Interview on Freep.com
by Mc Collum

Detroit rapper Eminem talked Wednesday to Free Press pop music critic Brian McCollum. Here are some excerpts. Editor's note: The numerous profanities in the conversation have been replaced with dashes.

MCCOLLUM: You say on "The Way I Am" that "I'm not gonna be able to top 'My Name Is.' " Here you've sold four million records in five weeks. Guess you proved yourself wrong.

EMINEM: When I wrote that song the label was really stressing me for a first single. I had my whole album just about finished. I went up to Interscope and played it for everybody. But everybody was saying they didn't feel like I had a leadoff single -- they were all second singles, like "Stan" and "Criminal." That's when I wrote "The Way I Am," right after we had that meeting. I was feeling the frustration and pressure of like trying to top "My Name Is." So instead of giving them "The Real Slim Shady," which I ended up writing at the last minute right before my deadline -- thank God -- I gave 'em that song. I just let it out. It was a message to the label, a message to everybody, to get off my f------ back.

Nobody really understands the pressures put on me, to always be good, to always be on point. There are so many pressures that go with my job right now. It's crazy. I'm really glad we're shooting a video of this song. It's my favorite song on the album.

Despite all your success last year, it doesn't sound like you've found much peace. In fact, it seems quite the opposite.

You gotta be careful what you wish for. I always wished and hoped for this. But it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

In what way?

In every aspect: not being able to walk down the street anymore, people not treating me like a normal human being anymore. I miss going to the park and playing basketball. I was never that person who wanted big cars and Benzes. All I really wanted to do was have a career in hip-hop and be successful.

Does that mean you would take back the last year?

Would I take it all back? That's a good question. That's a real good question. It's 50-50. People would argue, "You got everything you want. You've got money, you don't have to worry about paying bills."

But I can't even go in public anymore. I've got the whole world looking at me. I can't be treated like regular person anymore.

But there are positives, just in the sense that my little brother's not gonna need anything the rest of his life. My moth ...My mother! My daughter's not gonna need anything the rest of her life. Sometimes I feel like I'm living my life for everyone else. I wake up at seven in the morning, and the rest of the day is work. I can't sleep. I don't eat. It's just crazy. It's a lot of f------ work, a lot more work than I ever expected.

When you look back at your days playing clubs around town, does it feel like ancient history, or are those memories fresh in your mind?

It doesn't seem that far away. These past couple of years have really shot by for me. S--- is speeding now. Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.

Most people figure that after delivering a multiplatinum album, like you did last year with "Slim Shady," you could go just about anywhere you wanted. But you stayed in the Detroit area. Bought the big house in Sterling Heights last year.

I tried to stay close to home. For one thing I bought the house when I didn't know I would be as successful as I am now. It was like, "I better grab this house, I don't know if any more money is coming." I bought the house, got it on the main road ...just figuring I might get a couple of fans every once in a while. That was a big f------ mistake.

And the city won't let me put up a fence. They won't pass a city ordinance for me. They won't take my case as a special case. Everybody wants to treat me like a regular f------ person. But I'm not a regular f------ person. I've gotta have security guards sitting outside my house now because they won't let me put a fence up. The other night somebody hit one of my security guards in the head with a battery. That's they type of s--- I get, m-----------s coming to my house, knocking on the door. Either they want autographs or they want to fight. We've had people getting in our backyard and swimming in our pools.

I take it you're planning to find somewhere else to live.

Yes, I will. Yes, indeed.

And you stayed close to home ...

Just because I'm so used to it. Like I said, a lot of people don't understand this about me.... I guess the point I'm trying to get across is not only did I never think I'd get this big, it's like I'm still refusing to believe it. I don't like having security hold my hand to walk out to my f------mailbox. There's something inside of me that refuses to believe I can't walk down the street or be as normal as I want to be. That's the downside.

Your run-ins with the law have upped the ante.

I can't comment on it as much as I'd like to. All I can say is that it's the story of my life: Whenever something good happens, the bad always follows. That's the story of my life since the day I was born.

I should have been out celebrating my record sales. Instead I'm sitting there in jail. Hopefully I can get through this.

How do you feel about your chances?

Uh . .. (Pauses) Man, I can't even say what I feel. But I have no idea what's gonna happen. I hate not knowing that, but I guess it's part of the life I lead. I don't know, man. My personal life is kind of f----- up. Every aspect of my personal life is put out there.

And you've helped put it out there. How does somebody get past the intimidation of airing their dirty laundry for millions of listeners?

I don't know. I think one of the reasons is because I make my songs for me. Me and the missus, we go at it. It's no secret we've had our problems, or that we're still having our problems. I feel like when something's bothering me, the best way to get it out is to write a song about it, I think when I do that, people can relate to me more. The more I tell them, the more in touch they are with me.

Because I guarantee you there's a lot of people going through this kind of s--- with their relationships -- with their girl, their man. I think a lot of people feel what I'm really saying. There's a lot of people out there that get in relationships and have kids involved. Once you have a child, once you bring a child into this world, it makes it that much more complicated, especially when you don't get along with someone. You're trying to make it work, you want to make your family work. But s--- keeps happening that f---- it up.

Not to defend Kim, but I realize what has happened to me has probably been a strain on her, too. It's a crazy thing to deal with. You've really got be in shape.

How supportive was she of your music as you were trying to catch a break?

Want me to be honest? It was off and on. When we were younger, she supported everything I did. The older we got, the more reality started to set in. She's one of those people that's real down to earth, like "Hello! You're living in fantasy. These things don't happen to people like us." I was always the optimist, like, "Yo, I'm gonna make this happen." And I just kept busting my ass. To be honest, I really didn't have much support, nobody in my family, in her family. Just a few friends. And just myself.

The rapper holds court.
By Teri vanHorn
San Jose, Calif.

"Hi! I'm Mr. Play-A-Shitty-Show," Eminem says, upon emerging from his dressing room an hour after finishing his set. I can't imagine that many of the 13,000 fans in the San Jose Arena would agree with his assessment. But before I can tell him so, he points to his DJ, the broad-shouldered black man sitting next to me, and says, "And that's Eminem."
"I'm Eminem," DJ Head affirms, grinning. "I'm just in the shade."
"Hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha," the real Eminem cackles, and collapses on the couch adjacent to us.
Eminem has had one hell of a month. His third album, The Marshall Mathers LP, was released May 23 to the tune of 1.76 million copies, the highest first-week sales for a solo artist in history (and the second highest in all, after *NSync's No Strings Attached). The album has held onto the top position in the Billboard 200 albums chart for the past four weeks.

But while the rapper's career has soared, recent events in his personal life have featured all the volatility and turmoil of, well, an Eminem song.

The 26-year-old Motor City MC faces criminal charges in his home state following two tiffs on the weekend of June 3-4. That Saturday afternoon, he allegedly pulled a gun during an argument with an associate of rival rappers Insane Clown Posse in Royal Oak, Mich. About nine hours later, police said, Eminem spotted a man kissing his wife, Kimberly Mathers, in the parking lot of a Warren bar and pistol-whipped him in the head. The man has vowed to sue the rapper.

There are obvious similarities between Eminem's alleged actions that weekend and some of the content on The Marshall Mathers LP. The rapper disses Insane Clown Posse in a crude skit, while he angrily accuses his wife of cheating on him in "Kim," which ends with him choking her to death.

When I ask Eminem how the last couple weeks have been, the rapper's demeanor abruptly changes. His gaze shifts to the floor. The silliness disappears, replaced by weariness. Hunching forward, arms resting on his thighs, he presses his lips together and speaks in a voice lower than that of the zany "Mr. Play-A-Shitty-Show" of a few minutes before. Head takes this as his cue to exit and leaves the dressing room.

Eminem says that from the start, The Marshall Mathers LP (Mathers is his real name) was a more personal endeavor than The Slim Shady LP. With misogynistic and homophobic lyrics, the new album's tone is angrier than that of its comically oriented predecessor. Mathers continues to play with multiple characters: there's the celebrity MC Eminem, the shameless scoundrel Slim Shady, and Marshall Mathers, the "regular guy," as the rapper refers to himself in the song bearing his name.

Some of the new album's lyrics are based on real experiences, Eminem says, while some are purely fictional and others are a combination of fact and fiction. He says many of his rhymes are intended to push listeners' buttons.

With his oddly charismatic nasal vocals and dead-on flow, Eminem raps about childhood traumas and spins revenge-fantasy rhymes about raping his mother and killing women. Eminem has described his childhood as difficult, citing poverty and characterizing his mother as a welfare-dependent drug user. (Mathers' mother is using such descriptions as grounds for a defamation lawsuit against him.) "Take drugs, rape sluts/ Make fun of gay clubs," advises the character in "Who Knew," which also features references to wife-beating and cop-killing, as well as crude jokes about paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve and the late Sonny Bono. Eminem expresses his struggles with fame on nearly every song, including the catchy single "The Real Slim Shady." Along the way, he takes swipes at everyone from Eminem wannabes to President Clinton to *NSync. The album mixes fluid basslines and hiccuping beats with the sounds of a car careening into a lake and someone being choked, while the style moves from horror-core hip-hop, to hook-filled pop-rap, to Dr. Dre's surrealistic funk. "Marshall Mathers," featuring Eminem singing the chorus, has prominent rock-ballad elements.

So without further ado, read about Eminem in his own words, and decide for yourself who the real Slim Shady is ...

sonicnet.com: What have the last couple weeks been like for you?

Eminem: The last couple of weeks have been ... I guess hectic. I really can't go into any legal things. Hectic is the best answer I can give you. A little rough, I guess.

sonicnet.com: What's it like being at the top of your game professionally, to have the biggest opening sales week for a solo artist in history, and then —

Eminem: — It's horrible, it sucks, and I wish it didn't happen to me. Nah, I mean, what else can I say? Of course it feels good. I realize I'm hot now, and I guess I gotta just ride the wave. It feels good to be where I'm at musically. I couldn't ask for anything more, I guess. Could I? Nah, I couldn't. Career-wise, everything is going good.

sonicnet.com: But you've had such extremes. At the same time you're having this historical success, you lost your freedom; you were in jail. What's it like to be going through something like that professionally, and then personally, you really hit a rough spot?

Eminem: [looks down] Yeah, I did. It's shitty — what else can I say? It feels good to be where I'm at musically. And my personal life, I guess, ain't goin' so hot. I really can't get into all the details right now, until all my legal shit is worked out, but you know, it's been a rough couple of weeks. I guess I should be celebrating but at the same time I guess I really can't. I should be celebrating, but do I really have anything to celebrate about? Not really. So I'm just trying to take things as they come. I think being on this tour is probably the best thing for me to get my mind off what's going on in my personal life.

sonicnet.com: How has it let you distance yourself from it?

Eminem: It gives me something constructive to do with my time, other than sit home and try to, you know, soak in my personal problems. It gets my mind on what I'm doing. I guess what I do best is making music and entertaining crowds, so that's why I figured I'd get on this tour and just do what I love doing.

sonicnet.com: You made such a big point with your last album of saying that your lyrics were this fictional world you were creating. But it's easy to look at your troubles in the last couple weeks as a mirror to some stuff on the new album. Was there, with The Marshall Mathers LP, a kind of crossover to where your rhymes became more of a reflection of your real life?

Eminem: A lot of my last album was real fictional. It was fictional trailer-park humor. Before, despite what happened to me a couple weeks ago, even before that, making this album was a lot more personal, I guess. I think I grew up within the last year, like, crazy amounts. [Shakes his head] I think I've been through more in the last year than I've ever been through in my entire life, from being a regular person and then having this superstardom come up. I grew up. There was a lot of shit that happened to me in the last year that I decided to write about and kind of like put all jokes aside. There might be some funny shit on my new album, but definitely not as much as there was on my last album. I tended to try to take my life with my last album and make it a joke, I guess, and try to take situations that came about and kind of flip 'em and turn them into a big joke. This album, I decided to get more personal and more serious, like all jokes aside, with the song "Stan" and "The Way I Am," and kind of tell people how I really felt. Like, it's cool to joke and it's cool to have fun and shit, but you know, fame really hit me in a hard way. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle it when it first came about. I decided to voice that on this album. There was a lot of people making opinions about me who really didn't know what I was about in the first place, who took everything I said on the last album literally.

Eminem: Just what you said — loss of privacy and not being able to walk down the street anymore, and not being able to go to the same places that I used to go. I think one of the reasons I'm in the trouble I'm in now is because I refuse to believe that I need to walk around with security or that I need to have someone hold my hand everywhere I go. It's a really hard thing to accept ... Just not being able to play basketball at the same court I played basketball at all of my life — you know what I'm sayin'? And from going into places that I used to go into and just being nobody and being treated like a regular person, to being treated to, I guess, someone of my status, or whatever. It's a really hard thing to deal with, and I've been trying to deal with it for the past year. Maybe I'm not dealing with it as good as other people do. You know, some entertainers might like all the stardom that's handed to them or might like all the attention around them. Me, myself, I guess I don't really indulge in it; it's not really my thing. Of course I wanted to make a living at what I love doing, which is hip-hop. But at the same time, I'm not the type of person to want 1,000 girls outside of a club screaming, or [people] hanging on me, or the autographs and all that. I realize I got fans, and I respect that, and I try to please everybody. But at the same time, that's not what I was lookin' for in this whole rap game. I just wanted to make a living at what I do. I never thought I would get this big.

sonicnet.com: And it's made you concerned for your safety?

Eminem: It's definitely made me concerned for my safety. I wouldn't say paranoid, but I would say that, you know, I realize I got people that love me and people that hate me. In this business, you can't succeed, you can't be loved without being hated, especially where I live. I decided not to move out of the state I grew up in, and I think that's one of the biggest problems, letting go of some things and realizing that things have changed. I've never been one much for change. I guess I gotta come to grips with it.

sonicnet.com: Is that part of the reason for carrying a gun?

Eminem: I can't even answer that. I can't even answer that.

sonicnet.com: [The song "Stan" on The Marshall Mathers LP features Eminem reading a series of letters from a fictional obsessed fan named Stan. The song climaxes with Stan killing himself and his pregnant wife because Eminem hasn't responded.] You've said there wasn't really a Stan, but was there a particular experience or fan letter that inspired you to write that song? Are there a lot of Stans out there?

Eminem: I hope there's not, but I know there probably is. Obviously, it's not a real experience, but ... [holds his head in his hands] I get people sending fan mail to my house. That's another thing — I live on a rural street, you know what I'm sayin'? Like a main road. People have found out where I live and put my address on the Internet, so I get people sending mail to my house and shit like that. I've read a lot of crazy fan mail. First of all, it's crazy to send mail to my home address. That's some crazy shit in itself. Aside from that, I get letters from people saying, "I can relate to what you're sayin'," "I feel you," "I never knew my father," "I come from a broken home." Most of the letters that I tend to get are from fans between the ages of 18 and 14. That's really crazy to me. To me, that means I have an impact on a lot of kids that are going through their main teen-age years, their most important teen-age years. That's a little bit scary to me. So basically what I was trying to do was send a message to critics and fans: Don't take everything I say literally. I might not be the best person in the world, but I'm definitely not the worst. I might say some things that are kinda left field, but that doesn't mean that every single thing that I say, I mean. I may tend to push a lot of buttons and piss a lot of people off — a lot of critics, and a lot of people who don't really know hip-hop. But that's basically what I came to do, is upset that balance of everything that's normal everyday things that people are used to hearin'. That's my main purpose of even coming here, was to shake things up a little bit. But at the same time, I wanted to let people know that not everything I say is meant to be taken literally. So "Stan" was a message to those critics and the kids not to get too political or anything. I'm not here to save the world, but I'm not here to fuck it up any more than it is.

Eminem: First of all, that was a stab at my own mother, because my own mother is suing me. That's my mother. I didn't ever say anything that wasn't the truth about my mother. People ask me about my background and where I grew up and how I grew up, and I fucking told the truth, and I get slapped with a lawsuit. I didn't even tell everything that I could have told. I basically told the main facts. I really didn't even go into that much detail about my life story. At the same time, I believe in freedom of speech, and I believe in artistic expression to the fullest, and there's a sticker on my CD that says "parental advisory" for kids under 18 who ain't supposed to get it. That's not to say they're not going to, but I'm not a babysitter. I feel parents should spend more time with their kids and teach them the fuckin' right from wrongs. I get a lot of parents that come up to me and say, 'I let my kid listen to your shit — my kid is 11 years old, and he listens to it. But I sit down with him and explain to him that this is entertainment and you don't mean what you say on some of these things but some of it you do.' I've had a lot of people come up to me lately and say things about my political awareness and things along the lines of my being political, and that's not even what I was trying to do with this album. I just tell things like I see it. I tend to say things the way they are. I have no problem with that, with telling it the way it is. But I get parents who say, 'Your album is real political. What you sayin' is true.' I'm not trying to be political. I'm not trying to stand up and preach or anything like that. But what I do, or what I've been doing since my first album, is taking things that are wrong with the world and maybe twistin' them and bendin' them out of proportion. But I don't think they're bent any more out of shape than the world already is. You've got kids walking up in schools opening fire.

People might tend to think that's a fucking huge tragedy and all kinds of innocent kids got killed. I might tend to see things from the kids who opened fire. I might tend to see things from their perspective, how they were bullied and how they were treated, and how they fuckin' felt — and what about those kids? There's always a flip side, and I tend to look at that before I pass judgement on anybody. And who's to say that those kids are wrong? I mean, of course they were wrong, but who's to say? There's no telling what they felt inside, and there's some things that happen, some things that people do where they just fuckin' snap. You do something, you react, and you can't take it back once you did it. To me that ain't nothing but being human. If those kids were pushed to the fuckin' edge, they were kids, you know what I'm sayin'? If they couldn't take no more, they couldn't take no more. So yeah, it was a tragedy that innocent kids' lives were lost, but who's to say that those kids weren't innocent, you know what I'm sayin'? That's the world, man. I don't say anything that doesn't happen. You can go line for line on my album and I guarantee you anything that I made a reference to would be something that's either happened to the world or could happen. I don't say anything too far-fetched, that's out of the fucking ordinary to me.

sonicnet.com: At the end of "Kill You," you say that you're only kidding. Why? Why say all that and then take it back? Why should we believe anything you say after that?

Eminem: Because that's the fucking ... that's the mystique about Slim Shady, about me, is that you never know when I'm joking and when I'm not. You might think you do, you know what I'm sayin'? But I always leave that little air about myself that you don't know, you're not sure about. I don't want everybody to know me and know how I really am and the way I really think and the things that I really do or feel in my everyday life. For one, that would be boring to me. Number two, I don't think that people need to know that much about me. I've already spilled my guts as much as I can to the public. I think I've let people know more about me than probably almost any entertainer in the business, you know?

People know me from having feuds with my wife, to feuds with my mother, to my love for my daughter, to how I grew up, to what type of person my mother was. People know damn near everything about me. But there's some things I want to keep to myself. And I think for the most part kids in general get where I'm coming from, and I think they relate to me more than anything. I think that's why they're buying the records, because I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and I think they, for the most part, pretty much know when I'm serious and when I'm joking. "I'm Gonna Kill You" is a violent song and it pushes a lot of buttons. And at the end I say, "I'm just playing ladies. You know I love you." It's not, see ... when you do certain things, when you take one line out of my album and don't listen to the rest of it or listen to the rest of the words in the song or listen to the next song, you might be taking the shit out of context. And when I said, "I'm just playing ladies, I love you," it was kind of sarcastic. But then "Stan" comes on and it's a song that — I did that shit on purpose — I sequenced my album and I put the songs together that I wanted people to hear ... The general feel about my whole album, I put that shit together myself. So, you know, "Stan" was the song that was like, 'OK, all jokes aside.' You know, this is a person that's writing to me that's really fucking crazy and that I'm not writing back ... because I'm too busy. And then he ends up killing himself because he thinks that I'm dissing him. And then at the end, I write him back but it's too late, you know? So you shouldn't take things out of context. And not every lyric, not every single word that I say is meant to be analyzed and studied. For the most part, it's just hip-hop. I think the reason people take my rhymes and try to pick 'em apart is because I am selling so many records right now. If I was selling a hundred thousand records every time I came out, people wouldn't tend to analyze shit so much because there wouldn't be that much attention brought on me. But right now I may be like the spokesperson for the youth of our America, I guess ... You know what I'm sayin'? Just because I say things that hit home with a lot of kids and everybody in life, not everybody growing up had a perfect life. Not every kid growing up right now has that perfect family life. Everybody's got troubles at home, you know.

sonicnet.com: What was your wife's reaction to "Kim"? ["Kim" details an argument between Eminem and his wife in which he accuses her of cheating. The song has been billed as a prequel to The Slim Shady LP's " '97 Bonnie & Clyde," in which his alter ego murders his wife and brings their daughter along while he disposes of the body in a lake.]

Eminem: That song was recorded like a year and a half ago, and that was when we were going through a lot of problems. Not to say that we ain't now, but me and Kim's relationship has always been really shaky. We've been going out now, we've been together for 10 years. Since I was 16 years old, we started going out. And I think when she heard the song ... like when she heard " '97 Bonnie & Clyde," she was kind of like, 'Ha ha. Real funny, asshole.' 'Cause that song was meant to get her back for what she was doing to me and my life. I didn't know that I was going to get signed to Interscope and the song was going to get so big, the album was going to get so big. I had no idea. That was a song just to get her back for what we was going through, you know what I'm sayin'? And I think it did — I think it proved its point — but she didn't like it. The "Kim" song ... I remember we was sittin' in my driveway, and I played it for her. [smiles] We had just started talking again, where we were on speaking terms. I saw her like four times, and like the fifth time I saw her again — like when we had really got back into seeing each other — I played it for her. I said, 'Yo, I want you to listen to this song, and tell me what you think of it. I'm putting it on my next record.' And she's like, 'It doesn't matter what I say?' And I was like, 'No, it doesn't matter what you say. I want to get your opinion, but it's not going to stop me from putting it on my next record.' And she listened to it and she looked at me and she was like, 'You are really fucking crazy. You're really out of your fucking mind.' And she doesn't want to listen to the song anymore. And to tell you the truth, I don't really listen to the song anymore. That song is like an outtake from one of our arguments in everyday life. That's really how we fight sometimes. We've had fights like that where it's like constant screaming and shit like that, you know. Not to say that other people don't. But, you know, I basically took the anger that was built up from what she had done to me and what we was going through, and I made it into a song.