Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem by Anthony Bozza

Author:Anthony Bozza
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9781400053803
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Published: 2003-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

I’m on a mission and my mission won’t stop: Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre in 1993.

On the West Coast, a group of artists, most of whom met at the student radio station of the University of California at Davis, formed the Solesides-Quannum collective. Solesides began as DJ Shadow (Josh Davis), Blackalicious (includes Gift of Gab, a.k.a. T. J. Parker, and Chief Xcel, born Xavier Mosley), Lateef the Truth Speaker (Lateef Daumont), and Lyrics Born (Tom Shimura); Lateef and Lyrics Born also recorded as Latyrx. The Solesides crew, like some of the bright lights in the Rawkus family, were a mix of a fractured, funky, stream-of-consciousness aesthetics and rich, old-school rap. Through the nineties, first on Solesides Records, then on Quannum Projects, these artists made eclectic, quality rap music that, like that of their East Coast counterparts in Company Flow, did not catch on until the decade headed to a close.

At the time, artists on labels like No Limit, Cash Money, and Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy Records would sell a million records on the reputation of the label and the sound the label was known for, which often eclipsed the performers’ abilities. At the height of No Limit Records’ popularity, kingpin Master P could literally have put out an album by your mother and watched it sell one million copies. By contrast, underground acts with limited means relied on talent. Eminem came up with a solid class of battle MCs in the late nineties: J.U.I.C.E., Supernatural, Chino XL, Xzibit, Thirstin Howl III, as well as Detroit’s Royce Da 5′9″ and Proof. Some of these names have made it. Some, like Supernatural, are more the stuff of legend.

But the late-nineties underground hip-hop scene, even at its most innovative, focused on a return to basic, straightforward rap: looped grooves and MC skills first and foremost. Rap battles and ciphers—lyricists passing the mike from one to the other—hadn’t disappeared, but had become a staple of underground parties. An MC’s credibility depended on how well he could captivate a room on the spur of the moment, not on his clothes, clique, or cash. Competitions where MCs would take each other down with prepared and improvised verses, as in the final scenes of 8 Mile, were the building blocks of a rapper’s reputation.

The golden age of gangsta rap and the late nineties underground are the two influences at play in Eminem, a convergence of the hardcore sensibility with a rhyme style born of a diverse, MC-centric scene. Eminem first heard rap music when his uncle Ronnie Polkingham, who was just a few months older than Eminem, played him Ice-T’s “Reckless” from the soundtrack to the 1984 film Breakin’. Eminem grew up break-dancing, listening to LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., and the Beastie Boys, and began writing his own rhymes in his early teens. He performed at local talent shows and at school functions in groups with names such as the New Jacks and Sole Intent. As he continued writing, performing, and consuming rap, Eminem found his way

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