'The Way I Am' - Excerpts from book 2008

Link to buy the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Way-I-Am-Eminem/dp/0452296129/ref=sr_1_1/178-2882680-1170539?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388957645&sr=1-1&keywords=0452296129

There is also an option to "look inside" and read parts when you click on the cover.

Eminem's Memoir: Exclusive Excerpt from EW.com

(Link: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20233569,00.html)

In this first look at ''The Way I Am,'' the Grammy-winning rapper comes to terms with his anger issues, including his bout with Moby at the MTV Video Music Awards

I've always had issues with my temper.

When I look back at myself during those years when everything was blowing up, I think maybe at first I was a little, you know, too aggressive and loud. It was like I had this voice and I had to be heard. ''Don't f--- with me,'' to the point where people must have been wondering, Why is this dude so angry? Is he on crack? Is he on crystal meth? I go back and see old interviews and even now I wonder, Why was I so hyper?

I went through a phase back then when I was shooting pistols in the air behind the studio and, you know, pulling guns out, pointing a pistol in somebody's face, not even realizing that I could've gone to jail for that s---.

Back then I was living on a main road, Hayes Street, and random people used to come and knock on my door all the time. The first album had gone four times platinum. I finally had some money. I remember thinking, I have a house, I can park in back. It was the first time in my life I'd had a real home that I could call my own and nobody was going to be able to throw me out. Directly across the street there was a trailer park. Wouldn't you know it? Sometimes kids would sit and wait for me to come out.

Other times they didn't even bother to wait. They would just come and bang on the door. The doorbell kept ringing. I was starting to lose it. As soon as I would open the front door the camera flashes would go off. They'd start clapping. I was losing my mind. I got up in one kid's face with a pistol. Unloaded, but still. Was that the right thing to do?

Hell, no. But my temper was out of control. Thank God I was in enough control to not do something tragic. I had to move out of there before I wound up hurting somebody.

My mood can change quickly. It's always been that way. When I was drinking, I could be in a good mood — just loving everybody and feeling like everything was great — then somebody would say the wrong s--- to me, and before you knew it there was nothing my bodyguards could do to stop me from reacting and at least punching, spitting, or kicking a few times before they could get to me. It would be the simplest s--- that would set me off, like somebody looking at me hard. And I could not stop until I felt like I'd done something to make that person accountable, to make that person learn his lesson. Afterward, I would be full of apologies, just saying ''I'm sorry'' over and over. I'd feel like such an idiot for acting like that. Like, Why can't I control this?

You all saw the Triumph thing go down at the MTV Video Music Awards, right? That's a pretty perfect example. I mean, there I am, sitting in my seat, and they announce that I'm up for an award, presented by Christina Aguilera. I had said some things about her in the past, Moby had said some things about me, and I had said some things back about him. So I'm sitting there next to Proof, and they bring in Moby and sit him like two rows directly behind us. So now I'm like, Okay, what's going on? What are they trying to do? I've got Moby behind me, and Christina up onstage, and then this dog puppet gets up in my face. I'd been so busy touring and doing my own s--- that I hadn't had time to watch TV, so I had no idea what that dog was. All I saw was Moby and Christina and this dude who's sticking his hand in my face, trying to be funny. I didn't even see the puppet, you know? My natural reaction was, ''Get the f--- out of my face. Get your f---ing hand out of my face.'' And that's when I kind of lost it and a half. I should have kept my composure, but instead I stuck my fingers basically on Moby's nose. Right in his face, like, ''F--- you.''

When they told me I won the award, I went up there and gave Christina a hug, because there wasn't a real beef with her. I was just dissing her to separate myself 'cause I didn't want to be classified as a pop artist. When I hugged her, I thought I was being as mature as I could be. But when I got behind closed doors in the green room, I threw a fit. There was a cooler with drinks in it, and I asked if anybody wanted to grab a water or something. Nobody did. So I picked up the cooler and threw it against the wall and kind of f---ed up the whole room, basically.

Launch 2004

FEATURE - The Dirty Dozen Dish The Dirt

By Billy Johnson Jr

Is there any truth to D12's song "My Band?" Is Eminem really the obnoxious lead singer depicted in the song? Does he really insist on preferential treatment and steal the limelight from his group members? In this exclusive interview, the Detroit Dozen's Eminem and Proof respond to all of our questions regarding the matter. But if you've chalked D12 up as a novelty band only good for comedic efforts, think again. Em and Proof explain how their latest album, D12 World, gives them an opportunity to prove their other lyrical talents. 

LAUNCH editor Billy Johnson Jr. traveled to the group's hometown for this interview, in which they revealed details about internal feuding, the death of D12's seventh member, and the solo album plans for the rest of the guys. Read on. 

LAUNCH: Your first single, "My Band," is hilarious. You've chosen to parody yourselves this time. Who came up with that idea? 

EMINEM: I don't know. We were just talking one day...I was walking around the studio, just in "dude" mode. And it just came about. I went in and laid a hook, like I was doing a beat, and then they came in and listened to it. They liked the beat, so I put a hook to it. 

PROOF: And here we are! 

EMINEM: I laid my magnificent vocals down, had everyone come check it out. Like, "This is the issue we should address." 

LAUNCH: What that the purpose of that single? 

EMINEM: We wanted to address it, but hadn't come about with the proper way to do it yet, and that was just, like, a last-minute thing. I think it was one of the last songs on the album. 

LAUNCH: How do you view this song? Is it comedy for you? 

PROOF: Not really. It was a perspective that a lot of people see us as, 'cause of the situation that we're in. 

LAUNCH: Do you think the song helps the situation or make it worse? 

PROOF: I think it helps. 

EMINEM: It's reverse psychology. 

PROOF: It's reverse psychology, exactly. 

LAUNCH: What reaction are you guys getting on the street? 

PROOF: Oh, they be like, "You crazy. Silly as f--k!" 

LAUNCH: Was it fun to look at your own situation and deal with it this way? 

EMINEM: Yeah. I mean, the whole concept of the song is just like I'm a dick. Like, let me just be an a--hole, which is how the media perceives me: "Look, I don't care about these guys; we hate each other. We're fighting on the road all the time." It's the overall picture of how people can see us, and we think it's funny. 

PROOF: Like, in your face! 

EMINEM: Right back at you. 

LAUNCH: Eminem , are you the sort of guy that's "always right"? 

EMINEM: [sarcastically] Yeah, what I say goes. And that's it. And they all know that it's one way or it's out the door. 

PROOF: Enough of that guy! We whoop his ass when the cameras is off. That's what happens. 

EMINEM: Right. That's what I was getting to. OK? 

LAUNCH: One difference I hear on this album is there's not so much of the shock-value stuff on the songs. Do you agree with that? 

PROOF: I think that it's us growing up a little bit, getting a little mature. 

LAUNCH: Did you want people to realize that there was more to you than "Purple Pills"? "

PROOF: Exactly. 

EMINEM: Yeah, more substance. We need to make sure of that, you know. The shock value of it all of that spawned from Detroit. Like this whole Slim Shady era in everything that I did from that album. The Marshall Mathers LP had a lot of shock value to it, too. So I mean, this was my group, but the world wasn't in tune with it yet. I came out first, and no one had ever heard me do it. So then group came out, and it was funny at first, but we felt like we needed to step the game up a notch, as far as putting emotion into it. Show them a little skill, just taking it to the next level. We had to do something different. 

XXL 2006 , on Proof & Em

Proof 

Stay Tru

By XXL Staff

R.I.P MC Proof.  Photo credit: XXL website

For more than a decade, up until his shooting death on April 11, Deshaun Dupree “Proof” Holton was a leading figure on the Detroit rap scene. In the mid-’90s, as host and frequent participant at the famed open-mic night at Maurice Malone’s Hip-Hop Shop, Proof carved out a legacy as an unparalleled battle MC, and—as depicted by Mekhi Phifer in the 2002 movie 8 Mile—played an instrumental role in pushing his friend and rhyme partner Eminem to worldwide superstardom.

Proof was born in Detroit on Oct. 2, 1973, the son of record producer McKinley Jackson. He attended various Catholic schools as a child, and went on to Osborn High in his teens, but dropped out to pursue a career in rap before graduating. He formed a duo, Funky Cowboy, in 1996 with producer J Dilla—who also died earlier this year—and later, the multiplatinum sextet D12. While Phifer’s 8 Mile character, Future, was based on Proof’s real-life persona, Proof himself appeared in the movie as Lil’ Tic—the MC who intimidates Eminem’s B-Rabbit into choking in the opening battle scene.

Always one of Motor City’s most approachable stars, Proof could regularly be found at clubs, restaurants, concerts and bowling alleys, and he continued in his support of local hip-hop. Last summer, he launched his own label, Iron Fist Records, with his solo debut, Searching for Jerry Garcia, and planned on releasing the work of his artists Purple Gang, Woof Pak and Supa MC.

A few weeks before his death, Proof sat at the Iron Fist offices in the Michigan Building, about two blocks from the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit. He was in a good mood, happy with the 50,000 copies Searching for Jerry Garcia had sold, planning an overseas tour with Kid Rock’s DJ, Paradime, and looking forward to starting work on the next D12 album. Shrugging off recent talk of problems within the group, he was quick to defend Eminem against attack, and recounted a recent run-in with one of his camp’s biggest detractors. He also touched on the strange highway shooting of his label mate Obie Trice, his new album, his position in the Motown hip-hop scene and a life that seemed nowhere near finished.

You’ve always stood by your friendship with Eminem. Over the last couple years, he’s taken a lot of heat from certain figures in the industry. In an interview with XXL, Suge Knight tore into him with some pretty venomous statements. He called Em a “racist,” and basically compared him to a slave master.

Well, I had the privilege of meeting Suge Knight. I’m from Detroit, and I guess I don’t understand the fear that some people strike in others. I mean, Suge is doing bad, everybody knows it. The industry banned him. I personally think he shot himself. That’s just me. I mean, what he says don’t even count. When he’s running the record label as a Black man and somebody’s White running a record label, and it’s all the same shit across the board, where’s the slave-master mentality? That makes Suge a slave master if that’s the case. He has a platform to speak from, but most of the things he be saying is bullshit.

Why do you think it’s so popular to rip Em?

High profile! Like I had told Em one time about Suge, if you shut up saying stuff about him, that makes him stronger. If you attack him, you take away the only credibility that he’s got. And that is, the streets believe he’s just some hard-assed muthafucka. But if you approach it like, Yo, he’s not! Like Snoop did on that song “Pimp’d Slapp’d 2 (Fuck Suge Knight),” that shit is hard. ’Cause they’re ain’t nobody saying nothing to Suge. Em had a couple of things they wouldn’t let him say. You know, the labels and shit. If Suge really looks at himself, he destroyed himself. I mean, you had Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac. You got all these big artists, and you’re going to let the streets dictate how to run a record label? It’s like, Okay…

I’ve always been in the hood. But just ’cause I got love for rapping and people in general, I don’t give a fuck what color nobody is. A person’s a person. That’s just the way I operate. I’ll get the “Uncle Toms” and all this kind of shit… But me and Em will be dawgs forever. There’s no doubt. There’s nothing that anyone can say to me about Eminem at all. It’s like, just stop it, okay?

You said you met Suge. This was last year, right? You were in Vegas with Trick Trick? What went down that day?

Well, I was upstairs, and they said that Suge was downstairs. So I was like, I’m going downstairs! He’s with like two or three big dudes. When I came down there, Trick was already there, and he said he told Suge he’s gonna have to see me or something to that effect. I’m like, I don’t want to talk to that nigga. Then I was just chillin’ with some friends, and one of the dudes that was with Suge said something to me. I was like, I ain’t messing with that shit. It wasn’t nothing. So then Kid Rock was downstairs. I love Kid Rock to death. Me and Bob go way back, and this night he decides to be the peacemaker. So when I see Suge next to Kid Rock, I wanted to post up just to make sure that Suge wasn’t trying no crazy shit, you know. But he wasn’t. I guess they knew each other. Then Kid Rock says to Suge, “Hey, that’s my childhood friend. Proof! Come here! Come here!” I’m like, man, that’s fuckin’ Suge Knight. I’m not about to come talk to him. But I walk over there, and Suge sticks out his hand. And I’m like, “I ain’t shakin’ your muthafuckin’ hand. Get out of my face with that shit.” He pointed like, “You, you, and you come outside.” I said, “Man, that’s the last thing you told Tupac, and we ain’t seen him since.” Once I did that, the way his face looked was priceless. I don’t try to tell that story too much, ’cause I’m not trying to be that kind of person. But I know the kind of people I’ve been around all my life. Most of the certain ones, I can put them in the same category, ’cause of this look that they’ve got. When I looked at Suge and that shit wasn’t nowhere there, I was like, I can’t believe it. It was almost like a letdown. It was like, This ain’t the guy. This guy can’t be one of them guys. I’m not even one of those guys, but I know them guys, and he’s not one of them dudes.

When you’re in other cities, do you feel like you have to represent Detroit in a certain way—let others know that you don’t take any shit?

If you can survive in Detroit, I’ll be damned if I’ll go anywhere and be hoed out. ’Cause this place is a muthafucka. They say there’s like two or three murders a day in Detroit. They don’t even make the news, that’s how much murder happens here.

Just like all that beefin’ with Suge, I ran into Chris Gotti the other day at the Compuware thing. Kind of the same thing Suge tried to do to me. I know the owner of the Compuware building and his wife, so I wasn’t about to tear up no shit. You know they tried to rush me down in Miami. Which they didn’t do anything. I’m like 165 pounds and five or six of y’all can’t get me. They was all just DJs and kittens. [Laughs.] I walked out with scratches.

Obie Trice was shot this past New Year’s Eve while driving down the freeway. Do you think there was any connection to rap, or was it just an unlucky, wrong-place, wrong-time kind of thing?

I think it’s a Detroit thing, honestly. I was at a show in Toledo when that happened. I drove all the way back thinking the worst shit ever. But it was a good thing the bullet didn’t really penetrate. I’m glad he’s hardheaded. People don’t know that Obie is actually my cousin. But we didn’t find that out ’til later, after being label mates. That’s some wild shit!

You’re known for being out on the scene here in Detroit, and for being approachable, down-to-earth. Has that become more difficult lately?

A lot of times when I’m out and about, I get to hear a lot more shit. When it comes to preserving hip-hop, like there was about to be a big rumble at Northern Lights on Tuesday. I took it upon myself to personally get on the phone and call both sides of the party like, “You’re not going to Northern Lights to fight. This is like the only hip-hop shit we got going in Detroit that’s real, and you guys are not going to fuck it up.” And they didn’t. So with the bad, there’s some good from me being on the scene and knowing a lot of rappers and stuff, so we can still preserve the scene. ’Cause I am the “Mayor of Hip-Hop.”

In that regard, you chose an interesting title for your album, Searching for Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead guitarist is not a name that carries a lot of currency in the hip-hop community.

You know what? It’s like a catchphrase when you say it to a Black person. They say, Who? It goes to show how closed minded people can be. Me, I’m open-minded, ’cause my father was a musician. He produced Tower of Power, Jones Girls, Marvin Gaye. Going to Catholic schools made me accepting of people of different cultures. I came across Jerry Garcia on a documentary on a whim. [My friend Mark and] I had just watched Searching for Bobby Fischer, and we’re watching this documentary come on. It says that Jerry Garcia’s demise came from stress, drugs and poor diet. Mark was like, “Fuck Bobby Fischer, that’s who they should be looking for.” And I was like, “Riiight!” He was the epitome of what an artist is. He did jazz, rock, whatever!

You had a lot of high-powered guests on the album. 50 Cent, Nate Dogg, Method Man and B-Real…

Method Man and B-Real! When people say Proof is down-to-earth, it’s because of those two people. I met Method Man in like ’94, when he first came out. He shot me his phone number, and we used to kick it on the phone, talkin’ ’bout doing a song together. We did the song, and it just showed me that once you did get on, you didn’t have to act a certain way. A lot of people tend to take that shit to their head. The things the fans say to you let you know how everybody else acts. When they say, What are you doing here? I live in Detroit for one, and I can come and see titties when I want to see titties! But that just shows you how distant others can be. [Laughs.] I think some people just let it go to their heads. I know that people let it go to their head, ’cause I catch myself in certain situations doing some wild shit. I’m like, That’s really not cool. I can be on the phone and just hang up. I’m like, [to myself], You couldn’t even say bye or anything? Like, where am I going? Maybe I’m distracted? Whatever it is, I know that that wasn’t right. Like, wow—what did I just do?!

I’m sure you don’t mind some of the public attention. But how do you deal with the overzealous fan who approaches you at an inopportune time? Like when you’re eating with your kids or taking a piss in the men’s room or something?

This is one thing I figured out about fans, it’s why I try to be gracious to them: The people at home don’t see the work when they’re at home watching TV. You don’t understand the work behind it. You just share the moment. Say Marilyn Manson’s my man. Say I’m watching Marilyn Manson on TV. I’m just a fan, right? When I see Marilyn Manson, he doesn’t know about my house, but I know my house and where I found my moment with Marilyn Manson at. So I gotta say something to you right? Now, I might say the dumbest shit in the world because I don’t know what to say. I feel like I know you. I don’t know you, but we had this moment at my home. At that moment that I’m talking to Marilyn Manson, he can’t feel what I’m feeling. They don’t share getting the beat, writing the rhyme, going in the studio, shooting the video. When the video’s shot, then we share just this one moment. But you can’t explain that to nobody that’s drunk at the bar.

Back before you were famous, back when Em was crashing at your house way back when. Did you ever imagine how big it would eventually get?

Let me tell you the illest story about what I say when people ask why I didn’t finish high school. I used to wake up, walk over to Em’s house to go to school at lunch. I had this little scam on lunch cards. I stole a bunch of lunch cards and gave them to people, then I would collect money from them at the end of the week. I’d go up there at lunch and stay for about three hours in a row. I’d never go to class! Em said to me one day, “Man, why are you going to high school? We’re gonna be rappers.” I was like, “Okay.” I go and talk to my mother. Say, “Mom, I want to drop out of high school and be a rapper.” She said, “Okay, you just got to get a job.” So I called Em, and I said, “Em, I can’t drop out of high school unless I got a job.” He said, “Okay, I’ll call you back.” He called back like three minutes later and had gotten me a job at Little Caesars. [Laughs.] Just imagine if he had been wrong.

http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2006/05/proof-stay-tru/

XXL 2009

Eminem, “Hard To Kill”

It’s felt sort of empty without him, hasn’t it? One of the biggest superstars on the planet, Eminem has been on a three-year hiatus, dealing with some awfully heavy personal issues. He’s back now, though. And up to his old tricks. Sick. But healthier than ever.

Interview By Datwon Thomas

Photography By Perou

Tucked away in the VIP room of Morton’s steak house in downtown Cleveland, Eminem sits at the head of a long, 12-seat dinner table, looking more like a high school baseball shortstop than a multimillionaire don of the hip-hop world. He’s rocking a white Jordan fitted cap to the back, with a platinum cross dangling atop a wrinkled white T-shirt, black sweats, and Nike Air Max on the feet. Along with his longtime manager and partner, Paul Rosenberg, D12 producer Denaun Porter, and an eight-member team of label support, assistants and security, the 36-year-old rap star is watching Michigan State handle Connecticut in an NCAA Final Four game, which is playing on a huge flat-screen hanging on the mahogany walls. Repping Detroit harder (and more successfully) than General Motors, the crew oohs and aahs and screams at every basket, urging the Spartans to victory. Em cracks jokes about his publicist peeing on people in a riot back in the days. (Never happened.) But just as everything seems dorm-roomish and festive, word comes down. “Let’s roll. Em has to be there now.”

That’s a sentiment no doubt shared by millions of fans worldwide. One of hip-hop’s biggest-selling artists ever (his 34 million total domestic album sales ranks second only to Tupac), Eminem has been mostly MIA for the past three years. After an aborted European tour in summer 2005, the troubled icon ducked out of the spotlight to deal with a growing drug problem—one exacerbated, the next year, by the failure of his second marriage to Kimberly Scott, and even more by the loss of his best friend and rap partner, Proof, who died in a tragic, and still somewhat hazy, shooting incident in a bar on the very 8 Mile Road that Em has made so famous.

But he’s back. This spring marks the release of his sixth solo album, Relapse, the first of two on tap for the year. Judging from a quick listen to the setup singles “Crack a Bottle” (with fellow Interscope Records pillars Dr. Dre and 50 Cent) and “We Made You,” and a few select unreleased tracks, it’s pretty clear that rap’s nimble-tongued clown prince wants to reclaim his throne. With an emphasis on the cartoony, TV-steeped ultraviolence that rocketed him to fame 10 years ago, Em’s rapping in his Slim Shady guise, with a nod to his favorite Marvel comic-book hero, the trigger-happy vigilante Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher. “The Punisher just seemed appropriate for my return to the scene,” he says. “Shady with a vengeance!” Everyone feels the wrath—from horror-flick serial killers, like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, to train-wreck starlets, like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, to failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. In the video for the first single, “We Made You,” Kim Kardashian gets the wood-chipper treatment.

But tonight there’s more serious business to attend to. It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 24th annual induction ceremony, and the blue-eyed, formerly golden-haired god of hip-hop’s modern era will be introducing the greatest group from hip-hop’s early years, Run-DMC, before they take the stage and receive their prestigious due. Fresh from Morton’s, backstage at the museum’s performance hall, crumpled-up, handwritten speech tight in his fist, Em paces the small dressing room right next to the one occupied by Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. “I’m about to rock this shit!” he says, goofing on his own nervous energy, as a black leather coat arrives for him to wear. “I don’t know what I’m about to rock, but I’m about to do it! I’ma, ummm, rock this speech!”

He hops up, dons the coat and a matching Run-DMC–style fedora, takes the walkway to the stage and busts a b-boy stance at the podium. The audience leaps to its feet. The place goes crazy. Somebody screams “It’s Eminem! He’s back!”

Where have you been? It seems like a whole generation of hip-hop has gone in the time that you’ve been away.

Yeah, well, there were a few things that played into that factor. First of all, I went for seven years straight and never took a break. It got to the point where I felt like I needed to pull back. After the last tour, the Anger Management 3, as everybody knows, I went into rehab for a drug problem that, honestly, didn’t get better when I went into rehab. I wasn’t ready to go into rehab. I felt that, at the time, everyone else was ready for me to go. And I wasn’t ready.

You weren’t ready mentally?

I wasn’t ready mentally. I wasn’t ready to give up the drugs. I didn’t really think I had a problem. Basically, I went in, and I came out. I relapsed, and I spent the next three years struggling with it. Also, at that time, I felt like I wanted to pull back, because my drug problem had got so bad. I felt like, Maybe if I take a break, maybe this will help.

I started to get into the producer role more… I can still be out there with my music, like with the Re-Up album, but I don’t have to be in the spotlight the whole time.

What types of drugs were you were taking?

Ever since the beginning of my career I dabbled in Vicodin, Valium, Ambien. It was kind of like a recreational thing that, for some reason, when it first started out, like ecstasy and shit like that, I was able to do it and step away from it. Drinking, I was able to do it and step away from it. But slowly it started progressing. For a while, there were, like, four to six months where I struggled with ecstasy. I had found myself taking it before every show.

So you would go out, rock these shows…

Yeah, like, on the Warped Tour, me and Proof would split a hit, like half a hit or whatever, and on top of it, I was drinking or whatever. Then I would come home and be like, Aight, I’m not gonna do it around the kids. So those would be the times I’d clean myself out. I’d be home for a week, two weeks or whatever and be like, I’m done with this. Then I’d get back out on the road and then… It started becoming that I’d be doing it all the time if people had it. I wouldn’t carry the shit on me. I wouldn’t have it myself. If we were around that kind of party atmosphere and somebody had it, which my music at that time always attracted that crowd, like the raver kids and shit like that, we’d end up hanging out with some kids somehow, and people would be around us and be like, “Hey, I got some mushrooms, I got this, I got that.” Slowly, after a period of time, it became where we were buying it on the road. So we would kinda say, “Who’s got the E?” It became where I wasn’t doing it anymore because people had it, I was doing it and actually purchasing the shit, just because. Then it got to a point where I felt like I needed it to be onstage.

My biggest thing was sleeping. I would take NyQuil and shit like that. I’d be like, Okay, well, this worked last night. But I got to take extra tonight, ’cause it ain’t gonna work. Now I got to get a prescription for something. I got to see my doctor.

Because you couldn’t sleep?

It’s between the schedule and all the shit when it starts to get crazy. When you’re in album cycle and touring and shit like that, the schedule… You got to be somewhere at certain times. You only got this little window to sleep. And if you don’t sleep, you are kind of fucked for the next day. So it was all the mental things that I went through. I struggled with ecstasy, kinda struggled with drinking. But I was able to cut it off, which is what I never understood about pills. But that’s obviously what you learn in rehab. It’s what becomes your drug of choice. Certain addicts may not struggle with… I may not have a problem with liquor. But if I drink liquor and I get to where I get a hangover the next day, I’m screaming for a Vicodin. “Oh, I wish I had a Vicodin!” So, basically, I struggled off and on with prescription pills, like, the next three years. Then, everybody knows, I went through a divorce. I was trying to put my family back together. That ended up not working out. Then losing my best friend. It was kinda like going through those struggles. None of that shit was easy. My addiction got worse and worse and worse. I had to come to the realization, I mean, I’ve been clean for a year now, but I had to come to the realization that I want to do this. This ain’t something that anybody can just tell me, know what I mean? This isn’t something that everyone can want for me.

When did you know that it was time for you to go to rehab?

There were a bunch of moments where I felt like, I want to do it, I want to do it. Ah, maybe now is not the time. Maybe I’ll just do this for a little longer. I started realizing, like,

I took a break from the spotlight, and I felt like I wanted to be with my family and spend more time with my kids and stuff like that. But the whole time, I’m walking around the house high most of the time. So I’m missing out on the best parts of their lives. There were several moments. And it got to the point where the guilt that I started feeling inside for doing the shit… I wasn’t fooling anybody but myself. I had to come to that realization. At the time, I’m 35 years old, how long am I going to keep doing this? I felt like I needed to grow up, and if I didn’t grow up, it was like, now or never.

Without Proof here, is there someone else that can help you with the emotional weight you’ve been dealing with?

I’ve always had a real tight circle. All the guys from D12, everybody in the circle, management and other members of our crew, have just always been there from day one. Everyone felt his loss, from his kids, to his wife, to everyone. But, for some reason, in hindsight, the way I felt was almost like it happened to just me… Maybe at that time I was a little bit selfish with it. I think it kind of hit me so hard. It just blindsided me. I just went into such a dark place that, with everything, the drugs, my thoughts, everything. And the more drugs I consumed, and it was all depressants I was taking, the more depressed I became, the more self-loathing I became… By the way, I’m just now at the point where I’m better talking about it. It took me so long to get out of that place where I couldn’t even speak about it without crying or wanting to cry… Proof was the anchor. He was everything to D12. And not just the group—for me, personally, he was everything.

When I say I went into a dark place, it feels like I literally crawled into a hole. There were days I’d just sit around all day and take pills and try to numb myself. It was almost an excuse for me to take more pills, like, I just lost Proof, so it’s okay for me to take a couple of pills.

I started spiraling out of control with my thoughts, with the drugs, with everything. When I would go to the studio, I kept trying to write songs about him. I think I might have wrote and recorded at least five or six songs about him. None of them came out the way I wanted them to, and all of them made me depressed. All of them made me go deeper into that hole… Nothing I wrote was good enough for him. Everything was, like, self-loathing.

Did you ever take any personal responsibility for what happened to him?

Yeah, I went through that kind of thing as well. I felt like, Well, maybe if I would have been with him at the club that night… He knows I was trying to get him to chill out and stop going to the club so much.

How did you react to all the conflicting information that came out immediately following the incident?

I got a bunch of conflicting stories, a bunch of conflicting things, and none of them ever made sense to me. There were things that I’d heard that they were saying, that Proof shot the dude first. It’s so not in his character to do that. There were other stories that matched what I knew Proof would have did. I had to go through the process in my head of, like, regardless of what happened, it happened. It’s not gonna bring him back. I don’t know if I’ve accepted it is the right word, but I’m dealing with it. Life for me will never be the same.

In what way did Proof’s death affect your work?There was, like, a two-year period where I couldn’t write shit. With what was going on and shit, I just couldn’t. I was so cluttered in my mind that everything I was writing wasn’t worth recording. I’d record it, and I’d get through half a song and be like, I don’t like this. I’d get through a song, and the next day I’d be like, Nah, that don’t sound like me. And then I started going in the studio and trying to freestyle. Like, I’d do a line at a time and be like, “Stop the tape,” and be like, “Okay, I got a line here.” You know, kinda like how Jay-Z would do it. Obie did a lot of that, too.

You know, so it was almost like, I don’t know if I was challenging myself to see if I could actually do it or if I was just being lazy with writing because I wasn’t feeling what I was actually writing… So it was like, going through them time periods, I could spend more time and feel good about recording music just making beats. But then when I came out of my writer’s block, I went into the studio with Dre… My first trip was in Orlando. We had planned the trip for, like, two weeks, and I called him on the phone, and I told him, “I don’t know, man, I might be coming out of this writer’s block.” And he was like, “Uh oh! That’s what I want to hear!” I went to Orlando, and I think I wrote, like, 11 songs in the couple weeks that we were out there. Dre kinda caught fire right around the same time that I was comin’ out of my thing… Once we started getting that chemistry back, it just went so crazy that I did two albums in, like, six or seven months. I was literally writing songs faster than I could record them. I’ll take a day out to do vocals, and then my voice will be gone for, like, the next two days. So I’ll have to rest my voice. So, in between, those two days that I’m resting my voice, I’m writing two or three more songs. Before I knew it, we had two albums’ worth of material.

Your new single, “We Made You,” heavily references Amy Winehouse’s sound. How did you keep up with new music during your time off? Were you on the Internet a lot?Nah, I wasn’t. Either I go buy CDs or I have Paul or somebody sending me something if I hadn’t heard it yet.I stayed up on the music, and obviously I watch TV and saw what was going on. And without naming any names, it just felt like hip-hop was going downhill. And it seemed like kinda fast. You know, in them three years, it was like everybody just cares about the hook and the beat; nobody really cares about substance. But with this new T.I. album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now. You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know. Or T.I., where you hear shit and you’re like, Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that! You know what I mean? Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more.

XXL featured a new generation of MCs on the cover recently: Charles Hamilton, Wale, B.o.B, Asher Roth. Have you heard their music?Yeah. Well, B.o.B we actually have a publishing deal with. So I’ve been up on him for a while. But he’s insane. Like, talentwise. He’s, like, 20 years old, and the dude, like, fuckin’ plays guitar, he plays keyboard, he writes raps. He’s not only good at writing songs in the sense of just raps, but hooks. He’s fuckin’ insane. He can sing… I just worked with him a few weeks ago in the studio, and I’m like, “Do you fuckin’ dance, too? Jesus Christ!”

Charles Hamilton I’ve worked with a couple of years ago, toward the end of 2007. I just made the beat to a song, but, you know, I think Charles Hamilton is dope. Asher Roth, I haven’t had a chance to, like, really get into everything, like, really get into what he’s about, because I’ve only heard a couple of songs. There was talk about people saying he sounded like me, and he was doing this and that and, you know, trying to take what I do and do it. You know, shit like that. I’ve heard things. But the stuff that I’ve heard from him—honestly, which certainly isn’t enough for me to make my own opinion and say, “Yeah, he does sound like me” or “No, he doesn’t.” But the couple of songs I’ve heard, I don’t really think he does. You know what I mean? He’s doing his own thing. I can respect it, too, because, at the end of the day, I think he’s dope.

I think people were looking to see if there was going to be any kind of friction or whatever. Because you’re both White. You know, like the “White rapper spot” has to be reserved for one person.Man, that’s stupid.

Clearly.

As big as hip-hop is, you know what I mean? Like, who gives a shit? I mean, at first it was like, just to me it was like, is it because this dude is White that everyone’s automatically making comparisons? Obviously, to an extent, it is. That’s what everyone is gonna be looking for: Does he sound like Eminem? But I was flipping through the channels, and I caught something on spring break [with him performing], and I heard a song I had never heard before, and I was like, This dude sounds nothing like me.

Let’s talk about your new album. The early material to come out seems like a return to the crazy, twisted, psychopathic stuff you first came out with 10 years ago on The Slim Shady LP. Like, a serial-killer-type theme.

There’s a lot of stuff on there like that. When I came home from Orlando, out the blue, just the title, Relapse, hit me. Just the word stuck in my head… I kinda wanted to go back to what got me here in the first place. I’d asked Dre, “What do you think people want to hear from me anymore?” He’d be like, “People want to hear you lose your fuckin’ mind again.” Not only does Relapse mean coming out of rehab, but I wanted to go back to Proof’s idea of, “Let’s just say the most fucked-up shit that we can.” So I’ve kinda gone back to that direction.

Besides Dre, you’ve been working with 50 Cent again, too. How is your relationship with 50? He’s going through this whole battle with Rick Ross, with this Pimpin’ Curly stuff. How do you view all of it?

Mine and 50’s relationship has always been the same. It’s always been good. If anything, we’ve gotten closer in the last few years. 50 will just come to my house and just stay the night. Stay the weekend in one of the bedrooms and just hang out. And we talk about shit. I mean, a lot of our talk is about music, you know. But we just—we talk about shit, and we just make jokes and hang out. It doesn’t always have to be about business. You know, he’s going through this Rick Ross thing, which is kinda his thing. I guess, you know, at the moment, it’s just, let 50 do 50. I think that the Pimpin’ Curly shit is fuckin’ hilarious, though. I’m sorry, to me, that’s when 50’s at his best. When he’s doing just the funny shit. In real life, 50’s a fuckin’ clown, man. He’s actually a really funny dude.

Pictures of you came out last year where it looked like you’d gained a lot of weight. You’re back looking real chiseled now. What happened?

I gained a bunch of weight in my time off. I got lazy. I was eating a lot, just because the pills make you feel hungry. Then, just this past year, I got clean, I got sober, and I started running. I had a knee surgery last year, but as soon as I could, I hit the treadmill. So I run every day. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been up to 10 miles a day. I’ve been trying to really push myself. Just to see how much I could actually run, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. At the end of the day, I’m an addict. So I have addictive behavior. So I’m obsessive-compulsive about a lot of things. I’m obsessive-compulsive about my music, you know. Now I’m obsessive-compulsive about working out. I can’t do nothing in moderation… You’d think that the signs, like, all the addiction that runs in my family, I would have been a little more hip to that. But I just—I guess I wasn’t.

With all the hype surrounding your comeback, and with the terrible state of the record business, the hip-hop business in particular, do you feel like you’re coming back to save your label, or hip-hop as a genre, or even the music industry as a whole?

I don’t know if I feel like I’m coming back to save anything like that. I mean, obviously, if I can, you know, save the label and help generate more money for that, that’s great, too. But the truth is, I get bored just sitting around. I’m ready to be back out there. I love to be respected for the music that I make, and that’s what I’m in it for. The beautiful thing about this record is, I don’t expect it to do anything… Money is not necessarily something that I need anymore, so I’m doing it because I want to do it. I’m doing it because I want people to hear the music and like the music… If people like it, cool. If they don’t, they don’t. I certainly would like the benefits of what would come with it. If it could help generate more money for the label, then that’s good. But, at the end of the day, it’s just about the music.

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Link: http://www.xxlmag.com/news/throwbacks/2013/10/eminem-hard-to-kill-originally-published-june-2009/4/

Scans from: http://www.xxlmag.com/news/throwbacks/2013/10/eminem-hard-to-kill-originally-published-june-2009/4/

Kronick

Fat Chance
interview by Meshack Blaq

Eminem, Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers. Who is he? Why do we see him all over magazines and television shows that no other rapper has graced before (Except Snoop) for all the wrong reasons? What's all the ruckus surrounding him anyway? Where is he going lyrically? When exactly did Dr. Dre see the light in this white kid from middle America and when will the madness diminish? Ask a few of the millions and the millions that continue to buy his albums weekly. Ask the kids who want his poster on their walls or the dirty versions of his cd's when they're only 11, 12, and 13 years old. Have you even listened to his cd's? Does anybody care? Well, we decided to get next to Mr. Slim Mathers aka Marshall Shady and ask him 20 Questions for your sake. Catching him backstage at the Up In Smoke East Coast leg in Hartford, CONN was no easy feat, but Kron-ron did it again! And nearly everyone (including Animal) told me when Kronick set out to do this, "FAT CHANCE!"

KRON: As I sit at home and watch all these special talk shows on CNN and MSNBC devoted to Eminem's lyrics, I have to wonder is this how you planned it?

EMINEM: I guess I couldn't have asked for anything better. I think it's funny how people make such a big fuckin' stink because that's why I did it; so they would make a big stinkin' fuss! Really, I didn't talk about anything that really isn't going on in America anyways. Nobody would say shit if I didn't say somethin' about Homosexuals. But as soon as you talk about Homosexuals, Gay people are really uptight I guess.

KRON: Why do you think America is so uptight about Gays and Lesbians?

EMINEM: Well this is the thing. When I recorded my first album, I had somethin' on there where I said the "fag" word a couple of times and it got blown outta proportion. Like the Ken Kaniff skit and all that shit got blown out of proportion. That's when Journalists started asking me if I was Homophobic. And I got asked the question so much that it kind of backed me up into a corner like I started taking it defensively. They didn't even know me! I make a couple of comments and muthafuckers think I'm Homophobic. Well OK, yea I am! And it just evolved into this thing where people started calling me shit, so I just became whatever they said I was.

KRON: So who do you think is more twisted, you or the media?

EMINEM: I think the world is more twisted. The world is fuckin' twisted because the world made me. So when I talk about shit, it ain't as bad as priests raping kids or people having sex with underage women and shit like that. You got all kinds of fucked up shit goin' on like corrupt Politicians and shit like that. All I do a lot of times is talk about it and put it into character. And when I say it, it'll make it seem like I'm makin' it right or OK to do that, or I'm makin' it funny. But really, all I'm doin' is takin' what's wrong with the world and making it into music.

KRON: Is all this furor and uproar over your lyrics a game to you like Parker Brothers, or is it more like Chess?

EMINEM: I would say a little bit of both because it's a game. It's kinda fun to sit back and watch the media play right into my hands. But at the same time it's kinda like Chess because I don't think they know what my next move is gonna be. It's important for me to keep that mystique about me so that people don't know what I'm gonna do next, or say next.

Icast 1999

ICAST: What was your life like growing up, and how do you think it
influenced your music?

Eminem: My life was really shitty growing up, and obviously it influenced my music. All you got to do is pick up a Slim Shady album. I feel like if you listen to the album in depth, there is really not many questions to ask.  I'm pretty much coming out and telling the world this is what I been through, this is what I seen, this is what I done.

I feel like I represent hip-hop. I've lived it all my life and I know it, I grew up on it. And I would say my sound is just pretty much for anybody who's been through some bullshit man, who has ever been through some - trifling times or whatever. We pretty much all have, so I represent those people. All I do is reflect what's went on in my life in my music.

ICAST: How old were you when you started rapping?
Eminem: Like nine. I was about nine when I started listening to rap. I started rapping, writing my own ryhmes about fourteen and just kept getting better at it.

Proof: Better and better.

ICAST: What kind of influences do you guys bring to the sound of the music?

Proof: Ice-T. Ice-T, "Reckless" on up.

Eminem: Yeah, Ice-T's "Reckless" was the first rap song I ever heard. I was in the fourth or fifth grade. But growing up, I had a lot of influences like L.L. Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run DMC. Some of the earlier groups.

Proof: NWA, 2 Live Crew.

Eminem: But the list goes on and on. It was Run DMC and 2 Live Crew, then it was NWA, and Run DMC again. Just whoever was putting out albums.

Proof: Basically, we checked everything. No matter if it was wack, we would know because we were bright. Every tape that was out, we bought it. He had a tape collection that was incredible. I had the vinyl and he had all the tapes.

ICAST: What's your writing process like?

Proof: We not gonna say that because what if somebody is watching that and we tell you, we gotta kill you because you'll give away the formula.

Eminem: No, my writing process is basically, I don't try to sit down and think of shit. I let the thoughts pop into my head, and then I write them down. I let it come natural. It's not something that I try to search for.  I gotta let the stuff - throughout the course of my day, I might find like six to twelve ideas. And then just jot them down and at the end of the week or the end of two weeks or whatever, I stack my ideas up and then I write a rhyme.

Proof: If somebody listen to the album, and they listen, most of the stuff he say reflect from his life. He don't try to think creatively, he just take from his life and animate it with lyrics.

ICAST: Does that help you work through some stuff? Some of your songs are
about pretty serious things.
Proof: I think it is a therapy for him. It's a therapy for every rapper.

Eminem: For every rapper out there - hip-hop has always been known to be pretty much autobiographical. You reflect your life - you tell what you know. You say things from your point of view, like this is my point of view, this is the way I see life, it's always been like that.

ICAST: Do you think you material deserves to have like a parental warning on
it?

Proof: Yeah definitely.

Eminem: Definitely, but it's not going to stop kids from getting it. I was 11-12 years old, listening to 2 Live Crew, sneaking into rated R movies.  Kids are kids, and kids are a lot smarter than we really give them credit for.

Proof: That's what it is.

Eminem: People want to try to blame music, like the kids in Colorado and shit like that, people want to try and blame the music for it, but those kids are really crazy.

Proof: To start with. And the parents should be checked for that. They always try to blame - find something else like maybe it's the Slim Shady record because he talking about crazy stuff.

Eminem: It's the music or it's the movie that the kid's seen that made him do it. If they want to see that movie, they the one that did it. Or if they want to listen to that record, they wouldn't of did it. Come on man.

Proof: They don't just take one song and make a person go nuts. That's a growth thing.

Eminem: If I'm a jump off a bridge, I'm a jump off bridge because I want to jump off a bridge, not because somebody told me to.

Proof: Not because Ice-T says he jumped off the bridge. We jump off the bridge cause we gonna jump off the bridge anyway.

Eminem: You want to jump off the bridge with us? Let's all three of us go right now and we'll go jump off a bridge.

Proof: Come on man, everybody is doing it.

Eminem: Everyone is doing it now.

Proof: Everybody is jumping off the bridge, dude. Dude, everyone is jumping off the bridge.

Eminem: Would you come jump off the bridge with us?

ICAST: If I jump off the bridge, I can't listen to your CD anymore.
Eminem: You can listen to my CD on the way down.

ICAST: Did you ever run into resistance?

Eminem: No, no, no.

ICAST: Well, I mean, because you're a white guy.

Proof: Oh God----

Eminem: I'm white!

Proof: He's white! Man, I didn't know you was white! All that time - - get out of here. You telling me this guy is white.

ICAST: As far as I can tell.

Proof: This dude is white? Damn it.

Eminem: No it's sunburn.

Proof: Sunburn. He's red.

ICAST: Do people have expectations, like this guys isn't going to be able to
do it because he's...

Eminem: I don't know - you have to ask those people.

Proof: Listen, I'll tell you this. I went to black dominated high school and I used to sneak him in there into the lunchroom. And they'd be like, "We want to battle you." "No, can't battle me, why don't you battle the white boy over there first?" And everybody would be like "I'll kill him."  Then the Em would come out and kill the whole lunch room, which was a black dominated school and would be looking like "damn!"

Eminem: Everything is always looks. You gonna fuck with somebody --- people are gonna mess with you by looks. Whether you go to a mixed school or you go to an all black school or you go to an all white school, you gonna pick things out to mess with kids about. Growing up, that's just what you do.  This kid's fat. This kid's too skinny. This kid's got buck teeth, this kid's got a big forehead - you know what I'm sayin?

Proof: And this kid looks like Chris Rock. We've been through all that.

ICAST: Do you think it made you work harder to get respect as a rapper?
Eminem: Definitely. I had to work hard and there was a certain level of respect I had to get. It was definitely an uphill battle, but I feel like I'm winning it. I'm slowly winning over the respect of everybody. I don't care if you black, white, orange or whatever colour you are, that kid can skateboard, that kid can ride a bike, that kid can rap, that dude can play football.

Proof: It don't really matter. I think that the youth that's coming up now is really dope. Whoever they cool with, they cool with personality.

ICAST: How did you hook up with Dr. Dre?

Eminem: I was just in a lot of rap competitions and I was in the '97
Scribble Jam, and then towards the end of '97, I was in the Rap Olympics.  And taking second place in the Rap Olympics, kids from Interscope were there and they got the tape, my demo tape so to speak, and I gave it to him and Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope, he liked it and he played it for Dre, and Dre was like, "Yo, let's find this kid, let's hook him up or whatever."  And they found me.

ICAST: What was it like to work with him?
Proof: That's the greatest producer in rap history. The greatest man.

Eminem: Dre is the best. The best producer of all time.

Proof: No doubt.

Eminem: That's a question that is always asked and it's kind of self-explanatory, like what am I supposed to say?



ICAST: I mean, how does he communicate his ideas and how does he get your ideas in a way that someone else wouldn't be able to? Because he obviously succeeds.

Eminem: Their chemistry.

Proof: Because there is a chemistry there.

Eminem: Yeah, like when him and Snoop Dogg first got together. There's a chemistry there. It's like this - I'm a lyricist and a writer. He makes beats and produces it. He has a vision. He can make that come to life.  Every Dre beat - damn near every Dre beat that I hear, I wanna rap over. It makes me instantly think of things, so like I said, it's just a chemistry.  We just get together and in one studio session, we can knock out one or two songs right there.

ICAST: Where do you think rap is headed?
Eminem: Rap and hip-hop if the biggest thing, you know what I'm saying?

Proof: It's embracing the youth, so - there's always babies every minute.

Eminem: I think rap embraces the youth, so as long as there's always youth, there's always rap.

ICAST: What's your relationship with a live audience like?
Eminem: The reaction has been good so far. Especially with the Warped Tour. It's a different crowd for me to perform in front of so everything has been on the up and up. The crowds are perceiving me well, so I'm cool with it. I like to work for my money. I like to go out and earn crowds because it makes me feel like I'm working. Not just come out on stage and stand in one spot and the crowd just loves me the whole time just because of who I am. I want to give a show. I want to entertain people. I want to be in touch with the crowd and talk to people, keep eye contact with the people.  And really just try to see what they're feeling. These are the people that's buying my records, so they're paying my way. So, you gotta keep in touch with them fans.

ICAST: So the audience can affect your performance?

Proof: Definitely. Because we not the kind of MC's that go on stage and don't care what they do. We feed off the crowd every time. Every show.

Eminem: If the crowd is not making no noise, I'm going to address it.  Whatever the crowd is doing, I'm going to address it. If they ain't making no noise, I'm going to stop my record --- "yo, you ain't feeling me or whatever?" If they throwing shit, and acting rowdy, I'ma address it.

Proof: If they're not hype, we work harder sometimes. Jump in the crowd, whatever we gotta do.

Eminem: Jump in the crowd, take our clothes off,

Proof: Beat up their pets.

ICAST: You mentioned that the Warped Tour audience is different than your normal audience, how is it different?

Eminem: It's different because ever since January I been on tour --- pretty much non-stop, and every tour that I done so far has been pretty much strictly hip-hop crowds. And this is like you got alternative, you got Blink 182 to Ice-T. You got people that come to see me, you got people that come to see Suicidal Tendencies. So it's just all types of crowds. When I look into the crowd and I'm saying my words, and the front row might not know it, but the people in the back might not know the words to my songs because they ain't heard my album yet or they barely know who Eminem is. So I'm trying to get the respect of them people.

Proof: We want to work them.

ICAST: What do you think is the biggest risk that you've had to take for your career?

Eminem: Drugs.

Proof: No, I think his biggest risk was the sacrifice into his family time.

Eminem: My family I don't get to see. My girl and my daughter. I don't get to see them. And one of the main things that's really fucked up is when people piss you off, you can't hit them in the face.

Proof: We can't do nothing no more because the way it used to be, we was the
bully busters.

Eminem: We can't act like how we wanna act. How we really wanna act.

Proof: Cause the higher powers that be won't allow it. We can't even look at nobody no more.

Eminem: Judge Judy.

Proof: We can't argue, we can't do nothing. We gotta - it's just crazy man.

ICAST: How do you do that?

Proof: It's hard.

Eminem: I got out of control a couple of times.

Proof: He can't live with it. I think I can, but I don't think he can live with it.

Eminem: It's really hard, man. When somebody disrespects you on a street level, you want to do something to retaliate. But you got to learn to control your temper and you got to take the "Fuck you's" and "You suck!" and shit like that.

Proof: Even the flapping you. Or whatever they do to you.

Eminem: Somebody slaps me, and ----

Proof: We was lying right there on that part. If you hit us, we gonna hit you back. Believe me.

ICAST: Sounds like you've been able to direct your own career a lot of the time. So how do you define success?

Proof: That's funny, that's a funny word, success, cause success is like when you succeeded. What have we succeeded?

Eminem: I'm cool with success as long as it doesn't get too out of hand.  I'm trying to keep shit balanced and ---

Proof: Down to earth.

Eminem: And what people don't realise is that you're a regular person. When I go out on that stage --- if I'm on stage and my voice cracks or I'm losing my voice because I've been on tour for so long --- if I slip and fall down and trip over a cord, whatever happens. People don't realise that whatever happens, happens. And you're just a human being. And when you don't want to sign million autographs when you're standing outside of your bus and you sign a few of them, and then them other people that didn't get their autographs are like "fuck you, asshole!" People don't realise you're a regular person, a human being. And that's one of the hardest things that people have trouble coming to grips with.

Proof: That you're regular. That you bleed and use the bathroom.

ICAST: So what do you do when you have your down time? How do you keep your head together?

Proof: Down time? What the fuck is that?

Eminem: We had like two weeks off.

Proof: We had 13 days off.

Eminem: I masturbate a lot. I masturbate a lot.

Proof: But masturbation is cool.

ICAST: The ultimate in safe sex.

Proof: Ultimate safe sex. Especially if you wear a condom.

Eminem: Use condoms. Don't do drugs. Leave it up to me.

ICAST: What is the most important thing you've learned since you've gotten a real level of commercial success that you might not have had earlier in your career?

Proof: I don't know man, I gotta lot of shit to learn still. Everyday I learn something new. Everyday I meet somebody new, so maybe as me in 20 years.

Eminem: My main thing was, I wanted to get the respect, I wanted to show the world and people who didn't believe in me that I could do this. And now that I'm doing it, I'm proving my point. And I'm going to keep proving my point until I'm tired of the rap music. I can't do it forever. None of us can. You can't ask questions forever. You probably got about 87 more questions on there, so --- you can apparently ask questions forever. I can't rap forever.