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Eminem · S3 E8
D12
Devil's Night, Proof, Bizarre, and the crew from Detroit that had Marshall's back from day one
Six guys from Detroit who called themselves the Dirty Dozen before anyone outside 8 Mile knew their names. By 2001, their leader is the biggest rapper alive, and he is pulling them all through the door with him.
D12: My Band (official music video, 2004). The funniest video D12 ever made, and the most honest. Eminem plays a rock star while the rest of the group gets ignored by fans, journalists, and women. It is a joke, but every member has said the joke was real. Being in a group with the biggest rapper alive meant standing next to a spotlight so bright it erased everyone else in the room.
My Band: D12 (2004)
Produced by Eminem, the beat is deliberately goofy: a bouncing synth riff, a drum pattern that sounds like a marching band warming up, and a chorus sung in a mock boy-band falsetto. The genius is in the structure. Each D12 member gets a verse complaining about being overshadowed by Eminem, and Eminem's own verse is him bragging about it. Listen for Bizarre's verse, where the comedy turns into something uncomfortably close to a real grievance.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why is the group called D12?
Proof
DeShaun Holton, known as Proof, was the one who believed in Marshall before anyone. They met at the Hip Hop Shop on West 7 Mile and became inseparable. Proof introduced Eminem to battle rap, vouched for him in rooms where a white kid had no business being, and became the emotional anchor of D12. Every contract Eminem signed, he fought for the crew to be part of the deal.
“Em could have gone solo from day one and never looked back. He didn't. He dragged us with him. Every contract he signed, he fought for us to be part of the deal.”
— Proof, The Source, 2001
Purple Pills: D12
The lead single from Devil's Night (2001) that had to be renamed "Purple Hills" for radio because the original title was too explicit. Every D12 member gets a verse, and the track plays like a relay race of escalating absurdity. This is what D12 sounded like at their peak: six voices bouncing off each other with the energy of a crew that has been freestyling together since the mid-nineties.
Purple Pills, D12 (2001)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Six voices bouncing off each other in a relay race of escalating absurdity. D12 at their peak, freestyling like it's still the mid-nineties.
Which D12 member went on to become a major hip-hop producer under the name Mr. Porter?
Season 3 ends at the top. But the next chapter opens with a question Eminem has been dodging since "My Name Is": would America care about him if he were not white? He is about to answer it out loud.
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