Britain mere weeks after his tour, Eminem was given his Best International Artist award by his unlikely new friend.

  The early months of 2001 saw the more threatening, legal aspects of the fallout which had followed The Marshall Mathers LP start to settle, too. On February 14, in between his UK tour and the Grammys, Eminem appeared at Macomb County Court, Michigan, and agreed to a plea bargain from prosecutors over his alleged pistol-whipping of John Guerra. Wearing a dark suit and spectacles, he accepted the dropping of the felony charge of assault with a dangerous weapon, in return for pleading guilty to the potentially five-year felony offence of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. “Mathers’ attorneys will request a sentence of straight probation, and Marshall is looking forward to putting the matter behind him,” said Interscope spokesman Dennis Dennehy. Probation was what even County assistant prosecutor David Portuesi expected from the judge when sentence was passed in April. “Mathers has no record and there was no serious injury,” prosecutor Carl Malinga added.

  Only Guerra’s lawyer, John J. Gaber, was unhappy, claiming his client had not been consulted on the prosecutors’ deal. “Eminem walked into a court with two or three lawyers,” he sneered, “maybe the prosecutors are impressed with that. Through manoeuvring, they just have possession of a concealed weapon without a licence. That’s a violation of the law without a victim … and the prosecutors are going along with this? And you tell me why.”

  A fresh, queasy aspect of American celebrity was certainly suggested by the squad of high-priced, middle-aged, neatly bearded lawyers pictures showed putting their sheepish client’s case, on his return to court on April 10. Interscope’s corporate funds were surrounding their most prized asset, a force field to prevent the law making his misdemeanours bring him low. The difference if Eminem had faced his charges three years earlier, coming to court alone from a trailer park, could only be guessed.

  April’s sentencing went smoothly, anyway. Judge Antonio Viviano imposed only two years probation. The terms included refraining from excessive alcohol or drug use, undergoing counselling, avoiding “assaultive behaviour”, and a ban from owning or possessing weapons. Eminem also needed the judge’s permission to leave the country. Viviano cautioned him that any violation of his probation, or criminal trouble, could lead to the full five years jail-time, for carrying a concealed weapon. Eminem was also fined $2,500, plus $500 in court costs, $60 to the Michigan crime victims’ support fund, and $30 a month in supervision fees during probation. “I don’t think it’s a slap on the wrist,” Viviano said.

  His mother had been in court, seeing her son for the final time to date. “I’m sure he was worried,” she told NME. “He wants to portray himself as a tough guy, and he’s not.” His look of inward concentration, hand rubbing his chin, as he was photographed standing to receive sentence, supported her claim. When it was over, he was, as he had been at the Grammys, unusually sober with reporters. “I’m glad the judge and the courts treated me fair and as a human being,” he said. “I just want to get it behind me, and get back to
spending time with my little girl and making music.” Afterwards, “he didn’t celebrate,” his lawyer Walter Pisczatowski told NME. “We talked and then he went out to lunch with his family. It was just a small get-together.”

  On June 28, Eminem would admit charges of carrying and brandishing a concealed weapon, during his other altercation a year earlier, with Douglas Dail. He was sentenced to a year’s probation, and $2,300 in fines and costs. With barely a whisper, the consequences of his Slim Shady eruption, which had loomed over him for so long, had vanished from his life.

  On March 1, something still more central finished. Kim filed for divorce a second time, citing “a breakdown of the marriage relationship … and [because] there remains no reasonable likelihood that the marriage can be preserved.” By the 20th, it had already been agreed that she and Eminem would share legal and physical custody of Hailie, and that Eminem would keep their $450,000 home, and write her a $475,000 cheque for a new one. “It was easily arrived at,” Eminem’s lawyer on this occasion, Harvey Hauer told the Detroit News, “because each person was concerned with the family and concerned with the well-being of their daughter.” It was “not contentious” at all. The divorce was finalised without fuss that October. “It’s always been Marshall’s desire that whatever happened, happened in the best interest of the child,” Hauer said. The heat and bruising fury that had hurt the couple for so long, and fuelled Eminem’s most extreme art, had burnt out. The one-time wild teenage lovers were now civilly distant adults, for the sake of their daughter. Eminem’s most gruelling love had stopped in its tracks. ‘Kim’’s argument was over.

  On May 1, Mathers-Briggs agreed to settle her court case, too, the $10 million in damages she’d asked for plummeting to $25,000. But the complications that followed showed this legal war was still causing strain and hurt, with Eminem’s mother now the one suffering, and no healing in sight. She fired her lawyer, saying she had been “confused and pressured” into the settlement, which she then appealed. Betty Kresin depicted the wounded bewilderment her daughter appeared to be experiencing to a reporter: “Debbie dropped the lawsuit because she wanted to try reconciling with her son. But she’s told me she wants to bring it back, and then she doesn’t, and I don’t know what’s going on.” Judge Mark Switalski enforced the original settlement on June 6 anyway, on the basis of Mathers-Briggs’ verbal agreement, recorded on a voice-mail to Gibson, and Gibson’s letter on her behalf to the court. Subsequent “remorse”, he said, changed nothing. After costs, Mathers-Briggs was left with a derisory $1,600. “Marshall thinks that’s hilarious,” she sighed to NME.

  Suddenly, all Eminem’s troubles since Marshall Mathers were gone. Now, all he had to do was follow it.

  10

  THE DIRTY DOZEN

  East Detroit was where the next salvo came from. That was where Eminem’s schoolboy compadres D12 still lived, anonymously, in the sort of chipped clapboard houses their star rapper had abandoned. That was where Spin magazine was forced to seek them out, listening to the group’s five black members’ sanguine stories of police harassment, carjackings and shootings, in April 2001. The occasion was the release of D12’s début LP, Devil’s Night, on June 19. Eminem’s name was written boldly on its back, as its “Executive Producer”, a patronage-denoting title previously used by Dre on him, and he played his full part inside. But, barely a year after The Marshall Mathers LP‘s full-frontal assault, Devil’s Night, it was quickly clear, was covering fire.

  D12’s six members, six years after its inception, were now all veterans of the Detroit hip-hop scene which had burgeoned around them: Rufus Johnson, aka Bizarre, 25, had released an EP, Attack Of The Weirdos, and shared time with Eminem in The Outsidaz; Denaun Porter, aka Kon Artis, 25, had followed his production work on Infinite by producing other underground Detroit rappers, and recorded an unreleased EP as Da Brigade with Von Carlisle, aka Kuniva, 25; Deshaun Holton, aka Proof, 27, had made an unreleased EP with the group 5 Ela; Ondre Moore, aka Swift, ex-Rabeez With Baredda, was the replacement for Bugz, shot two years before. And then there was Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, aka Slim Shady, aka the eight-million-selling man, the 28-year-old senior player. But that Spin piece showed events since their inception had not unbalanced D12 in the ways you would expect.

  “The thing about D12 is there ain’t no leader,” Bizarre told the magazine, even if “Em did sell eight million copies, so his opinion does matter.”

  “We’ll still whip his ass [if he’s in the wrong],” said Kuniva. “We don’t think about it like, ‘Oh, this guy, he sold eight million records, we can’t speak to him,” Bizarre added. “We think about him as our boy, who we always known all our life. He never changed, really.”

  “The crew’s got to stay together,” Eminem concluded. “There’s gonna be fights. But we’re always gonna be friends, because that’s what we were before any of this shit. That’s the most important thing. Just to fuckin’ remember that we’re friends.”

  “We agreed that the first one who made it would come back and get the others,” he simply added to another reporter, suggesting a romantic bond more like the till-death blood brothers of The Wild Bunch than the immoral Dirty Dozen; the honourable Western outlaw self-image they’d started with in 1995 was clearly still strong in their hearts.

  The photos in Spin, of D12 with the Lafayette Coney Island hot dog diner to themselves, impishly clowning with staff, confirmed the comfort of his posse for Eminem. Relaxed and laughing, for the only time I know of in public (apart from one early photo of him dancing and hugging with D12 and Kim, everyone innocently happy), he is lost in pleasure at the others’ antics. For once, as the fat and slyly funny Bizarre perches a British bobby’s helmet on his head, and Kon Artis takes charge in the kitchen, no one is watching Eminem. In the pictures, he looks like just another scrawny, amiable white guy, pleased to be allowed in the gang. “There’s no fucking master plan, no pressure, no commercial intent with D12,” he explained to Q. “It’s just something I do with my friends and it’s fun. It’s not a career thing at all. I don’t have to be in the fucking limelight all the time, which is good.”

  Devil’s Night was further evidence of Eminem’s diluted, unpressured presence in D12. When it came out, so soon after the group had done little but get in his way at his lame British shows, I reviewed it dismissively, calling them Eminem’s Wings. Like Paul McCartney’s wilfully democratic post-Beatles band of musos, their presence excused him from any sudden shortfall in talent after Marshall Mathers’ heights. He could even have a flop record with them, and not get the blame.

  Listened to more carefully, though, D12 and Devil’s Night had more substance. Eminem had started his own imprint, Shady Records, to get his friends released through Interscope, and, also producing eight tracks (to Dre’s four, and Kon Artis’ two), it showed him using his success to seize a new level of control. Rapping alongside the Detroit crew he’d grown up with, some of his more freakish attributes were suddenly given context. And when he did take the mic himself, he had the old implacable presence. At its best, Devil’s Night took the previous year’s notorious ammunition, and resumed his war with the world.

  It was a Detroit record through and through. Intense, isolated sessions in Dre’s studio did not feel right this time. Instead D12, and Eminem’s key collaborators – Jeff Bass, Mike Elizondo, even Dre – decamped to the 54 Sound studio in Ferndale, a small white suburban community to the west of Warren, with almost identical battered frame bungalows, and the inevitable southern border, 8 Mile. There, cheap motels, a cemetery and the State Fair surrounded a bare bus terminal which would shoot you straight back into downtown Detroit’s ghetto heart. In this place, the slickness and self-absorption of Eminem’s last two LPs fell away, and the references to the city – as Detroit, or Amityville – piled high. Even native son Iggy Pop got a mention.

  Eminem’s increased involvement in production, and new Dre directions, also made Devil’s Night‘s sound at once more basically, funkily hip-hop, and more inc
lusively American. Simply, it was more like rock music. The influence of Eminem’s method of composition – building ideas by bouncing them off Jeff Bass’s guitar and piano riffs – must have been significant, as his own rock knowledge was slight. But the single ‘Purple Pills’ was typical of this barrier-breaking mood anyway, its scratching and booty-moving bounce ending in a redolent harmonica solo by Ray Gale. Dre-produced track ‘Fight Music’ meanwhile was built from an ominous Elizondo bass line, clearly echoing Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’. Rasping hard rock guitars were all over the record, as were welcome female R&B voices, for the songs about sex and filth, and, on the Eminem-produced ‘Blow My Buzz’, a West Coast-pleasing snatch of P-Funk.

  This base-covering was nothing new: hip-hop’s initial crossover into mainstream acceptance in the Eighties had come from Run-DMC’s use of Aerosmith’s dinosaur rock, and the example of Cypress Hill’s grunge-rap ten years later, and hip-hop’s subsequent domination of the American charts, had shifted rock towards rap’s beats, in the form of the massively popular Nu-Metal. But while Eminem and Dre were not above considering such commercial factors, the blurring of demographic lines in Devil’s Night went deeper.