Whatever You Say I Am Read online

  In the face of these white hybrids Eminem more fully and organically expresses the state of race and hip-hop today.

  “The problem for white artists is that there are very few people who are even near as good as Eminem,” Dave Marsh says. “But I think they should keep on keeping on. The future doesn’t lie in segregation, it lies in integration. What integration meant in the sixties, it might mean now: How about we let black people lead for a while. That’s how it plays out in Eminem’s story. Everybody knows Dr. Dre is there and is crucial to his process. At the same time, everybody knows Eminem is not Dr. Dre’s puppet.”

  Like his integrated racial identity, Eminem’s music is an organic fusion of black and white: white as seen through a black lens and black as seen through a white lens. He is as proficient in a black art form as he is at finding a sugary melody. Like the best subversive pop of any variety, Eminem’s music manages to relate complex realities—from celebrity worship (“Stan,” “Superman”) to selfloathing and nihilism (“My Name Is,” “Role Model,” “The Real Slim Shady,”)—to pop radio. Eminem tells stories, like his most talented black counterparts, yet, from recorded freestyle raps such as “Greg,” about a kid with a wooden leg, to 8 Mile’s epic “Lose Yourself,” his output illustrates a confessional voice and a constructed, cinematic songwriting eye that is more typical of rock and roll and R&B than of hip-hop. Eminem has evolved musically as well, particularly on The Eminem Show, into a more guitar-laden, anthemic production style that is a unique, powerful amalgam of both traditions.

  “What white rappers bring,” says André of OutKast, “is a fuck-it attitude. The Beastie Boys brought a fuck-it attitude, but it was more or less a party fuck-it attitude. Eminem’s attitude is ‘fuck it,’ I’ll say anything, to anyone, anywhere, fuck it, fuck it all. Who’s the hottest pop group on MTV right now? Fuck them. What did the president do? Fuck him, too. I think that’s what’s lovely about it. It ain’t like he’s trying to wear gold chains and shit and playin’ like he’s from my neighborhood. And people respect him for it. They can identify with all of it because it’s real. That’s all that people will identify with—what’s real to them.”

  In this free-form climate in music and “racial performance,” the only true test is one of the oldest: Does the artist’s formula work? More important, is it credible? On this front, Eminem, as a talented white man, had to, and still has to, work twice as hard. Hip-hop might be changing its face, but to many young black Americans, it is still the forum for their group’s identity in the post–Civil Rights era, and although a white man on the mike might be compelling, in order to endure, he had better consistently be very, very good.

  “I never asked Dre if he knew I was white when he heard my tape,” Eminem says. “I had met one of his A&Rs at the Rap Olympics, so I guess he knew. I don’t think it really mattered much. It’s because I’m dope. It sounds corny coming out of my mouth and I don’t want to sound prima donna or nothin’, but if somebody takes it to a certain level, it doesn’t matter. A few people who work with Dre told me at first when they heard about him wanting to work with me, they were like, ‘no white rappers.’ Dre told them he didn’t give a fuck if I was green or yellow or whatever color, he was working with me as his next project.”

  “To be real with you,” Dr. Dre says, “usually white MCs aren’t good—it’s as simple as that. It’s not a racial issue, you just have to be good and most of them aren’t. Someone like Eminem is rare. A white MC is like seeing a black person in a hockey rink—it’s gonna get some attention, but you know he’d only be playing if he was real good. Eminem is one of the best MCs I’ve worked with and one of the best out there, period. I didn’t think twice. To me, I don’t give a fuck if you’re purple; if you can kick it, I’m workin’ with you.”

  Another key to Eminem’s unassailable identity is his fundamental honesty about his position in hip-hop; a quality he learned when writing battle raps: By dissecting himself, he left his opponent little ammunition. His timing doesn’t hurt either: As Eminem’s success reached unprecedented levels for a white rapper, in a type of prediction of the fact, the rapper addressed the commercial advantage of his color just before The Eminem Show took off. “It’s just an obvious fact to me that I probably sold double the records because I’m white,” Eminem says. “I’m not saying that if I’d been a rapper of another race I wouldn’t have sold records. In my heart, I truly believe that I have talent, but at the same time I’m not stupid. I know that when I first came out, especially because I was produced by Dre, he gave me that foundation to stand on. That made it cool and acceptable for white kids to like it. In the suburbs, the white kids have to see that the black kids like it before they do.” On the album he made his point even more clearly with lines such as “if I were black, I would have sold half,” “hip-hop wasn’t a problem in Harlem, only in Boston,” and “I’m not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley to do black music so selfishly and use it to get myself wealthy.” Clearly, this is a man who knows how race has played for and against him; it’s proof that he knows the score—and so should everyone else.

  Eminem personifies the subdivisions of America—black, white, city, suburb—and the limber cultural convergence of race identity in America. Above and beyond his gifts as a musician, Eminem is a lightning rod for debate, for projection, and for conjecture, because he is an embodiment of what is happening, the most visible, most complete example of a complex evolution. Like so many significant artists who come to represent their times, Eminem did not campaign for the job, he is merely reflecting the influences that formed him and the times in which he lives. Hip-hop to Eminem was an escape from his life—literally and figuratively—as it is to so many others, more every day. It bonds inner-city kids who hear their reality reflected in the lyrics of the same black rappers that spell out to suburban kids, both affluent and poor, how to escape from whatever real or imagined prison holds them. Alienation from society, each other, and ourselves knows no boundaries and neither does the art that reflects it. In that trait, it offers some salvation.

  “There’s always going to be assholes,” Eminem told writer Matt Diehl in 1998, “but if there’s one music that could break down racist barriers, it’s hip-hop. When I do shows, I look out into the crowd and see black, white, Chinese, Korean people—I see all these nationalities there for one thing. You don’t see that shit at a country show, you don’t see it at a rock show. It’s hip-hop that’s doin’ it.”

  chapter 6

  we call it amityville that’s the mentality here, that’s the reality here—to live and thrive in detroit

  It is squat, with a wide roof that hangs low over synthetic log walls. There are moose aplenty here; horned heads hang from plaques and dark eyes stare from all directions. Chandeliers of antlers cut the headroom in half. The image of one moose, in sunglasses, appears everywhere: on the sign outside, on the staff’s chests, on the menus, on the hats for sale. Gilbert’s Lodge, where “sportsmen, sportswomen, and regular folk alike enjoy delicious home-cooked meals, famous pizza, and bigscreen TV in a rustic lodge setting” is open for business tonight. Gilbert’s Lodge is open 364 days a year.

  Inside, worn wood furnishings humid with years of human traffic are lit in the chilly radiation of television and neon. A sign advertises a trophy room, where jerseys remember the past glory of softball games and bowling tournaments.

  A few of the wait-staff in green aprons chat at one end of the bar. Near them, two men drink beer and watch football in silence. A party of five, waiting to be seated, goes unnoticed. After a few minutes, one of them walks into the kitchen.

  “Yo, Pete, wassup?” he says to a mustached man who is surveying the cooks.

  “Hi, Marshall,” he says, with a slight smile. “Coming in to buy the place?”

  “Yeah, Pete, you’re fired,” the blond guy says. “Nah. We’re coming in to eat.”

  “Well, sit anywhere you like, you know the place. We’ll get ya set up.”r />
  A woman bustles through the door and attaches an order ticket to the line.

  “Oh, hi, Marshall, good to see ya!” she says. “I saw your video on MTV.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Eminem says. “Thanks.”

  The cooks look up and say hello. As Eminem leaves the kitchen, a waitress in her forties stops him.

  “Hi, Marshall!” she says, in a cotton-candy Midwestern accent. “You know, I heard you were on MTV all the time, that’s what they’re telling me, but I watch it and I never see you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he replies.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I watch it all the time and I never see you. Am I missing it? When is your video on? Is it on late at night when I’m sleeping?”

  “You know, I don’t know,” Eminem says, his smile static, his eyes glinting. “It’s on a lot. I don’t know why you haven’t seen it.”

  “I don’t know, either. I turn on MTV all the time and I look for you, but I never see you on there. I’m starting to think they’re all joking me about you being on MTV!”

  “Well,” he says, “keep watching and you’ll see it. Nice to see you, we’re gonna go sit down.”

  “OK, Marshall,” she calls as he’s walking away. “I’ll look for you on MTV, maybe I’ll see you sometime!”

  He leads his party past the bar, toward the wide tables and barrel-backed chairs. Televisions box the area, broadcasting sports in visual stereo, while Sugar Ray’s lazy ballad “Every Morning” blares from unseen speakers. We sit, five at a table for six, in silence.

  Ten minutes later, our table is still devoid of silverware, water, menus, and conversation. I watch a man and woman dig into a pizza not far away. A waitress refills their water glasses. Eminem stops her as she passes our table.

  “Can we get some beers here?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she says, “but I need to see some ID.”

  “I don’t have my wallet,” he answers flatly. “I used to work here. Ask Pete, I’m over twenty-one.”

  “OK, I’ll have to do that,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

  Eminem is a bit wild-eyed but civil, like an unbelieving host whose guests never arrived. He doesn’t look crushed, more ready to crush something.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Paul Rosenberg says. “She must be new.”

  “Yeah,” Eminem says, leaning back in his chair. The silence is filled by more pop music, now Eagle-Eye Cherry’s “Save Tonight.” The waitress delivers a beer and a shot of Bacardi for Eminem. He swallows it before she leaves the table and he orders another. I talk to Paul until we run out of steam. Eminem stares at the televisions.

  “Why did that bitch have to say that?” he says, turning back toward us. “Fucking bitch, I never liked her. Always watching MTV. She probably doesn’t even have a TV.” He pauses. “Bitch.”

  Paul looks at Eminem, scanning him. “Well, she’s still here and you’re not,” he says. “She’s jealous.”

  “Ahh, yeah,” Eminem says. “I’m getting another shot.”

  He ambles to the bar and shakes the bartender’s hand. He downs the liquor and brings a refill with him to the end of the bar, where some of his former coworkers chat.

  “Man, everything can be going right,” Paul says, eyeing Eminem, “but a comment like that will stick with him for days. She’s seen the video, you know she’s seen the video.” He sips his pint.

  “This is his reality,” Paul continues. “He came from this. And after everything is over, this is the reality he has to go back to.”

  Eminem lopes back to the table, his spirits lifted by Bacardi and Kathleen, a coworker who always believed in him.

  “You know, Paulie, a lot of the shit that’s happened to me,” he says, dropping into his chair, “is because you’re fat.”

  He stares at Paul. He laughs, two quick chops. “Heh-ha!”

  Eminem knocks back some beer. “I can’t wait to do my second album. That shit is gonna be fucking bananas. Every time I make music, I know more and more what I’m doing, so it’s gonna get hotter and hotter.”

  He looks at us and then at the waitress by the bar. “Lots of drugs and lots of fuzz,” he says, throwing his hand in the air. “Hey! Can we get some more beers over here?”

  Eminem surveys the room, the backdrop to a past too recent for nostalgia but just far enough away for examination. “You don’t even know how much at home I felt here,” he says to me, leaning in a little. “My home away from home. Dog, I fucking lived here, man. I worked forty-eight hours a week. Sometimes I pulled sixtyhour weeks and still wasn’t making shit. I started off at five-fifty. That’s not a lot of money.”

  He isn’t proud or ashamed of the details of his life, even the darkest; his mood is bittersweet. Sitting here, watching his old coworkers react to him, warmly, coolly, mockingly, or not at all, I see Detroit’s mixed message in his life. Eminem endured here in an isolated rap scene, rejected by the radio stations that now play his song; in New York and L.A. he is a celebrity already, but his former coworkers at home don’t come to his table. There is a territorial pride in Detroit; it doesn’t allow its own to grow an ego. I will watch this play out as Eminem’s fame grows. When Eminem buys his first house, fans will swim in his pool, flip him off, take his mailbox, and wait in his driveway until he resorts to guns as a deterrent. In 2000, after the same guns get him in trouble with the law, he will return to his hometown with Dr. Dre’s Up in Smoke Tour for two concerts. City officials will successfully pressure promoters not to screen a pre-show video in which Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre hold up a liquor store and sit in a hot tub with seminaked women. The mayor’s office will ask to preview and edit the video to their approval; they will be refused. Hours before the show, city officials will threaten to cut the power to the stage if the video is shown. They will also strongly recommend that Eminem not bring an inflatable sex doll onstage. He has been using it to represent his wife, Kim. Eminem will comply; he will have been in court already that day, for the initial proceedings of one of his two trials. Dr. Dre will be ticketed for promoting pornography for screening the video at the first night’s concert. Detroit will be the only city in the country to censure the tour, one of the most high-quality, incident-free, and professionally run (from sets to security) hip-hop tours ever. Dr. Dre will sue Detroit for violating his First Amendment rights and will win $25,000. It will hardly be a homecoming for Eminem. I understand now why he thrives in the face of adversity; it is a way of life here.

  “Hey, Marshall, how you doin’?” Pete Karagiauris, manager at Gilbert’s Lodge, asks. “How about we make you guys a special garlic chicken pie?”

  “All right, Pete,” Eminem says. “We’re going to be sitting here awhile. We plan on getting drunk.”

  “OK, drink up,” Pete says.

  “Pete’s cool,” Eminem says. “But the owner, Louie, he ain’t here. That motherfucker was a fuckin’ dick. I worked here for three years, cooking, washing dishes, I was a busboy, all that. And the whole time I kept saying I was going to be a fucking rapper. Louie used to always come in when I was cooking and be like, ‘Oh shit, Marshall, you’re here. I thought you’d be gone, blowing up as a rapper by now.’ That guy always fucked with me. When I got fired right before Christmas, he was the one who OK’d it. It was like a week before Christmas and then they hired me back eight months later.”

  The waitress is more friendly now. “How are you doing over here!” she says.

  “I’m wasted and good!” Eminem says.

  “This shot is from Kathleen, she wanted to get you drunk.”

  “Well, OK,” he says. “Tell her she’s too late.”

  Pete and two waiters return with plates and a sizzling pizza, preceded by roasted garlic aroma. “Here’s the special,” he says.

  “Marshall here was a good worker,” Pete tells me, sitting down in the empty chair, “but I always knew his music mattered the most. I had to stay on top of him sometimes. He’d be in the back rapping all the orders! I had to tell him to tone it down sometime
s. But he was good about that.”

  “He’d rap the orders?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Everything that came out of his mouth was a rap. Every once in a while, I had to check on him and make sure he wasn’t fooling around back there too much. No matter how much he was joking around, he always took his music very seriously. We were all really surprised when we saw he really did it.”

  “Did you think he sounded like a good rapper?” I ask.

  “Oh, I don’t know anything about it,” Pete responds, chuckling. “I wouldn’t know at all. I listen to Greek music. Call me next time you guys are coming in, I’ll bring my bouzouki.”