Being Eminem
It has been five years since the world last heard from Eminem, but the most incendiary rapper of all time is returning to the fray with perhaps his most stunning album yet. In his only major interview to mark the release of Relapse, he talks to Anthony Bozza about fame and his fondness for serial killers, the addictions that nearly finished his career and why he's in a better place now than ever before
* Anthony Bozza
* The Observer, Sunday 17 May 2009
It has been five years since Eminem last emerged from his Detroit compound with a new studio album, Encore. By then, the rapper born Marshall Mathers III had established himself as the most significant US artist of his generation – driving and reflecting fierce debate in George Bush's America on racial and sexual politics, violence, dysfunctional families and the pitfalls of celebrity. He survived a traumatic childhood in the racially divided lower-class suburbs of Detroit to win nine Grammy awards and an Oscar (for best song, from the film 8 Mile, the loosely autobiographical tale in which he starred); but even as critics and commentators belatedly sought to embrace him, the United States Secret Service found itself considering an investigation into the suggestion – on the 2003 track We As Americans – that he had threatened the president's life.
No one could be insensate to Eminem, or Slim Shady, those aliases born of a hip-hop tradition to which he had always been true. Shady righted the wrongs the rapper had suff ered in life and ridiculed the insincerity and injustice he saw all around him. But somewhere along the way it seems as if holding a mirror up to his culture caused the real Marshall Mathers to lose his way. The stuff of his life – from his acrimonious relationships with his mother Debbie and his now twice divorced ex-wife Kimberley Anne Scott (mother to his daughter Hailie ) – fuelled lyrics that were often painfully detailed and explicit. But following a greatest hits collection – with the ominous title Curtain Call – in December 2005, Eminem disappeared from the limelight.
In the years since there have been endless rumours: Eminem was struggling with drug addiction and weight gain; Eminem had put down the microphone for good; Eminem intended to focus on acting; Eminem was too paranoid to leave his home. The truth is mixed.
In his time away from the world at large, the 36-year-old star struggled with an addiction to painkillers and sleeping pills that had been with him for years. He gained weight, he grew depressed and he lost the creative spark that had always driven him on. The murder of his best friend and partner in rap, Proof – real name DeShaun Dupree Holton – on 8 Mile Road in Detroit in April 2006 did nothing to help his downward spiral.
I first heard Eminem in 1998, when he was an unsigned rapper freestyling on a Los Angeles radio show and I was on staff at Rolling Stone magazine. I kept my eye out for him and a year later, when he signed to Interscope records and was working with Dr Dre – one of the most infl uential hiphop producers in history – I was dispatched to interview him for a 250-word piece on the "novelty" video for his surprise hit My Name Is. The Eminem I met then was on fi re, with wit, with creativity and with a nothing-to-lose momentum that was carrying him further to the top day-today than I think even he reali sed. But as time went on, and over the course of several in-depth interviews that saw me finally writing a book called Whatever You Say I Am (Transworld) about his rise to fame and his cultural significance, I saw the Eminem I knew change.
It wasn't just the stress of success and the complicated life he chronicled so well in rhyme. In our last interview, circa the album The Eminem Show in 2002, he had grown very visibly reserved; it was a trend that seemed to continue in his subsequent dealings with the press and public at large. Soon after, on Encore, his rhymes fell short of his acerbic, acrobatic best. It sounded from the outside as if the wordsmith who was never without a pen and a pad had grown bored of his craft.
In truth, he had. He was midway through a spiral that he has finally turned around: he is now a year sober and ready to re-emerge with the feverishly awaited Relapse. His voice is clear, his speech is focused and for the first time in too long – to my ears at least – Eminem sounds like the man he used to be. The outward signs are positive: rather than remaining in his home studio to record, Eminem has built a new facility in Detroit, full of his favourite vintage arcade games, where he now prefers to work. And though he has not decided if he's going to tour this album or Relapse II, a second studio release tentatively scheduled for later this year, he has decided that he's ready to keep writing and rapping rather than working behind the production desk for other artists. It sounds as if Eminem has realised, once again, that rap saved his life and that no one should turn their back on what they're born to do – especially if they're given the chance to do it their way.
