Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [79]
“You have to ask yourself how hungry you are,” Paul Rosenberg says, sliding into the next booth with a tray of dubious snacks. I see marbleized pizza in a triangular paper dish and a basket of amorphous breaded blobs.
“What is that shit?” Eminem asks.
“They’re calling it fried chicken,” Paul says.
“Nah, I can’t fuck with that.”
Behind him, three girls in a pack try to determine if Eminem is Eminem. He doesn’t notice.
“So, like, I was telling you about JLB, the radio station in Detroit,” he says. “I dissed them on the record because when I was coming up, those motherfuckers showed me no love. They had two local favorite rappers. One was the cousin/niece of the program director and shit. They got airplay for, like, three years and never fucking got a record deal or nothing. I got friends who work at the station and one of them told me when I had Infinite out that one of the DJs played it and Frankie Darcell, the program director, when he found out I was white said, ‘We ain’t playing this record, what the fuck is a white person doing with this.’ And that was it—he took my record off. Believe me, I had my boys begging to get it played. I ain’t just mad at them for that. There were so many dope MCs when I was coming up and they would never fucking play them. Their saying is ‘Where hip-hop lives.’ I told them in the Detroit papers: If JLB is playing my song now, fuck them. As soon as I get home, I’m telling the motherfuckers to take my shit off the air. I don’t want them to play it. Fuck those fuckin’ ragged-ass fucks. No help from them at all, motherfuckers.”
That was then: Eminem when he was M&M, peforming on the Detroit talent show circuit in 1996.
Eminem stretches out sideways in the booth, with his legs on the bench. Last night, he won over a doubtful black crowd; fended off a rabid, mostly white one; and today is heading to his racially divided hometown, which has an underground that knows him and a mainstream that didn’t want to.
“Man,” he says, looking sidelong at me, “the respect level I get now, I never got before. I couldn’t play at or even get into a club like the one last night just being Eminem before all this shit with my video being out. It’s fucking bananas. It’s some scary shit because you can fall just as quick as you get to the top.”
A black food-court employee walks by our booth to pick up two trays from the top of the closest garbage can. He eyeballs us on his way back to the kitchen and returns a minute later.
“Uh, what’s up?” he says.
Eminem turns to look. “Nothing man, how you doin’?” he says.
“Um, are you …? Uh, I was just wondering …”
“Eminem?”
“Yeah! What’s up nigga! Yo, your shit’s tight, yo. All about the mushrooms and shit!”
Eminem sits up and laughs in short snare-drum blasts, “Ha-ha.”
“Hey, can you sign this?” the guy asks, holding out a paper plate. “It’s to George Ito and Wah, that’s W-A-H.”
Above his signature, Eminem writes “Do you like violence?”
The group of teen girls are convinced now; they’re in conference to choose a plan of action. Another uniformed employee walks over.
“Can I get a signature, too?” he says.
“No problem, what’s your name?”
“Daniel.”
To show his appreciation, Daniel gives handshakes and hip-hop half hugs to everyone in the two booths around Shady, almost including a third booth of two men who aren’t with us.
“Man, Paul waking me up this morning was my worst nightmare,” Eminem says. He looks alert enough, but washed out. “Him waking me felt like somebody crushed my back. It was daylight when we left the club. I got two hours’ sleep, if that. Paul, he gets home, he goes into instant snore mode. Paul, your life is over.”
Paul nods from behind Blaze magazine. Beyond him is another autograph-hunter,