Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [4]
It might have been his hangover, or it might have been my empathy and enthusiasm, but Eminem was relieved that he could relate to me, and he told me as much as he’d told any journalist, at first, to the healthy dismay of his eavesdropping manager. I can only guess, but I think it was somewhere in the air between New York and Detroit that Eminem decided to let me be the one journalist he’d arrange to have interview his mother. It was a coup, the Holy Grail found before the search began. The honor did not come without responsibility. For several months after the story was published, Eminem’s mom, then called Debbie Mathers-Briggs, would phone me. Those talks were long, strange, and upsetting, some of the saddest speeches I’ve heard from anyone. We’d chat about Marshall as a child, and from my vantage point on the outside, her recollections sounded like tales of a family making do with what they had and finding happiness in their shared struggle. She would ask me why Marshall hated her now and why he was doing what he was doing to her. She stopped calling after she filed her legendary lawsuit against her son and, I assume, heard that the tape of my initial interview with her would be filed by the defense as evidence, should the case come to trial.
By the time we had wrapped that first session together in Detroit, it was late and Eminem, Hailie Jade, Kim, Paul, Larry Solters (Eminem’s first publicist), and I were in a van humming along the frozen highway to hickville bumfuck. Well past the townships of Warren and St. Claire Shores, where Marshall spent plenty of time earning the minimum wage and miming Tupac and the Beastie Boys in his bedroom mirror, everyone began to nod off, Hailie first, Paul second. I was tired, too, and the low din of the engine and road, which drowned out the third or fourth go-round of The Slim Shady LP, did little to help me stay conscious. I had been a sponge all day, absorbing the experience out of an interest well past professional obligation. Eminem sat on the bench seat in front of me. He had barely slept for three days. He sat erect, staring at the passing road, blinking, thinking, and flicking his hand to the beat. He seemed very far away. Looking back, I see that moment and that night as the final calm before the storm to come for him. As I’ve followed his career since 1999, spent time with him personally, and interviewed him again and again, I’ve seen the effect that that storm has had on him.
This book is not so much a biography as it is snapshots and billboards; captured moments I’ve experienced amidst the changing backdrop of Eminem’s life and career. The narrative tales I’ve selected to start each chapter tell the story of a time and place and of a man, Marshall Mathers, that I’ve come to know from our first meeting in 1999 to the present day. The chapters that follow are an analysis, as much of America as they are of Eminem; as much a portrait of a society as they are of the undercurrents of one man’s character. Eminem’s life has forked since I first met him; much of it is no longer his, as he is no longer a person, but a symbol to so many. Expectations, responsibilities, and the tumult of his life’s last four years have made being Eminem more complex, but underneath it all, at his core, he is the same in my opinion and his desires are simple: he lives for hip-hop and his daughter, nothing more.
I’ve always felt that to understand anyone, you must forget yourself and meet them, as much as you possibly can, on their own terms. Go to where they’re most comfortable; show them, if you do, that you see what they see, and there’s a chance that they’ll reveal their true selves. For Eminem, the superstar rapper, the toast of Hollywood circa 2003, his preferred turf is still as humble as the white T-shirts he wears. He relies on what works for him: bending words to his will, honing double-rhymed