Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [8]
“There was a year after Infinite where every rhyme I started writing got angrier and angrier,” Eminem recalls. “That was from the feedback I got off that album. Motherfuckers was like, ‘You sound like Nas and AZ,’ ‘You’re a white boy, what the fuck are you rapping for? Why don’t you go into rock and roll.’ All types of shit like that started pissing me off.” Eminem’s frustration at being taken for a poser enraged him. He’d become a staple at open-mike nights at local institutions like designer Maurice Malone’s Hip-Hop Shop, a weekly scene in Detroit where MCs battled or just passed the mike. With nothing left to lose, Eminem’s battle riffs grew darker, grittier, more nihilistic. His rhymes grew crazed, drug obsessed, and more belligerent than ever. He began to win competitions consistently and became a fixture, someone to beat, as local MCs started coming to the open-mike nights to battle the white boy and make a name for themselves, whether they won or lost to him.
In 1996, just before Christmas and Hailie’s first birthday, Eminem was fired from his job at Gilbert’s Lodge. He was rehired six months later, this time for a few months, and then fired again, almost exactly to the year. In those interims, he worked where he could, mostly at a Little Caesars Pizza chain. It became so tough to make ends meet while raising Hailie that Eminem stopped rapping and writing for a time. Kim and Marshall fought bitterly, breaking up and making up with schizophrenic regularity. Eventually she moved back in with her family, who had long disapproved of Marshall and made it difficult for him to see his daughter. It was his lowest point, and a time when Marshall Mathers saw suicide as a viable option, nearly ending his journey before it began.
By this time, Eminem had already met Paul Rosenberg, an attorney and onetime rapper he met at the Hip-Hop Shop. Rosenberg had rapped in the early nineties under the name Paul Bunyan, with a group called Rhythm Cartel. Rhythm Cartel performed at Detroit spots like the Rhythm Kitchen, another Maurice Malone-backed party. It took place for a time in Stanley’s Mania Cafe, a Chinese restaurant that cleared out the tables but left the takeout counter open while rappers passed the mike, ciphering impromptu jams on a sound system carted in each week by a group of dreadlocked promoters. The party, which Rosenberg says is the best hip-hop party he’s seen anywhere, lasted for about three years, constantly changing venues. Forty-ounce Colt 45s, not Cristal champagne, were the toast of the times. There were more dreads than diamonds and the competition was kept on the mike and off the street. Rosenberg met Eminem’s longtime partner Proof at one of these parties and Eminem actually saw Rosenberg perform there before they met. At the time, Rhythm Cartel, Eminem, a transplanted East Coast rapper named Bukari, and DJ Houseshooz were the only white regulars to speak of in the Detroit scene.
Proof introduced Rosenberg to Eminem one night at the Hip-Hop Shop. “The first time I met him,” Rosenberg says, “Proof had him at the Hip-Hop Shop late in the day, after all the freestylers had cleared out. He had him sort of audition for me, although I don’t think Em knew that’s what Proof was doing. He just had Em up there rapping by himself over instrumentals and not too many people were around. I was just checking him out and I thought he was really good. The day we really met was when he had just started selling his Infinite album. All his friends were really excited because he had product, you know, which was a rare thing. And his was fairly professional-looking compared to what other people’s homemade product was looking like, so he was excited. He was in a battle that day and he won.” At the time, Rosenberg was in his second year in law school, pursuing a degree in music law. He had given up rapping years before, but was intent on representing Detroit’s untapped talent. “I talked to Em after the battle that night, told him who I was, and he