Whatever You Say I Am Read online

  “Em’s worked really hard to get where he is,” Bizzare, of D-12, says. “He went everywhere back in the day, battles, conventions. I was one of the first to take him out of town, actually. He had never been nowhere besides Kansas City and Cedar Point in Michigan. Around ’94, I think it was, me and him drove down to the How Can I Be Down? conference in Miami. There was like five of us in a Honda Accord, driving all the way down there. We didn’t do too good, we passed out a couple tapes, we didn’t get no respect, whatever. We had to leave early because all this bad shit was happening back home with Kim at the house Em had with her. They was getting broken into and they was getting evicted. Me and him had to get back to Detroit right away so we tried to catch a bus and they wouldn’t let him on it because he had his clothes in a garbage bag. He had to, like, put the clothes on and put shit in my bag.”

  It is impossible to relate the history of hip-hop and understand Eminem’s place in it without including the white people who have affected the scene for better and worse. In hip-hop’s early years, punk and New Wave artists such as the Clash and Blondie were early supporters: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five opened for the Clash on all seven nights of concerts that they played in Bond’s International Casino Times Square in 1981, in front of sets painted by graffiti artists such as Phase 2. Blondie was, in truth, the first group to land a proto-rap on the pop charts, with “Rapture” in 1980. Former Sex Pistol John Lydon and Afrika Bambaataa teamed up in 1984 for the cutting-edge dance hit “World Destruction,” and it’s impossible to think that plenty of the half a million copies of Kurtis Blow’s The Breaks sold didn’t go to white fans. In the early days of the music, white executives such as Tom Silverman (Tommy Boy), publicist Bill Adler, and producers Rick Rubin and Lyor Cohen (Def Jam) and Barry Weiss (Jive) supported rap when black execs at the black-music divisions of major record labels regarded rap as a novelty, opting to develop R&B divas and funk bands. The Source, the self-proclaimed “bible of hip-hop,” was started by two white guys, Jonathan Schecter and David Mays, out of a Harvard dorm room in 1988. From visionary believers such as producer and Def Jam cofounder Rick Rubin to charlatans such as N.W.A’s manager Jerry Hibbert, whites have been involved in hip-hop from the start; they’re as old-school of a feature as the rapper who never got paid—and the record company entrenched in white corporate America that didn’t pay him.

  The only unquestionably supportive role that whites have played in nurturing the music are as members of the record-buying public and the select critical media. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s landmark single “The Message” was heralded by white rock outlets such as the Village Voice and Rolling Stone back in 1979. The groups who have had the most universal appeal—Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, N.W.A, Naughty by Nature, Snoop, Tupac, Biggie Smalls, Eminem—have drawn fans from the same well.

  Of course, there is white rap. When Eminem debuted in the hip-hop press, each magazine, in one form or another, ran articles such as The Source’s “Other White Rappers Who Don’t Suck,” as a remembrance. All those articles were duly short. The Beastie Boys were the first significant white rap group; they weren’t the only one to be nationally known before Eminem, although it may have been better if they were. Most white MCs have done more damage to white hip-hop credibility than C. Dolores Tucker, the staunchly conservative, antirap black activist, has done to black free expression. Most white rap exemplifies cultural imperialism and inspires justified nonexpectations. It is a walking list of ways white men can’t jump. In the past, white MCs who “made it” won short-term victories then fell out of favor, not by losing their edge, but, after revealing their one trick, by staying the same. The most commercially successful white acts before Eminem were hokey, safe, poplike visions of hip-hop, with a shtick that crossed over with young audiences: Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch (rap with one foot in the “urban” dance music of the early nineties), Vanilla Ice (the white MC Hammer), and House of Pain (Cypress Hill with pot leaves and bongs traded for shamrocks and beer), who, to their credit, released not one but two hit singles. There is the terribly awful One Stop Carnival, by Beverly Hills 90210 star Brian Austin Green, that despite production work by Tré Hardson (Slim Kid 3 of the Pharcyde), remains an art-imitating-life caveat: Green’s character on the show, David Silver, was also signed to a record deal for his gangsta rap stylings and didn’t succeed. There is the Insane Clown Posse, a sorely undertalented Detroit rapschlock hybrid act known more for their Kiss-style makeup and an affinity for spraying audiences with Faygo cola than for their music; regionally, they enjoy a devoted cult following.

  Only two white rap groups before Eminem enjoyed credibility; only one can be called widely successful. The Beastie Boys were a white group managed by a black man, Russell Simmons, who nurtured these upper-middle-class, well-educated punks into rap brats. The Beastie Boys were a punk rock band for two years, until 1983, when they became taken with the emerging sampling technology of hip-hop and released the Cookie Puss EP named for an ice cream cake by Carvel. The Beastie Boys showed that defiant beer-can nihilism and inept punk rock proved far more creative in hip-hop: The Beastie Boys’ debut album, Licensed to Ill, went to number one on the U.S. pop charts in 1986. It was the first rap album to do so. Licensed to Ill was a collusion of Led Zeppelin riffs, an odd television theme sample (from the Mister Ed show), and irony-free lyrical references from Picasso to porno. Their fuck-it-all formula embraced the machismo of heavy metal (caged strippers onstage), the aimless rebellion of white teens (“[You Gotta] Fight for Your Right [to Party]”), the antiauthority street style of hip-hop (huge gold chains with a Volkswagen hood ornament), and the anthemic rock-flavored dynamics that characterized the early days of Def Jam Records, a style proved successful by Run-D.M.C., (particularly on Raising Hell, in 1986) and LL Cool J (on Radio, in 1985). But neither of those acts sold as many records as quickly as the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, which sold 750,000 copies in six weeks; at the time, it was the fastest-selling debut album in the history of Def Jam’s distributor, Columbia Records. In light of the volume of their success, the Beastie Boys faced a controversy similar to the one that met Eminem fourteen years later. Hip-hop purists were horrified at the Beastie Boys’ exaggerated, overly Caucasian delivery and excessive bad behavior, wondering if there was a line between an overenthusiasm for rap and a parody of the culture. The mainstream media protested the Beastie Boys’ stage show, which was laden with strippers and an inflatable thirty-foot penis. But the Beastie Boys, like Eminem, played their role properly, pretending to be nothing but white boys, educated at that, though in interviews their behavior and commentary indicated otherwise. “You know why I could fuck with them?” said Beastie Boys collaborator Q-Tip (of A Tribe Called Quest) to writer Matt Diehl in The Vibe History of Hip Hop. “They’re just themselves, not trying to be something they’re not.” Culture-stealers or not, the Beastie Boys introduced a tremendous number of white music fans to hip-hop and received a tremendous amount of attention from whites in general, stirring an interest that other rap groups, from Public Enemy to N.W.A, filled in the years to come. For their part, the Beastie Boys followed their success by temporarily taking themselves out of the game. After an infamous tour for Licensed to Ill, during which they were accused of, among many things, deriding terminally ill children while abroad, they quarreled with their label over money and parted ways for a few years, eventually relocating to L.A. In 1989, the Beastie Boys proved themselves truly innovative, pushing the boundaries of sampling culture and predicting the prismatic genre-mixing of nineties pop music with the stunning but somewhat commercially unsuccessful Paul’s Boutique, produced by the up-and-coming duo, the Dust Brothers in 1989. The group has since defined modern white b-boy “alternative” style, the eclectic state in which hip-hop, punk rock, funk, and skateboarder culture resides. The band’s fan base, despite the lengthy breaks between record releases, had not forgotten them: After four years away, the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty debuted at number one on the Top 200 A
lbum charts in 1998.

  Past and present masters: Eminem and Rakim, 2002.

  A less commercially viable but more traditional white rap group was 3rd Bass, a trio of two white rappers, including Prime Minister Pete Nice (Pete Nash) and MC Serch (Michael Berrin), plus a black DJ, Richie Rich (Richard Lawson). White hip-hop artists like Marky Mark and Vanilla Ice fabricated or embellished tough upbringings and paid the price with their loss of popularity, but 3rd Bass did not: Both rappers were from Queens and spent the 1980s winning respect and taking their share of boos at club shows. 3rd Bass was the first white rap group with street-style rhymes and attitude; they lambasted the Beastie Boys for their rich-kid backgrounds, ridiculed MC Hammer, and recorded a Vanilla Ice parody, “Pop Goes the Weasel,” which, ironically, became their biggest hit in 1991. In the video for that song, 3rd Bass even beat up a Vanilla Ice impersonator, played by punk-rock icon Henry Rollins. “Pop Goes the Weasel” was an interesting twist in the white rap credibility war, because 3rd Bass’s parody hit was based on the same formula that Puff Daddy would use in the nineties and that Vanilla Ice had used for “Ice Ice Baby”—lifting a recognizable refrain from a hit song almost in its entirety. Ice borrowed from Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” while 3rd Bass did the same from Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” Nonetheless, whereas the Beastie Boys created their own talent pool after their debut album, 3rd Bass worked with some of the most proven, respected hip-hop producers of the day, such as the Bomb Squad and Prince Paul. 3rd Bass disbanded in 1992, and MC Serch worked as a solo artist while Pete Nice and DJ Richie Rich worked as a group, releasing albums that failed to equal the sum of their parts. MC Serch has remained devoted to hip-hop, as a spokesman against payola in radio and as head of artist development at the short-lived, highly respected record label Wild Pitch; Pete Nice retired from the game to open a baseball memorabilia store. Though 3rd Bass’s public profile was not as high as that of the Beastie Boys, 3rd Bass proved, perhaps more so than the Beastie Boys, that every white rapper isn’t a sham.

  The litmus test for past white rappers remains the same for those today: authenticity and devotion to the culture. White teens brought up on rap and turned on to rhyme appeared in greater numbers than ever before in the nineties, with names like Miilkbone, Cage, Eminem, R.A. the Rugged Man, and Remedy, all of who have had tough upbringings, the backing of hip-hop royalty, or both. Rappers such as Eminem and Cage detail revenge fantasies and the damage of troubled childhoods in their music—Eminem’s broken home and Cage’s time in a mental institution as a teenager, where he was placed by his stepfather. Miilkbone was brought up in New Jersey projects; Remedy, a rapper from a wealthy family who boasts the backing of the Wu-Tang Clan, writes rhymes about his Jewish ancestors who died in the Holocaust. Not quite fitting in is a blessing and a curse to whites in hip-hop, placing them on the periphery, where they may innovate wildly, or prove their way onto the main stage. Whichever path a white hip-hop artist walks, inauthenticity at any step will be their last.

  Eminem is the white rapper who integrated mainstream accolades and credibility most successfully; he’s raised the bar on white rappers immeasurably, and on all rappers significantly. He has proved himself to be the highest form of white rapper: an authentic innovator in traditional hip-hop terms.

  “The top two rappers right now, as far as skill, writing, and delivery, are my partner Big Boi and Eminem,” says André of OutKast. “That’s truly how I feel about it. I mean, I can tell that it’s real for Eminem. It’s a passion for him, you know. It ain’t just like fly by night, he’s jumping to it.”

  “What Eminem does particularly well among many other things,” says music critic Soren Baker, “is that he actually makes you care about him. A lot of the whole ‘keep it real’ mandate that rappers purportedly adhere to is obviously totally false because there’s not enough time in the day to kill as many people, have sex with as many women, and sell as many drugs as these guys claim to, and still have a recording career and national tours.”

  Eminem’s rhyme style has also evolved while remaining true to the battle tradition that weaned him. He’s met the challenges of other MCs and has always responded, even to less-than-stellar lyrical opponents, with battle rhymes as intricate and fresh as the verses he pores over for his albums. “Being in battles keeps Eminem grounded I think,” says Sway Calloway. “Back in the day, that’s what helped develop and shape who he is. The only thing that was at all good about his whole ‘beef’ with Benzino is that it reminded Eminem where he came from. This is still rap, and guys like Cannabis or Benzino or whoever are still gonna come for you and you gotta prove that you’re still a warrior, a gladiator, no matter how many millions you sold. That’s what keeps a rapper’s arrogance, his spirit, his edge, going.” In addition, Eminem has moved into production, helming tracks for Jay-Z and Nas, proof enough that he is a rare talent, one who is authentic, passionate, different, and gifted enough to communicate his reality so universally that fans of all ages, colors, and musical preferences can feel it—every single time.

  “Eminem came out of the box with this surreal violent thing going on. It wasn’t just that, it was also really funny, even more because he aimed so much of it at himself,” says the Village Voice’s Sasha Frere-Jones. “That was the huge difference. Everyone in rap has shot everyone else a hundred times, and everyone’s done mean things to people, and I really don’t need to hear that again. But, like, suicide and self-mutilation analogizes a useful state of mind—which is, ‘okay, I feel bad about myself.’ That’s a huge, not very well-explored part of hip-hop. I know people who think even that part of Eminem is a moral force for bad. But, you know, I don’t know anyone who thinks he’s not a good MC. He’s like Biggie, and I’ve never heard anyone say that Biggie wasn’t dope. Nobody didn’t love Biggie—and it was the same thing when Eminem first came out; everyone’s running around with the same look on their face like, ‘Did you hear this shit?!’ When Ready to Die came out, it was the same thing—you couldn’t open the door without somebody quoting Biggie.”

  On The Eminem Show, the rapper makes reference to retiring his jersey at thirty. He knows that hip-hop isn’t a forgiving medium: Fans move quickly, and a weak album may be a rapper’s last—as a white rapper of his stature, the pressure is double. “I’m gonna stop when I’ve got nothing left to say,” Eminem says. “As soon as I don’t feel it, that’s it, it’s over.” If that happens tomorrow, history has dictated that, statistically, another skilled Caucasion will hit it big in hip-hop in nine years. Those who have followed in Eminem’s wake, such as Bubba Sparxxx, Haystack, Poverty, and Stagga Lee, have not enjoyed instant success. None of them approach the level of Eminem’s talent, but if they were close it would still not be enough. Eminem’s skills and success may have opened new doors for white rappers, but his legacy has set the standard forever higher, making their burden of proving themselves that much more difficult. The next great white MC will have to be better than Eminem, a quality that escapes 95 percent of the MCs of any race today. Even if a new white rapper doesn’t emerge in the near future, Eminem is wise enough to know the dangers of being a white rap also-ran; that parking lot is well populated. House of Pain’s Everlast had to switch to acoustic guitar in a kind of rock-rap-blues to hit the charts again in 1998 (Whitey Ford Sings the Blues), eight years after his solo rap album flunked. Vanilla Ice, after being exposed for inventing a gang-life past, fell into pop culture’s footnotes, despite a film, a live album, and a second album of rap in 1994 that aped the pot-and-gun-smoke vibe of Dr. Dre and Cypress Hill. He then, still aping the tastes of the day in 1998, reinvented himself as a rap-rock artist caught somewhere between the sound of Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit.

  The Beastie Boys, Everlast, and Vanilla Ice (as well as every musician Eminem has ever criticized) all turned down (or rendered ridiculous) my requests to be interviewed for this book, perhaps afraid that, like Mark Wahlberg may have been on TRL with Eminem, they would be ridiculed by comparison. T
he goal of my query was made clear: nothing but to learn of their experiences as white artists in hip-hop and to find out if they felt times had changed. It couldn’t have been easy, as it wasn’t for Eminem. Perhaps the only answer worth noting is the only one that was given, in an e-mail response from Vanilla Ice’s manager. His e-mail followed a phone conversation in which the subject of “compensation” was brought up—in light of an author’s publishing advance for a book. I have no regrets that this work suffered for the lack of insight that Robert Van Winkle, a.k.a. Vanilla Ice, would have provided in the twenty minutes of phone conversation I could have purchased for $5,000. My apologies to readers who disagree.

  In post-Eminem times, the fate of white rappers will be brighter if their talent and credibility are in the right place. More than any other pop music form, rap is supremely Darwinian; freestyle panache or connections (though this could be argued) is not all it takes. There is promising talent coming out of the Midwest, such as the young Asian rapper Jin and nineteen-year-old Eyedea, the winner of Blaze magazine’s 2002 Freestyle Battle, a white rapper who, despite offers from major record labels, has chosen to remain true to his roots on an independent, local label.