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| NME 2000 Issue |
A blog made by fans, for fans!
Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts
Monday, December 30, 2013
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Sunday, December 29, 2013
Detroit Free Press 2000
MCCOLLUM: You say on "The Way I Am" that "I'm not gonna be able to top 'My Name Is.' " Here you've sold four million records in five weeks. Guess you proved yourself wrong.
EMINEM: When I wrote that song the label was really stressing me for a first single. I had my whole album just about finished. I went up to Interscope and played it for everybody. But everybody was saying they didn't feel like I had a leadoff single -- they were all second singles, like "Stan" and "Criminal." That's when I wrote "The Way I Am," right after we had that meeting. I was feeling the frustration and pressure of like trying to top "My Name Is." So instead of giving them "The Real Slim Shady," which I ended up writing at the last minute right before my deadline -- thank God -- I gave 'em that song. I just let it out. It was a message to the label, a message to everybody, to get off my f------ back.
Nobody really understands the pressures put on me, to always be good, to always be on point. There are so many pressures that go with my job right now. It's crazy. I'm really glad we're shooting a video of this song. It's my favorite song on the album.
Despite all your success last year, it doesn't sound like you've found much peace. In fact, it seems quite the opposite.
You gotta be careful what you wish for. I always wished and hoped for this. But it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.
In what way?
In every aspect: not being able to walk down the street anymore, people not treating me like a normal human being anymore. I miss going to the park and playing basketball. I was never that person who wanted big cars and Benzes. All I really wanted to do was have a career in hip-hop and be successful.
Does that mean you would take back the last year?
Would I take it all back? That's a good question. That's a real good question. It's 50-50. People would argue, "You got everything you want. You've got money, you don't have to worry about paying bills."
But I can't even go in public anymore. I've got the whole world looking at me. I can't be treated like regular person anymore.
But there are positives, just in the sense that my little brother's not gonna need anything the rest of his life. My moth ...My mother! My daughter's not gonna need anything the rest of her life. Sometimes I feel like I'm living my life for everyone else. I wake up at seven in the morning, and the rest of the day is work. I can't sleep. I don't eat. It's just crazy. It's a lot of f------ work, a lot more work than I ever expected.
When you look back at your days playing clubs around town, does it feel like ancient history, or are those memories fresh in your mind?
It doesn't seem that far away. These past couple of years have really shot by for me. S--- is speeding now. Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.
Most people figure that after delivering a multiplatinum album, like you did last year with "Slim Shady," you could go just about anywhere you wanted. But you stayed in the Detroit area. Bought the big house in Sterling Heights last year.
I tried to stay close to home. For one thing I bought the house when I didn't know I would be as successful as I am now. It was like, "I better grab this house, I don't know if any more money is coming." I bought the house, got it on the main road ...just figuring I might get a couple of fans every once in a while. That was a big f------ mistake.
And the city won't let me put up a fence. They won't pass a city ordinance for me. They won't take my case as a special case. Everybody wants to treat me like a regular f------ person. But I'm not a regular f------ person. I've gotta have security guards sitting outside my house now because they won't let me put a fence up. The other night somebody hit one of my security guards in the head with a battery. That's they type of s--- I get, m-----------s coming to my house, knocking on the door. Either they want autographs or they want to fight. We've had people getting in our backyard and swimming in our pools.
I take it you're planning to find somewhere else to live.
Yes, I will. Yes, indeed.
And you stayed close to home ...
Just because I'm so used to it. Like I said, a lot of people don't understand this about me.... I guess the point I'm trying to get across is not only did I never think I'd get this big, it's like I'm still refusing to believe it. I don't like having security hold my hand to walk out to my f------mailbox. There's something inside of me that refuses to believe I can't walk down the street or be as normal as I want to be. That's the downside.
Your run-ins with the law have upped the ante.
I can't comment on it as much as I'd like to. All I can say is that it's the story of my life: Whenever something good happens, the bad always follows. That's the story of my life since the day I was born.
I should have been out celebrating my record sales. Instead I'm sitting there in jail. Hopefully I can get through this.
How do you feel about your chances?
Uh . .. (Pauses) Man, I can't even say what I feel. But I have no idea what's gonna happen. I hate not knowing that, but I guess it's part of the life I lead. I don't know, man. My personal life is kind of f----- up. Every aspect of my personal life is put out there.
And you've helped put it out there. How does somebody get past the intimidation of airing their dirty laundry for millions of listeners?
I don't know. I think one of the reasons is because I make my songs for me. Me and the missus, we go at it. It's no secret we've had our problems, or that we're still having our problems. I feel like when something's bothering me, the best way to get it out is to write a song about it, I think when I do that, people can relate to me more. The more I tell them, the more in touch they are with me.
Because I guarantee you there's a lot of people going through this kind of s--- with their relationships -- with their girl, their man. I think a lot of people feel what I'm really saying. There's a lot of people out there that get in relationships and have kids involved. Once you have a child, once you bring a child into this world, it makes it that much more complicated, especially when you don't get along with someone. You're trying to make it work, you want to make your family work. But s--- keeps happening that f---- it up.
Not to defend Kim, but I realize what has happened to me has probably been a strain on her, too. It's a crazy thing to deal with. You've really got be in shape.
How supportive was she of your music as you were trying to catch a break?
Want me to be honest? It was off and on. When we were younger, she supported everything I did. The older we got, the more reality started to set in. She's one of those people that's real down to earth, like "Hello! You're living in fantasy. These things don't happen to people like us." I was always the optimist, like, "Yo, I'm gonna make this happen." And I just kept busting my ass. To be honest, I really didn't have much support, nobody in my family, in her family. Just a few friends. And just myself.
Music 365 , 2000
Oh Yes, It's Shady's Night
EMINEM is still the baddest boy in hip-hop. So bad, in fact, that his own mother sued him for £10 million last year after he claimed in his hit single 'My Name Is' that she smokes more dope than he does.
The success of 'My Name Is' helped the Detroit-based rapper's controversial major label debut 'The Slim Shady LP' sell four million copies in the US. Eminem's sharp, funny, fast-flowing rhymes and outrageous white-trash humour made him the most original and talked-about rapper in America.
Now he's back with a new album cheekily-titled 'The Marshall Mathers LP' (it's his real name, hence the M&M-style nom-de-rap). The first single is 'The Real Slim Shady', on which he disses the competition and Britney Spears to boot. He'll be premiering this and other tracks from the album when he appears at London Brixton Academy on Bank Holiday Monday (May 1). His special guest star is Dr Dre, original gangsta and producer of 'My Name Is'.
Interview: PAUL ELLIOT
Music365: You're recording your new album with Dr Dre in Los Angeles. Don't you get distracted easily when you’re in such a lively city?
Eminem: "No, I'm focused when I'm recording. When I record I slip into the zone. I don't like to talk a lot. I like to stick to myself and get my thoughts together, think how I'm gonna map out each song. Each song is fairly easy to write. I record vocals on one day and take the tape home to listen to them overnight. Then I do more vocals the next day. I always do my vocals twice. I might have the skeleton down, the vocals and the beat, for two months before I think of the finishing touches to put on it, like sound effects or if I want the beat to drop out here or something. I take my time on my shit that way."
You recorded a song with Limp Bizkit but it wasn't included on their album 'Significant Other'. Were you pissed off?
"I wasn't pissed. It just didn't come out the way we wanted. I plan on having them on my next album. It's still up in the air. We'll see what happens."
When you were growing up, which rapper was your biggest hero?
"I wanted to be LL Cool J, I wanted to be Run, Ad-Rock, Big Daddy Kane, a lot of people. Me and my friends used to stand in front of the mirror and perform. The kids from the neighbourhood would come around to watch. We knew all the words."
Is 2-Pac's 'Me Against The World' your favourite record?
"It's one of them. 2-Pac was at one time my favourite rapper. 2-Pac was more of a feel emcee, a feel rapper. That's what I'm trying to do with my new shit."
You never met your father but it was reported that he was trying to get in touch with you following your success. Did you speak to him?
"No, I was on tour. I had a brother and sister from his side of the family. I don't even know if he's remarried, but they knew how to reach me all this time, they knew about me. I didn't know about them. I don't know them so I can't say if they’re trying to cash in on my success, but I would say that since this success, I feel like that is the reason that they’re trying to get in touch with me."
Are you a millionaire yet?
"I could safely say that I'm well off, but I'm not a millionaire. People see me on TV and mistake me for having more money that I actually have. I got money now, more money than I've ever had in my entire life, but I still don't feel like my future is set, I still feel like I gotta work extra hard to get where I really wanna go. Shit, I still got a second album to work, possibly an acting career."
When you were still a kid, did you really beat a man with a baseball bat when he attacked your mother?
"No, he hit me with a baseball bat. Some lady was talking shit to my mom, she came out and pointed a finger in her face, and I said, 'you ain’t gonna touch my mother', so some dude comes out with a bat, hit me in the stomach with it, then ran from me, and I ended up chasing him. While I was fighting him I had him down on the ground when the cops caught me. They didn’t arrest me. I told 'em that the dude hit me first and I had witnesses and that was it. That was a long time ago."
Did you get involved in a lot of fights when you were a boy?
"I used to get beat up a lot. Fights are fights. I used to walk home by myself, go to my girl’s and see my friends, and when I walked back I got fucked with. It happened a lot. Nine times out of ten I would be walking by myself. Where I was growing up, everybody tried to test you."
Were you ever shot?
"I been shot at, never hit. I was 16. These gang dudes were shooting at me."
Is it still hard for a white rapper to gain respect in the hip-hop community?
"People overall respect the lyrics and they know that I know what I'm doing. They can look past the whole white rapper thing. I'm not the first and I'm not gonna be the last, but hip-hop music is always gonna be predominantly black. Everybody loves hip-hop but not everybody can do it. Black people started rock'n'roll, so how can anyone say that black people can't do rock'n'roll now? The world is fucked up, it's fucking stupid, man. Whether you're latino, white, black, Asian, it don't matter. I'm tired of hearing about the white thing. If somebody says something about it now it's funny. I laugh it off."
Could you live in LA or will Detroit always be your home?
You never met your father but it was reported that he was trying to get in touch with you following your success. Did you speak to him?
"No, I was on tour. I had a brother and sister from his side of the family. I don't even know if he's remarried, but they knew how to reach me all this time, they knew about me. I didn't know about them. I don't know them so I can't say if they’re trying to cash in on my success, but I would say that since this success, I feel like that is the reason that they’re trying to get in touch with me."
Are you a millionaire yet?
"I could safely say that I'm well off, but I'm not a millionaire. People see me on TV and mistake me for having more money that I actually have. I got money now, more money than I've ever had in my entire life, but I still don't feel like my future is set, I still feel like I gotta work extra hard to get where I really wanna go. Shit, I still got a second album to work, possibly an acting career."
When you were still a kid, did you really beat a man with a baseball bat when he attacked your mother?
"No, he hit me with a baseball bat. Some lady was talking shit to my mom, she came out and pointed a finger in her face, and I said, 'you ain’t gonna touch my mother', so some dude comes out with a bat, hit me in the stomach with it, then ran from me, and I ended up chasing him. While I was fighting him I had him down on the ground when the cops caught me. They didn’t arrest me. I told 'em that the dude hit me first and I had witnesses and that was it. That was a long time ago."
Did you get involved in a lot of fights when you were a boy?
"I used to get beat up a lot. Fights are fights. I used to walk home by myself, go to my girl’s and see my friends, and when I walked back I got fucked with. It happened a lot. Nine times out of ten I would be walking by myself. Where I was growing up, everybody tried to test you."
Were you ever shot?
"I been shot at, never hit. I was 16. These gang dudes were shooting at me."
Is it still hard for a white rapper to gain respect in the hip-hop community?
"People overall respect the lyrics and they know that I know what I'm doing. They can look past the whole white rapper thing. I'm not the first and I'm not gonna be the last, but hip-hop music is always gonna be predominantly black. Everybody loves hip-hop but not everybody can do it. Black people started rock'n'roll, so how can anyone say that black people can't do rock'n'roll now? The world is fucked up, it's fucking stupid, man. Whether you're latino, white, black, Asian, it don't matter. I'm tired of hearing about the white thing. If somebody says something about it now it's funny. I laugh it off."
Could you live in LA or will Detroit always be your home?
"I love it out here. I love it 'cos I don't live here. It's a fun place to visit but I don't think I could ever leave Detroit, man, I got too much history there, too many roots, and plus, that's what makes it so cool about coming out here. LA is my little getaway to record my shit and then jet back home. I also got a studio in Detroit that I can go to if it's the middle of the night and I want to lay some shit down.
"I can't really help when the ideas come. Most of this shit comes either when I'm laying in bed waiting to sleep, or if people are talking. If they say something, a lot of the time it'll be the way people put words together, and they'll be talking to me and I won't even be listening to them because the last thing they said gave me an idea. I sit there with a blank stare and people think I'm on drugs constantly. I do that to my girl a lot. She'll be talking to me and I'll be like, 'uh-huh, uh-huh'. I'll be looking off and she'll say, 'You’re not even listening!' 'Yeah I am!' 'Repeat what I said!' 'You said, er, I don’t know what the fuck you said!' "
You're launching your own label now.
"Yeah, Shady Records. I just started it with Interscope. The first signing is D12, a rap group that I'm in. There's six emcees and we each have two identities, like Eminem and Slim Shady. It's not really similar to my shit. It is as far as the hard-edged rhyming goes, but if anything, it's a little grittier. I don't want to say it's underground because people associate that with shit that doesn't blow up, and I think D12's got what it takes to blow. It's just gritty. My shit is kind of sarcastic and political and Dirty Dozen shit is on some criminal type shit, you know what I'm sayin'? They're on some more gun-bustin' and shootin' and stabbin' shit, a little more so than I am, if you can believe that."
You've revealed a lot of your personal life in your songs. Do you regret anything you've said?
"No, I don't regret any of it. I really believe in that shit, man. I don't believe in talking behind nobody's back or being fake. It's fun for me to do that. When I write something I don't hold back, there's no holds barred. And whatever the consequences may be, if I offend anyone or whatever, I'm saying it so I'm willing to deal with it. I don't know if anybody does it like me, saying whatever they want to say. If I'm feeling it, then I'm gonna say it. Flat out. I'm not mad. I leave my anger in the studio. I get all my shit out on the mic, I say what the fuck I gotta say, and then I'm done. I can go home and sleep I got it all off my chest. I put it out. Music is a form of expression."
What do your fans think of you when they meet you?
"There's kids who meet me who say they were scared to meet me, they thought I was gonna bite their head off. I'm like, Who the fuck am I? All I do is make music, and I'm doing the same thing I been doing since I was 16 years old. I ain't changed shit, and all these fans and shit is kinda crazy to me."
What do you think of all the white rock guys acting like black rappers — people like Kid Rock and Korn?
"I like it. I don't listen to it every day. I like Bob, Kid Rock. He was a friend of mine. I respect what he's doing, he's being himself."
Is Dre producing all of the new album?
"He's doing a lot more than he was. He did three tracks on the last album. He's got at least seven on this one and we ain't even finished the work we're doing. Dre has been so busy with his own album. He's been mixing it down and shit, but as soon as he's finished, we're gonna start getting in there and knocking shit out like we did the last one. We got in there a couple of times and knocked out a couple of songs. I had the songs written, we just did the beats in the studio.
"I get a lot of sporadic shit - shit will just hit me. I can never sit down and search for rhymes. I mean, I can, but I don't really like to do that. It comes out better when I let it hit me instead of trying to search. I would definitely say that the tracks I've done are killing this first album. That's the way I feel. If you don't upstep the game every time you come out, if you don't make your album better than your last one, then you shouldn't even be in the game. I definitely feel that this album is topping the last one.
"You see it all the time, especially in hip-hop. Somebody will make a good first album and then the next album will be shit. I feel like lyrically, I'm too smart to fall into that trap. Ideas come to me constantly. I'm not somebody who's limited, who put all his ideas on one album. I constantly keep runnin'."
How do you feel now about your first album?
"The 'Infinite' album? I realise it's there, I did it, but I wasn't really experienced enough to know what to do in the studio. There was only 1,000 tapes pressed up of that shit. I think you can look it up on the internet and get it, and if you do, it’ll be a bootleg."
Your uncle Ronnie committed suicide. Have your ever felt so low that you wanted to end it all?
"That's always been something that's been in the back of my mind, but I don't think I have the balls to do it. There was this one time when I really felt like I wanted to do something to change my life, whether it would be doing something I regretted, or with rap or whatever. I was recording the song 'Rock Bottom'. We had just found out we were supposed to be getting this deal from some record label — I'm not gonna say which — and we found out that this guy who was saying he was gonna get us the deal was working in the mail room and he was nobody.
"A bunch of other personal shit was happening in my life right about then, and I just thought I wasn't gonna get a deal no matter what, and I just took a fucking bunch of pills. I puked the shit up. I didn't have to go to hospital but my fucking stomach hurt so bad. I had a little problem and I just took too many. I don't know if I was necessarily trying to kill myself, I was just really depressed and I kept thinking, more pills, more pills, I just kept taking 'em. I bet I took 20 pills in the course of two hours, Tylenol 3s. That's why I like going back and listening to my album and thinking of what I was feeling back then."
Is 'Rock Bottom' your most personal song?
"That and 'If I Have', but I got songs on this next album that are even more personal and go even deeper into that shit. I'm going a little bit more of a serious route now. My shit was real political but people didn't see it like that, they thought I was just being an asshole. I look at the way I came up and the things I was around and the places I was raised and shit, and I figure, that shit made me what I am. So if people perceive me to be an asshole, the way I live made me an asshole, what I been through has made me an asshole."
There was a rumour that you had recorded a song with Marilyn Manson — a prequel to the controversial track ''97 Bonnie & Clyde'...
"With Marilyn Manson? Nah, rumours, rumours. But yeah, the track is done. I don't want to give it away, I'll just say it's like some movie shit. I got a lot of songs on this album that are like movie plots, twisted stories."
Your little girl Hailie Jade is four this Christmas. Do you still speak to her every day?
"I just got off the phone with her a little bit ago. She's talking up a storm, man, she talks a lot. I want to try to get her into some kind of acting or something, she got this little personality that's incredible. She loves to talk. She'll say shit out of the blue, big words that I didn’t even know she knew. She'll look at it as a joke."
Are you still writing songs on Ecstasy?
"A couple of the songs on the new record were written on X. It exaggerates shit. Somebody will be just looking at me wrong and I'll just flip a table over, like, what the fuck are you staring at?! If you're in a good mood you love everybody, but if you're in a bad mood and you got shit on your mind, you're gonna break down and shit. The hardest shit that I've fucked with is X and 'shrooms."
A music industry commentator once claimed that you were making money exploiting the world's misery. Isn't it more accurate to say that you're making money exploiting your own misery?
"That woulda been a better choice of words, but looking at him, I don't think he was able to come up with a good choice of words. Looking at his picture I expected him to say that about me. If people don't like my shit it's not my problem. If you don't like it don't listen to it. Nobody's fucking forcing you to listen to it. Nobody bought you the album, threw it in your CD, tied you up and made you listen."
"I can't really help when the ideas come. Most of this shit comes either when I'm laying in bed waiting to sleep, or if people are talking. If they say something, a lot of the time it'll be the way people put words together, and they'll be talking to me and I won't even be listening to them because the last thing they said gave me an idea. I sit there with a blank stare and people think I'm on drugs constantly. I do that to my girl a lot. She'll be talking to me and I'll be like, 'uh-huh, uh-huh'. I'll be looking off and she'll say, 'You’re not even listening!' 'Yeah I am!' 'Repeat what I said!' 'You said, er, I don’t know what the fuck you said!' "
You're launching your own label now.
"Yeah, Shady Records. I just started it with Interscope. The first signing is D12, a rap group that I'm in. There's six emcees and we each have two identities, like Eminem and Slim Shady. It's not really similar to my shit. It is as far as the hard-edged rhyming goes, but if anything, it's a little grittier. I don't want to say it's underground because people associate that with shit that doesn't blow up, and I think D12's got what it takes to blow. It's just gritty. My shit is kind of sarcastic and political and Dirty Dozen shit is on some criminal type shit, you know what I'm sayin'? They're on some more gun-bustin' and shootin' and stabbin' shit, a little more so than I am, if you can believe that."
You've revealed a lot of your personal life in your songs. Do you regret anything you've said?
"No, I don't regret any of it. I really believe in that shit, man. I don't believe in talking behind nobody's back or being fake. It's fun for me to do that. When I write something I don't hold back, there's no holds barred. And whatever the consequences may be, if I offend anyone or whatever, I'm saying it so I'm willing to deal with it. I don't know if anybody does it like me, saying whatever they want to say. If I'm feeling it, then I'm gonna say it. Flat out. I'm not mad. I leave my anger in the studio. I get all my shit out on the mic, I say what the fuck I gotta say, and then I'm done. I can go home and sleep I got it all off my chest. I put it out. Music is a form of expression."
What do your fans think of you when they meet you?
"There's kids who meet me who say they were scared to meet me, they thought I was gonna bite their head off. I'm like, Who the fuck am I? All I do is make music, and I'm doing the same thing I been doing since I was 16 years old. I ain't changed shit, and all these fans and shit is kinda crazy to me."
What do you think of all the white rock guys acting like black rappers — people like Kid Rock and Korn?
"I like it. I don't listen to it every day. I like Bob, Kid Rock. He was a friend of mine. I respect what he's doing, he's being himself."
Is Dre producing all of the new album?
"He's doing a lot more than he was. He did three tracks on the last album. He's got at least seven on this one and we ain't even finished the work we're doing. Dre has been so busy with his own album. He's been mixing it down and shit, but as soon as he's finished, we're gonna start getting in there and knocking shit out like we did the last one. We got in there a couple of times and knocked out a couple of songs. I had the songs written, we just did the beats in the studio.
"I get a lot of sporadic shit - shit will just hit me. I can never sit down and search for rhymes. I mean, I can, but I don't really like to do that. It comes out better when I let it hit me instead of trying to search. I would definitely say that the tracks I've done are killing this first album. That's the way I feel. If you don't upstep the game every time you come out, if you don't make your album better than your last one, then you shouldn't even be in the game. I definitely feel that this album is topping the last one.
"You see it all the time, especially in hip-hop. Somebody will make a good first album and then the next album will be shit. I feel like lyrically, I'm too smart to fall into that trap. Ideas come to me constantly. I'm not somebody who's limited, who put all his ideas on one album. I constantly keep runnin'."
How do you feel now about your first album?
"The 'Infinite' album? I realise it's there, I did it, but I wasn't really experienced enough to know what to do in the studio. There was only 1,000 tapes pressed up of that shit. I think you can look it up on the internet and get it, and if you do, it’ll be a bootleg."
Your uncle Ronnie committed suicide. Have your ever felt so low that you wanted to end it all?
"That's always been something that's been in the back of my mind, but I don't think I have the balls to do it. There was this one time when I really felt like I wanted to do something to change my life, whether it would be doing something I regretted, or with rap or whatever. I was recording the song 'Rock Bottom'. We had just found out we were supposed to be getting this deal from some record label — I'm not gonna say which — and we found out that this guy who was saying he was gonna get us the deal was working in the mail room and he was nobody.
"A bunch of other personal shit was happening in my life right about then, and I just thought I wasn't gonna get a deal no matter what, and I just took a fucking bunch of pills. I puked the shit up. I didn't have to go to hospital but my fucking stomach hurt so bad. I had a little problem and I just took too many. I don't know if I was necessarily trying to kill myself, I was just really depressed and I kept thinking, more pills, more pills, I just kept taking 'em. I bet I took 20 pills in the course of two hours, Tylenol 3s. That's why I like going back and listening to my album and thinking of what I was feeling back then."
Is 'Rock Bottom' your most personal song?
"That and 'If I Have', but I got songs on this next album that are even more personal and go even deeper into that shit. I'm going a little bit more of a serious route now. My shit was real political but people didn't see it like that, they thought I was just being an asshole. I look at the way I came up and the things I was around and the places I was raised and shit, and I figure, that shit made me what I am. So if people perceive me to be an asshole, the way I live made me an asshole, what I been through has made me an asshole."
There was a rumour that you had recorded a song with Marilyn Manson — a prequel to the controversial track ''97 Bonnie & Clyde'...
"With Marilyn Manson? Nah, rumours, rumours. But yeah, the track is done. I don't want to give it away, I'll just say it's like some movie shit. I got a lot of songs on this album that are like movie plots, twisted stories."
Your little girl Hailie Jade is four this Christmas. Do you still speak to her every day?
"I just got off the phone with her a little bit ago. She's talking up a storm, man, she talks a lot. I want to try to get her into some kind of acting or something, she got this little personality that's incredible. She loves to talk. She'll say shit out of the blue, big words that I didn’t even know she knew. She'll look at it as a joke."
Are you still writing songs on Ecstasy?
"A couple of the songs on the new record were written on X. It exaggerates shit. Somebody will be just looking at me wrong and I'll just flip a table over, like, what the fuck are you staring at?! If you're in a good mood you love everybody, but if you're in a bad mood and you got shit on your mind, you're gonna break down and shit. The hardest shit that I've fucked with is X and 'shrooms."
A music industry commentator once claimed that you were making money exploiting the world's misery. Isn't it more accurate to say that you're making money exploiting your own misery?
"That woulda been a better choice of words, but looking at him, I don't think he was able to come up with a good choice of words. Looking at his picture I expected him to say that about me. If people don't like my shit it's not my problem. If you don't like it don't listen to it. Nobody's fucking forcing you to listen to it. Nobody bought you the album, threw it in your CD, tied you up and made you listen."
MTV 2000
His Fame and Family
Eminem's current mode of transportation has none of the plush luxuries you would assume a rapper might have in his traveling venue: no TV, no PlayStation 2, no DVD player and no roof.
"Throw it up," the Detroit rhyme Goliath says, looking down at an anxious fan waving a CD. Eminem's in New York City, traveling with a small entourage around Manhattan on a double-decker bus, made for tourists to go site-seeing. But Slim Shady is the spectacle today as he rides downtown from Times Square.
"I remember them days, just being so f---ing hungry," Eminem laughs after trying to catch the guy's CD that was flung to him from street level. "People will go to such lengths. I would do anything to let people hear my sh--. I didn't care, I was like 'Please dub my sh--, please listen to my demo.' "
Nowadays, there aren't too many people who haven't heard Eminem's irresistible irreverence, and while he loves to be heard, nothing will ever beat a day at home chilling with his daughter, Hailie Jade. And while his young one thinks her dad's gone crazy, Eminem insists he's quite the sane one. It's the world around him that's gone bonkers.
Atop the double-decker and on a hotel roof in Manhattan, Shaheem Reid and Sway Calloway got the lowdown on Marshall Mathers, the man. Among the things they chatted about were how he rates himself as a dad, what he thinks of his own father, why he doesn't cover himself in ice and what it feels like to have strangers jumping into your pool ...
Eminem's current mode of transportation has none of the plush luxuries you would assume a rapper might have in his traveling venue: no TV, no PlayStation 2, no DVD player and no roof.
"Throw it up," the Detroit rhyme Goliath says, looking down at an anxious fan waving a CD. Eminem's in New York City, traveling with a small entourage around Manhattan on a double-decker bus, made for tourists to go site-seeing. But Slim Shady is the spectacle today as he rides downtown from Times Square.
"I remember them days, just being so f---ing hungry," Eminem laughs after trying to catch the guy's CD that was flung to him from street level. "People will go to such lengths. I would do anything to let people hear my sh--. I didn't care, I was like 'Please dub my sh--, please listen to my demo.' "
Nowadays, there aren't too many people who haven't heard Eminem's irresistible irreverence, and while he loves to be heard, nothing will ever beat a day at home chilling with his daughter, Hailie Jade. And while his young one thinks her dad's gone crazy, Eminem insists he's quite the sane one. It's the world around him that's gone bonkers.
Atop the double-decker and on a hotel roof in Manhattan, Shaheem Reid and Sway Calloway got the lowdown on Marshall Mathers, the man. Among the things they chatted about were how he rates himself as a dad, what he thinks of his own father, why he doesn't cover himself in ice and what it feels like to have strangers jumping into your pool ...
MTV: Jay-Z has a new album coming out where he says fame is both a gift and a curse. Do you agree with Jigga's assessment?
Eminem: You gotta take the ups and downs with it. Fame has got its pros and cons. The pros would be you don't have to ride one of these double- decker buses anymore. The cons would be all the craziness that comes with it. When you get rid of some of your small problems, like having bills, and then transition to getting to where somebody like me or Jay-Z is, you have a whole new slew of problems, like lawsuits and other things I never knew could exist.
MTV: The tour is going well and you've sold millions of records, but you're one of the few rappers that we never hear talking about ice or cars or your bank account. What do you do with your money? Better yet, what's the first big-ticket item you bought?
Eminem: The first big-ticket item that I bought was a house. When I first started seeing money, I treated that like it was the only house I would ever buy and the only royalty check that I would ever get. That's how I treat every check. The truth is, you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. This is a crazy ride and nothing is guaranteed. I could wake up tomorrow and this could all be over. You have to invest.
MTV: What was it like owning your first home?
Eminem: At the time I bought it, I had no idea how famous I really was. It was across the street from a trailer park and we had kids coming across all day knocking on the door. We had a pool in the backyard, kids were jumping in the pool. It was crazy. The house was on a main road so we had people whipping in my driveway like, "Em, what up?" I literally couldn't go outside my house. So we deaded that real quick, sold the house, lost money and bought a new house. That's probably the best investment I've made, my new house.
MTV: You say you weren't aware of your fame when you first started blowing up. When did you start sensing how popular you were becoming?
Eminem: The first time I really sensed it was flipping through channels and seeing my face on every channel. You kind of get sick of yourself. The first time I experienced it was probably walking through a mall or something and not realizing how many people really know who you are. I probably got the most unmistakable nose and chin in the business. Sometimes I'll go out and cover up most of my face. If they see one eye people know it's me, it's crazy.
MTV: Your daughter Hailie is obviously a huge inspiration in your life and music, and the two of you have even recorded a song together. But does she know the depths of her daddy's fame yet?
Eminem: Yeah, she knows. She's six and she's getting the grasp of that whole thing. She's starting to realize. She goes to school like, 'My dad's on TV,' and these other kids, their dads aren't on TV.
MTV: Hailie is becoming a mini celeb in her own right. She seemed really comfortable recording "My Dad's Gone Crazy." Do you see her following in your footsteps and making music when she gets older?
Eminem: When she's 25, maybe she can. She's gotta grow up first. She scares me a little bit 'cause she's got that "little star" quality.
MTV: So will Hailie be getting any siblings anytime soon? Maybe you could spearhead a hip-hop Partridge family.
Eminem: No more kids. I'm good with Hailie. I'll spoil her and give her everything I never had. I have other family members that I take care of and want to take care of, but as far as kids, I'm cool. No more, one is enough.
MTV: As you approach the big 3-0, are you getting this whole parenting thing down pat? How would you rate yourself as a father?
Eminem: I do the best I can right now. I truly believe I'm doing the right thing and I do a good job. I'm a father before anything. I'm a father before I pick up the mic. I'm a father before I'm Eminem. Of course I'm not the perfect parent. There may be things I'm doing wrong and I'll find out in 10, 15 years, but right now I'm doing the best job I can and that's all I can do.
MTV: As much as she depends on you, in "Say Goodbye Hollywood" you liken Hailie to sort of your lifeline, saying "I gotta get up, thank God/ I got a little girl/ And I'm a responsible father/ So not a lot of good I'd be to my daughter/ Layin' in the bottom of the mud ..." Do you think that your daughter has saved your life?
Eminem: I think that in a roundabout way she did save my life. I always had drive coming up and I always wanted to make it as a rapper. That was my dream. But when she was born, it was the reality of "I have to do this." I had nothing else. I had no high school education. I want her to be able to grow up and look back on this and be like ? whether people agree with it or not ? "My dad put me on a song. My dad wrote songs for me, my dad said my name all over the place." I want her to be able to look back in magazines and everything and just know. I don't ever wanna be like my father was to me.
MTV: In the video for "Cleaning Out My Closet," you talk a lot about your mother, but some of the most mind-searing images portray your recollection of how your father treated you and your mother. Have you ever tried to reach out to him?
Eminem: I have never spoke to my father and I never will. I'm cool. It's not a void in my life, missing or anything. I'm happy and I've got who I need in my life and I think I've found a peace, an inner peace. I don't feel like I ever need to meet him one day and be like, "Oh my life is complete." I don't want to know him.
MTV: You've been feuding with your mother for quite some time, you've dissed her numerous times in songs and even took a couple of shots at her during the Anger Management Tour. What type of toll, if any, has your estrangement taken on Hailie's relationship with her grandmother?
Eminem: That's a difficult situation because my little brother lives with me now so my mother occasionally has to come there. I know that I can't imagine what goes on in a six-year-old's head. I know there's probably part of Hailie that maybe wants to see her grandmother but she doesn't know what's going on, and I just basically keep her sheltered from it. When my mother does come to the house, I try to occupy Hailie. When she's old enough and she wants to know her grandmother, she can make that decision on her own. But as of right now, I'm not gonna subject my daughter to any of that.
MTV: You have a first-hand perspective of what it's like to come from a home where the parents are not together. How much of an effect do you think your divorce from Kim will have on Hailie?
Eminem: I think that it's good that this happened while Hailie was real young and didn't get so used to seeing her mother and father together all the time. I think it's better we did it early because sh-- was rocky for a while ... I don't wanna subject my seed to that type of turmoil, 'cause it was turmoil a couple years ago. I think that right now when I look at it, she's a happy little girl. To me she doesn't show any signs that something's bothering her or anything like that. Maybe when she gets older she could tell me, maybe it was something I didn't know.
MTV: So now that you're single once again, are you going the Puffy route and looking for a new girl to ride, ride, ride?
Eminem: No. I'm not looking for a new woman. I'm cool being single ? not to say I don't get down (laughing). But as far as a relationship or getting married again, I'm cool, man. I learned my lesson and I've seen what it is and what it can and can't be and I feel like I've learned enough from my first mistake. Let that be the last one and keep moving forward. Relationships? No.
Spin 2000
Chocolate on the inside
The most promising new rapper of the year is a cartoonishly angry welfare kid from the Detroit ghetto. Oh, and by the way, he's white.
by CHARLES AARON
Give this kid a magazine rack, because he's got a lot of issues. For starters, there's race (he's the "corny-lookin' white boy" who got his lunch money stolen at his inner-city school and never forgot), drugs (he's well acquainted with mushrooms, weed, etc.), and women (he envisions his mom as a drug addict with no breasts, fantasizes about murdering his baby's mother, and advises a husband to cut off the head of his adulterous wife). For 23-year-old Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady, whose major-label debut, The Slim Shady LP, is the shocker pop-hit of 1999 (entering the Billboard 200 at No. 2 with more than 280,000 first-week sales), life is a *censored* who needs to die, now! He's so angry his "dance" song features a line about Kurt Cobain committing suicide. But by outrageously spoofing every fear every parent ever had about his/her child, the album also defies any pat answer as to why this runty dude is so pissed off. And it implicitly ridicules anybody who tries to label his music as either "positive" or "negative."
Less than a year ago, Eminem was a little-known, if nastily skilled, MC from Detroit, with only an independently released album and EP to his name. Now, after hooking up with Dr. Dre (he'll soon appear on Dre's Chronic 2000 album), he's been known to give shout-outs to Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine onstage. Since early '99, MTV has been endlessly rotating the uproarious video for his single "My Name Is," in which Eminem impersonates Marilyn Manson and Bill Clinton, as well as a publicity bit featuring Missy Elliott and Dre giving the rapper props (Interscope also bought commercial time to play the video during Howard Stern's Saturday night CBS TV show). He's getting spins on hip-hop radio stations, extremely rare for a white artist, and is even recording a song for Limp Bizkit's new album. All those years he spent fighting for his right to be white finally paid off.
Spin: From listening to your album, you get the impression that your childhood was pretty much a living hell. What was it really like?
Eminem: I was born in Kansas City, and my dad left when I was five or six months old. Then when I was five we moved to a real bad part of Detroit. I was getting beat up a lot, so we moved back to K.C., then back to Detroit again when I was 11. My mother couldn't afford to raise me, but then she had my little brother, so when we moved back to Michigan, we were just staying wherever we could, with my grandmother or whatever family would put us up. I know my mother tried to do the best she could, but I was bounced around so much-it seemed like we moved every two or three months. I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked. I'm not trying to give some sob story, like, "Oh, I've been broke all my life," but people who know me know it's true. There were times when friends had to buy me *censored*in' shoes! I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.
Spin: These were mostly African-American neighborhoods where you grew up?
Eminem: Yeah, near 8 Mile Road in Detroit, which separates the suburbs from the city. Almost all the blacks are on one side, and almost all the whites are on the other, but all the families nearby are low-income. We lived on the black side. Most of the time it was relatively cool, but I would get beat up sometimes when I'd walk around the neighborhood and kids didn't know me. One day I got jumped by, like, six dudes for no reason. I also got shot at, and ended up running out of my shoes, crying. I was 15 years old and I didn't know how to handle that shit.
Spin: Were most of your friends black?
Eminem: When you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap. Then I'd notice that a lot of mother*censored*ers always had my back, but somebody always had to say to them, "Why you have to stick up for the white boy?"
Spin: When did you first get into hip-hop?
Eminem: The first hip-hop shit I ever heard was that song "Reckless" from the Breakin' soundtrack; my cousin played me the tape when I was, like, nine. There was this mixed school I went to in fifth grade, one with lots of Asian and black kids and everybody was into break dancing. They always had the latest rap tapes-the Fat Boys, L.L. Cool J's Radio-and I thought it was the most incredible shit I'd ever heard.
Spin: What'd you think when you first heard the Beastie Boys?
Eminem: That's what really did it for me. I was like, "This shit is so dope!" That's when I decided I wanted to rap. I'd hang out on the corner where kids would be rhyming, and when I tried to get in there, I'd get dissed. A little color issue developed, and as I got old enough to hit the clubs, it got really bad. I wasn't that dope yet, but I knew I could rhyme, so I'd get on the open mics and shit, and a couple of times I was booed off the stage.
Spin: Your single ("My Name Is") is getting played on both Modern Rock and Urban radio. Are you surprised at how quickly you're being accepted?
Eminem: Thing is, I'm not really a commercial rapper. My whole market, my whole steez, is through the underground; if those hip-hop heads love it, I'll rise above. It's like, you hardly ever hear a Wu-Tang song on the radio, but they rose from the underground on word of mouth.
Spin: Has being white really affected the way you see yourself as a rapper?
Eminem: In the beginning, the majority of my shows were for all-black crowds, and people would always say, "You're dope for a white boy," and I'd take it as a compliment. Then, as I got older, I started to think, "What the *censored* does that mean?" Nobody asks to be born, nobody has a choice of what color they'll be, or whether they'll be fat, skinny, anything. I had to work up to a certain level before people would even look past my color; a lot of mother*censored*ers would just sit with their arms folded and be like, "All right, what is this?" But as time went on, I started to get respect. The best thing a mother*censored*er ever said about me was after an open mic in Detroit about five years ago. He was like, "I don't give a *censored* if he's green, I don't give a *censored* if he's orange, this mother*censored*er is dope!" Nobody has the right to tell me what kind of music to listen to or how to dress or how to act or how to talk; if people want to make jokes, well *censored* 'em. I lived this shit, you know what I'm sayin'? And if you hear an Eminem record, you're gonna know the minute that it comes on that this ain't no fluke.
Spin: Did you ever come close to quitting?
Eminem: About three or so years ago, not that long after my daughter Hailie Jade Scott was born. I was staying in this house on 7 Mile Road, and little kids used to walk down the street going, "Look at the white baby!" Everything was "white this, white that." We'd be sitting on our porch, and if you were real quiet, you'd hear, "Mumble, mumble, white, mumble, mumble, white." Then I caught some dude breaking into my house for, like, the fifth time, and I was like, "Yo, *censored* this! It's not worth it. I'm outta here." That day, I wanted to quit rap and get a house in the *censored*ing suburbs. I was arguing with my girl, like, "Can't you see they don't want us here?" I went through so many changes; I actually stopped writing for about five or six months and I was about to give everything up. I just couldn't, though. I'd keep going to the clubs and taking the abuse. But I'd come home and put a fist through the wall. If you listen to a Slim Shady record, you're going to hear all that frustration coming out.
Spin: Could you see why some black people might be not be so enthusiastic about a white kid trying to be a rapper?
Eminem: Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.
Spin: Did you ever wish you were black?
Eminem: There was a while when I was feeling like, "Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this shit." But I'm not ignorant-I know how it must be when a black person goes to get a regular job in society. Music, in general, is supposed to be universal; people can listen to whatever they want and get something out of it. Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.
Spin: How do you feel about other white rap fans?
Eminem: Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter-for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion. He wants to be hard; he wants to smack mother*censored*ers for no reason except that the world is *censored*ed-up; he doesn't know what to rebel against. Kids like that are just fascinated by the culture. They hear songs about people going through hard times and want to know what that feels like. But the same thing goes for a black person who lived in the suburbs and was catered to all his life: Tupac is a fantasy for him, too.
Spin: Should suburban white kids, who don't have any firsthand experience of the way black people live, really be identifying so closely with hip-hop?
Eminem: Well, whether a white kid goes through as much shit as I did, or didn't go through any trouble at all, if they love the music, who's to tell them what they should be listening to? Let's say I'm a white 16-year-old and I stand in front of the mirror and lip-synch every day like I'm Krayzie Bone-who's to say that because I'm a certain color I shouldn't be doing that? And if I've got a right to buy his music and make him rich, who's to say that I then don't have the right to rap myself?
Spin: Do you think that hip-hop culture can open up their minds at all?
Eminem: I don't know, man. Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism. If anything is at least going to lessen it, it's gonna be rap. I would love it if, even for one day, you could walk through a neighborhood and see an Asian guy sitting on his stoop, then you look across the street and see a black guy and a white guy sitting on their porches, and a Mexican dude walking by. If we could truly be multicultural, racism could be so past the point of anybody giving a *censored*; but I don't think you or me are going to see it in our lifetimes.
Spin: What do you think will happen if your album blows up and becomes a huge hit?
Eminem: I imagine I'll go through a lot of this same racial shit, but that'll just make my second album better-because I'll have even more to rap about.
The most promising new rapper of the year is a cartoonishly angry welfare kid from the Detroit ghetto. Oh, and by the way, he's white.
by CHARLES AARON
Give this kid a magazine rack, because he's got a lot of issues. For starters, there's race (he's the "corny-lookin' white boy" who got his lunch money stolen at his inner-city school and never forgot), drugs (he's well acquainted with mushrooms, weed, etc.), and women (he envisions his mom as a drug addict with no breasts, fantasizes about murdering his baby's mother, and advises a husband to cut off the head of his adulterous wife). For 23-year-old Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady, whose major-label debut, The Slim Shady LP, is the shocker pop-hit of 1999 (entering the Billboard 200 at No. 2 with more than 280,000 first-week sales), life is a *censored* who needs to die, now! He's so angry his "dance" song features a line about Kurt Cobain committing suicide. But by outrageously spoofing every fear every parent ever had about his/her child, the album also defies any pat answer as to why this runty dude is so pissed off. And it implicitly ridicules anybody who tries to label his music as either "positive" or "negative."
Less than a year ago, Eminem was a little-known, if nastily skilled, MC from Detroit, with only an independently released album and EP to his name. Now, after hooking up with Dr. Dre (he'll soon appear on Dre's Chronic 2000 album), he's been known to give shout-outs to Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine onstage. Since early '99, MTV has been endlessly rotating the uproarious video for his single "My Name Is," in which Eminem impersonates Marilyn Manson and Bill Clinton, as well as a publicity bit featuring Missy Elliott and Dre giving the rapper props (Interscope also bought commercial time to play the video during Howard Stern's Saturday night CBS TV show). He's getting spins on hip-hop radio stations, extremely rare for a white artist, and is even recording a song for Limp Bizkit's new album. All those years he spent fighting for his right to be white finally paid off.
Spin: From listening to your album, you get the impression that your childhood was pretty much a living hell. What was it really like?
Eminem: I was born in Kansas City, and my dad left when I was five or six months old. Then when I was five we moved to a real bad part of Detroit. I was getting beat up a lot, so we moved back to K.C., then back to Detroit again when I was 11. My mother couldn't afford to raise me, but then she had my little brother, so when we moved back to Michigan, we were just staying wherever we could, with my grandmother or whatever family would put us up. I know my mother tried to do the best she could, but I was bounced around so much-it seemed like we moved every two or three months. I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked. I'm not trying to give some sob story, like, "Oh, I've been broke all my life," but people who know me know it's true. There were times when friends had to buy me *censored*in' shoes! I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.
Spin: These were mostly African-American neighborhoods where you grew up?
Eminem: Yeah, near 8 Mile Road in Detroit, which separates the suburbs from the city. Almost all the blacks are on one side, and almost all the whites are on the other, but all the families nearby are low-income. We lived on the black side. Most of the time it was relatively cool, but I would get beat up sometimes when I'd walk around the neighborhood and kids didn't know me. One day I got jumped by, like, six dudes for no reason. I also got shot at, and ended up running out of my shoes, crying. I was 15 years old and I didn't know how to handle that shit.
Spin: Were most of your friends black?
Eminem: When you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap. Then I'd notice that a lot of mother*censored*ers always had my back, but somebody always had to say to them, "Why you have to stick up for the white boy?"
Spin: When did you first get into hip-hop?
Eminem: The first hip-hop shit I ever heard was that song "Reckless" from the Breakin' soundtrack; my cousin played me the tape when I was, like, nine. There was this mixed school I went to in fifth grade, one with lots of Asian and black kids and everybody was into break dancing. They always had the latest rap tapes-the Fat Boys, L.L. Cool J's Radio-and I thought it was the most incredible shit I'd ever heard.
Spin: What'd you think when you first heard the Beastie Boys?
Eminem: That's what really did it for me. I was like, "This shit is so dope!" That's when I decided I wanted to rap. I'd hang out on the corner where kids would be rhyming, and when I tried to get in there, I'd get dissed. A little color issue developed, and as I got old enough to hit the clubs, it got really bad. I wasn't that dope yet, but I knew I could rhyme, so I'd get on the open mics and shit, and a couple of times I was booed off the stage.
Spin: Your single ("My Name Is") is getting played on both Modern Rock and Urban radio. Are you surprised at how quickly you're being accepted?
Eminem: Thing is, I'm not really a commercial rapper. My whole market, my whole steez, is through the underground; if those hip-hop heads love it, I'll rise above. It's like, you hardly ever hear a Wu-Tang song on the radio, but they rose from the underground on word of mouth.
Spin: Has being white really affected the way you see yourself as a rapper?
Eminem: In the beginning, the majority of my shows were for all-black crowds, and people would always say, "You're dope for a white boy," and I'd take it as a compliment. Then, as I got older, I started to think, "What the *censored* does that mean?" Nobody asks to be born, nobody has a choice of what color they'll be, or whether they'll be fat, skinny, anything. I had to work up to a certain level before people would even look past my color; a lot of mother*censored*ers would just sit with their arms folded and be like, "All right, what is this?" But as time went on, I started to get respect. The best thing a mother*censored*er ever said about me was after an open mic in Detroit about five years ago. He was like, "I don't give a *censored* if he's green, I don't give a *censored* if he's orange, this mother*censored*er is dope!" Nobody has the right to tell me what kind of music to listen to or how to dress or how to act or how to talk; if people want to make jokes, well *censored* 'em. I lived this shit, you know what I'm sayin'? And if you hear an Eminem record, you're gonna know the minute that it comes on that this ain't no fluke.
Spin: Did you ever come close to quitting?
Eminem: About three or so years ago, not that long after my daughter Hailie Jade Scott was born. I was staying in this house on 7 Mile Road, and little kids used to walk down the street going, "Look at the white baby!" Everything was "white this, white that." We'd be sitting on our porch, and if you were real quiet, you'd hear, "Mumble, mumble, white, mumble, mumble, white." Then I caught some dude breaking into my house for, like, the fifth time, and I was like, "Yo, *censored* this! It's not worth it. I'm outta here." That day, I wanted to quit rap and get a house in the *censored*ing suburbs. I was arguing with my girl, like, "Can't you see they don't want us here?" I went through so many changes; I actually stopped writing for about five or six months and I was about to give everything up. I just couldn't, though. I'd keep going to the clubs and taking the abuse. But I'd come home and put a fist through the wall. If you listen to a Slim Shady record, you're going to hear all that frustration coming out.
Spin: Could you see why some black people might be not be so enthusiastic about a white kid trying to be a rapper?
Eminem: Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.
Spin: Did you ever wish you were black?
Eminem: There was a while when I was feeling like, "Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this shit." But I'm not ignorant-I know how it must be when a black person goes to get a regular job in society. Music, in general, is supposed to be universal; people can listen to whatever they want and get something out of it. Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.
Spin: How do you feel about other white rap fans?
Eminem: Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter-for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion. He wants to be hard; he wants to smack mother*censored*ers for no reason except that the world is *censored*ed-up; he doesn't know what to rebel against. Kids like that are just fascinated by the culture. They hear songs about people going through hard times and want to know what that feels like. But the same thing goes for a black person who lived in the suburbs and was catered to all his life: Tupac is a fantasy for him, too.
Spin: Should suburban white kids, who don't have any firsthand experience of the way black people live, really be identifying so closely with hip-hop?
Eminem: Well, whether a white kid goes through as much shit as I did, or didn't go through any trouble at all, if they love the music, who's to tell them what they should be listening to? Let's say I'm a white 16-year-old and I stand in front of the mirror and lip-synch every day like I'm Krayzie Bone-who's to say that because I'm a certain color I shouldn't be doing that? And if I've got a right to buy his music and make him rich, who's to say that I then don't have the right to rap myself?
Spin: Do you think that hip-hop culture can open up their minds at all?
Eminem: I don't know, man. Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism. If anything is at least going to lessen it, it's gonna be rap. I would love it if, even for one day, you could walk through a neighborhood and see an Asian guy sitting on his stoop, then you look across the street and see a black guy and a white guy sitting on their porches, and a Mexican dude walking by. If we could truly be multicultural, racism could be so past the point of anybody giving a *censored*; but I don't think you or me are going to see it in our lifetimes.
Spin: What do you think will happen if your album blows up and becomes a huge hit?
Eminem: I imagine I'll go through a lot of this same racial shit, but that'll just make my second album better-because I'll have even more to rap about.
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