sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-12 03:42 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-12 03:42 pm
Entry tags:
RPFic, Eminem; One Two Three Rest. NC-17 (Language)
Summary: Dre knows Marshall needs to get his head on straight, but all that rage has gotta go somewhere.
Warnings: High level of profanity, including racial and sexual slurs.
***
Dre remembers the first time he saw Mathers because you don't fuckin forget, do you? This little dude, not even that big, standing out like an albino at the fuckin Apollo. This little white dude with the squint around his blue eyes.
But you don't forget Mathers because you see this pasty little white kid get up onstage with a black mixer and a black boom boxer and a houseful of people laughing at his white ass and you hear the beat and then you hear this cracker start to freestyle and it's all fuckin over, man. This isn't some Ice wannabe, this kid is thug and he knows he's thug and the fuck-you look in his eyes is the stuff of fuckin nightmares. Dre's only ever seen that look once before on a white man and that was the time he shot a skinhead who thought he could fuck with Dre.
He shouldn't even be at this shit-ass little freestyle competition in some shithole in Detroit. He came because an old friend asked him to and you stick by your homies. He take his sunglasses off, gonna be a goddamned mob scene. Never mind that Dre ain't exactly on top of the dogpile these days. He gonna be again, once the label gets off the ground.
And Dre was no idiot. He knew that he couldn't open a hip hop label with a white kid, but he could get a white kid on a new label. Now the label's off the ground and he signed Mathers, who fucking flipped his shit when he met Dr. Dre. You know, like, shit, the kid played it cool enough, but it was all "Oh my fuckin god it's fuckin Dre" after he left the room, which is not exactly unwelcome.
The kid is pissed off at something, it's not hard to tell that, but his early recording is all pretty much stock shit -- ganstas, guns, coke, pot, sex, forties. His skin's gonna sell him, Dre knows it and Mathers knows it if he isn't an idiot, and he isn't. Dre sees him watching everything that goes on, taking it all in, processing it in that head that spits out some badass rhyme. Kid doesn't even fuckin know the meaning of the phrase "internal rhyme" and he spits it as good as Dre himself does. Not that Dre'd admit it, but he thinks maybe the kid knows it.
Mathers could run a label, Dre is pretty sure, with a little bit of training. If the label survives. It's pretty fuckin amazing, what the kid sometimes comes up with. He talks with everyone -- the mixers, the band, the executives if you let him. Dre flipped his shit when someone casually mentioned that one of their very wealthy, very Hamptons investors was in the lobby talking with Mathers, but when he came out they were all like "Bill Clinton this" and "Iraq that" and this suit and tie laughing at some dumbass joke Mathers, in his Adidas and basketball shorts, was making.
But there's something so furious about the kid, and Dre wants to know what it is. And then he finds out.
***
"Yo, I think you better see this," one of the mixers says.
"The fuck it look like I'm doing right now?" Dre asks over his carton of Chinese, because thirty minutes of lunch is the only fucking break he gets these days.
"No, man, you better see this," the mixer insists. He opens the door just wide enough to admit Dre, then closes it again quickly. The recording booth is lit up, but the mixing booth is dark; through the window he can just barely see Mathers dicking around with a drum machine.
"The fuck he think he doing in there?"
"Shut up," another mixer he didn't see is sitting in the corner. The recorder's running.
"You fuckin wasting my -- "
The drumbeats start, a complex roll that's almost arrhythmic, like an uneven heartbeat. Mathers starts to bob his head, reading from a notebook sitting on one of the drumpads.
...not takin nothing from no one
Give 'em hell long as I'm breathin
Keep kickin ass in the morning and takin names in the evening...
He stops to fiddle with the beat, scratch something out, write something else, lips moving silently. Fuck this shit, and Dre reaches over to turn the recording switch off when Mathers starts up again.
See they can trigga me
But they'll never figga me out
Look at me now, I bet ya prob'ly sicka me now
Ain't you momma?
I'm'a make you look so ridiculous now...
Dre blinks. That ain't cool, yo. You don't rap about your momma. Or anyone else's. Not without you wanna end up like Tupac.
There's another pause, barely noticeable, before he skips down.
I was a baby maybe I was just a couple'a months
My faggot father musta had his panties up in a bunch
Cos he split
I wonder if he even kissed me goodbye
No I don't, on second thought I just fuckin wished he would die...
The mixer has his fist in his mouth and a shit-eating grin on his face; he's biting his knuckles, trying not to laugh.
"Shit, dog," the other one says.
"Shut the fuck up," Dre hisses.
Just try to envision witnessin your momma poppin prescription pills in the kitchen
Bitchin that someone's always goin through her purse and shit's missin
Goin through public housing systems
Victim of Munchauusen Syndrome
Dre doesn't have a fuckin clue what Munchauusen Syndrome is, but he doesn't give a fuck. Neither does Mathers; he's not even fuckin reading anything anymore, he's just freestyling the kinda shit you never, ever say in public.
Wasn't it the reason you made that CD for me, ma?
So you could try to justify the way you treated me, ma?
Well guess what, you're gettin' older now and it's cold when your lonely
And Nathan's growin' up so fast he gonna know that you're phony
See what hurts me the most is you won't admit you was wrong
Bitch, do your song, keep telling yaself that you was a mom...
"Fuckin A," the mixer mutters.
Dre's watching Mathers, because now he sees why this kid is so fucking angry. And a little part of him hates that he's right there with the mixers thinkin about how fuckin great this rap is. So you could try to justify the way you treated me, ma? It's poetry, fuck the English Lit teachers who failed 'em both in high school. And it's totally fuckin new.
Mathers stops the drum machine and begins fucking with it. The mixer flicks the record button off. Dre reaches out and takes the low-grade tape they were recording it on.
"Get out," he says.
"Yo, man, your man fuckin insane," one of them says as he leaves. Mathers is still fucking with the drum machine but he doesn't really know much about it. Dre knocks on the glass and the kid's head shoots up so fast it's frightening. Dre crooks a finger.
"Fuck," Mathers mouths to himself, and even as the door to the mixing booth is opening he's got excuses. "Listen, wasn't nobody using the booth, I just though, I gotta learn the drum machine."
"Bitch, do your song, keep telling yaself that you was a mom," Dre repeats.
"Aw man, fuck."
"Your moms really fuckin do that shit?"
Mathers looks like he's about twelve, caught with his first joint.
"You got more shit like this in that notebook?" Dre asks.
"It's my notebook, I ain't gotta show you shit," Mathers answers. Dre crosses his arms. "I ain't gotta show you shit," Mathers repeats.
"You a fucked up shit, you know that."
"You tryin tell me you ain't?"
"Not like you I ain't, but you got a lotta shit to learn about this business," Dre says. Mathers' eyes are defiant blue, the cock of his head says he'll throw a punch before he gives up that notebook. Dre wonders if he's this fucking pissed off all the time.
"Your momma do that shit?"
"You give a fuck if she did? Shit, I wasn't bothering no one..."
"Shut the hell up."
Mathers obeys, sullenly.
"You rap about this shit, man, you gonna piss off every parent in North fuckin America," Dre says. "You rap about your momma and shit, we gonna make a fortune."
"You fuckin crazy."
"I told you to shut up. This the kinda shit gonna make you rich. Otherwise you just a novelty album. You Vanilla Ice with some skills. You gonna be a rapper or you gonna be a party joke?"
"I am a rapper."
"Then you gonna do like I tell you? You wanna rap that shit for reals? On an album?"
It seemed like the entirety of middle America flipped their shit when the album came out. Mathers was a shy kid in private, but if anyone crossed him he copped an attitude that you could see from here all the way to the bank.
Multiplatinum. Fuck it, man.
***
Dre started grooming Marshall for a place on the other side of the table, once he was done having his say in front of the mic.
It wasn't fuckin overnight Cinderella, either. Mathers didn't want to learn "table manners" for the investors. His momma was probably worse than even in the raps because Mathers was pretty much feral if you put him in a business suit or tried to make him small talk with someone who didn't drop his gs or know what fasheezy meant. With a posse or with the sound guys he was cool because they were his homies, but he was gonna have to learn that there were a lot of fuckers out there who were not his homies.
And he was gonna have to stop getting fucking thrown in jail.
"You know, I figure, I got this idea for the video for Business," Mathers said, while Dre guided his black cadillac through the nighttime streets. He'd let the kid stew behind bars for a while and gone to bail him out himself, at midnight, but it didn't seem to have made a dent. Mathers was staring out the window into the rain, one leg pulled up against his chest like a goddamned nine year old.
"I don't wanna fuckin hear it."
"No, man, it's awesome. You gonna be Batman and I'm'a be Robin, right, and we trick out a big-ass cadillac -- "'
Dre brought his fist down on the steering wheel, hard. Mathers stopped talking.
"I ain't your fuckin father figure," Dre said.
"Aw, shit, not that faggot-ass therapy bullshit again," Mathers muttered.
"You got issues, man. You got stacks of issues. I ain't gonna bail you out next time. Next time you fuck up I'm'a terminate your contract."
"You fuckin wish."
"I'm not fucking around. You think this is me being the ringmaster of your goddamn freak circus? This is partner-fucking-ship and if you keep pulling this shit you gonna be one lonely partner."
Silence. Dre picked up speed as they pulled out onto the freeway.
"You serious?" Mathers finally asked.
"You gonna cost me more in legal fees and shit than you make, some fuckin day."
"Aw, shit." Mathers rested his forehead against the passenger-side window, the corner of his jaw sharply outlined.
"You ain't gonna be the stage man all your life. You got more brains than that," Dre said.
"And you say you ain't my fuckin father."
"Shit, man, you think I been teaching you all this shit for my health? Someday they gonna call you old school, like they fuckin did me, and then you better know where the fuck you going. And the fuck where you are going is producing. You gonna be the first white man who fuckin knows what he's doing in this business."
Mathers was silent.
"So you cannot fuck up, shithead."
"Sorry," the younger man muttered.
"Don't fuckin be sorry. Don't fuckin do it again, or the fuck where you are going is gonna be sellin fuckin pencils on the street."
"Where we goin?" Mathers asked, as they passed the exit for the hotel he was staying in.
"My place."
"The fuck?"
"That hotel is shit for you."
Mathers shrugged.
Dre had a nice place, not the place he took women, for when he was tired and didn't feel like fucking around with a bunch of people trying to serve him. Exclusive. He was the only black man in the building. The parking guard waved him through and the doorman tipped his hat. Mathers, still the Eight Mile Road trailer park kid, looked around him with wide eyes.
Inside the apartment, he tossed his hat on a hook and wandered into the living room. "Nice place."
"Should be, for half a fuckin million."
"No shit?" Mathers kicked off his shoes and took a blanket off the back of the couch. "You need some better furniture, dog."
He flopped down on the couch, pulling the blanket over him. Dre put his hand over his eyes.
"There's a guest bedroom, asshole," he said.
***
Mathers musta found some spare clothes lying around, because when Dre came in at three am he was all but swallowed in a pair of blue pyjamas made for a larger man.
He'd only got up to take a piss, but the light in the guest bedroom was illuminating a line of yellow under the door. He didn't bother knocking. It was his fucking apartment, after all.
Mathers was sitting against the headboard, knees drawn up, writing rhymes with a pencil on paper towel.
"Couldn't find no paper," he muttered, beating out a time on his knee with the end of the pencil.
"You hardcore, man."
"Didn't fuckin get this far by bein a pansy ass."
"Aight. Let's hear it."
"Not done yet."
"I wanna hear what's got you up at three in the fuckin morning."
"Why the fuck you up?"
"Hadda piss."
"So go piss." He waved the pencil at the bathroom door. "Tell you when you done."
Dre shrugged and used the toilet, washed his hands, came back into the bedroom.
"Aight," Mathers said. "Gimme a beat, yo."
He beat out what he wanted -- one two three rest, one two three rest. Dre picked it up, patiently.
Entertainment is changin', intertwinin' with gangsta's
In the land of the killers, a sinner's mind is a somethin.
Dre laughed.
"I'll get it," Mathers promised.
But all they kids be listenin to me religiously,
So I'm signin CDs while police fingerprint me
It's all political, if my music is literal,
Then I'm a criminal. How the fuck can I raise a little girl?
I couldn't, I wouldn't be fit to.
You're full of shit too, Guerrera, that was a fist that hit you...
So like Marshall. It's not enough to dig into politics, but you gotta bring all your personal business up in it.
So for anyone who ever been through shit in they lives
Till they sit and they cry at night wishin they'd die
Till they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We nothin to you but we the fuckin shit in they eyes
"Shit, that's all I got," Marshall said. Dre didn't stop the beat. "Come on, motherfucker, that's all I got."
One two three rest. One two three rest. He wasn't done yet; there was shit he hadn't got through yet. Dre knew that much.
Rappers was honest men. Braggers, sure, boasters and storytellers but what else did they have? Shit. Shit in they lives. And more honest just meant that Marshall Mathers, who was a white boy from Detroit with a fucked up momma and a piss-ass life just had more to be furious about.
Marshall caught his breath.
"Shit, yo," he said.
One two three rest. One two --
See him walkin around with his headphones blarin
Alone in his own zone, cold and he don't care
He's a problem child, what bothers him all comes out,
When he talks about his fuckin dad walkin out
Cause he just -- hates him so bad that he blocks him out
If he ever saw him again he'd probably knock him out
His thoughts are whacked, he's mad so he's talkin back
Talkin black, brainwashed from rock and rap --
"Shit, stop the beat Dre. Fuckin stop the beat."
Dre stopped.
"Fuckin shit. Fuckin shit. I don't wanna be a rapper no fuckin more."
Dre grinned at him. "Too late, dog."
"Hey, fuck you too."
"Listen to me, o fucking kay? You gonna be the shit, Mathers," Dre said, leaning in close. "You gonna be the fuckin chosen one. We partners, aight? But you gotta stop pullin this shit just cos you ain't got no daddy. I ain't got no daddy neither and you don't see me fuckin shit up."
Marshall was quiet. Finally, he said "That was you, man. Fuckin....my moms passed out in the bedroom and Ronnie dead and all, that was the shit, you on this fuckin bootleg tape in my damn taped up walkman. That was you, man."
"Hey, Batman and Robin, right?" Dre said.
"Fuck yeah."
"Then you gotta do like I tell you, man. You gotta stop fuckin up."
"Aight, Dre." Marshall shrugged. "What you want me to do?"
Dre grinned. "We gonna fuckin rule the world, Em."
Marshall paused, and then he grinned back. "Fasheezy, dog."
END
Warnings: High level of profanity, including racial and sexual slurs.
***
Dre remembers the first time he saw Mathers because you don't fuckin forget, do you? This little dude, not even that big, standing out like an albino at the fuckin Apollo. This little white dude with the squint around his blue eyes.
But you don't forget Mathers because you see this pasty little white kid get up onstage with a black mixer and a black boom boxer and a houseful of people laughing at his white ass and you hear the beat and then you hear this cracker start to freestyle and it's all fuckin over, man. This isn't some Ice wannabe, this kid is thug and he knows he's thug and the fuck-you look in his eyes is the stuff of fuckin nightmares. Dre's only ever seen that look once before on a white man and that was the time he shot a skinhead who thought he could fuck with Dre.
He shouldn't even be at this shit-ass little freestyle competition in some shithole in Detroit. He came because an old friend asked him to and you stick by your homies. He take his sunglasses off, gonna be a goddamned mob scene. Never mind that Dre ain't exactly on top of the dogpile these days. He gonna be again, once the label gets off the ground.
And Dre was no idiot. He knew that he couldn't open a hip hop label with a white kid, but he could get a white kid on a new label. Now the label's off the ground and he signed Mathers, who fucking flipped his shit when he met Dr. Dre. You know, like, shit, the kid played it cool enough, but it was all "Oh my fuckin god it's fuckin Dre" after he left the room, which is not exactly unwelcome.
The kid is pissed off at something, it's not hard to tell that, but his early recording is all pretty much stock shit -- ganstas, guns, coke, pot, sex, forties. His skin's gonna sell him, Dre knows it and Mathers knows it if he isn't an idiot, and he isn't. Dre sees him watching everything that goes on, taking it all in, processing it in that head that spits out some badass rhyme. Kid doesn't even fuckin know the meaning of the phrase "internal rhyme" and he spits it as good as Dre himself does. Not that Dre'd admit it, but he thinks maybe the kid knows it.
Mathers could run a label, Dre is pretty sure, with a little bit of training. If the label survives. It's pretty fuckin amazing, what the kid sometimes comes up with. He talks with everyone -- the mixers, the band, the executives if you let him. Dre flipped his shit when someone casually mentioned that one of their very wealthy, very Hamptons investors was in the lobby talking with Mathers, but when he came out they were all like "Bill Clinton this" and "Iraq that" and this suit and tie laughing at some dumbass joke Mathers, in his Adidas and basketball shorts, was making.
But there's something so furious about the kid, and Dre wants to know what it is. And then he finds out.
***
"Yo, I think you better see this," one of the mixers says.
"The fuck it look like I'm doing right now?" Dre asks over his carton of Chinese, because thirty minutes of lunch is the only fucking break he gets these days.
"No, man, you better see this," the mixer insists. He opens the door just wide enough to admit Dre, then closes it again quickly. The recording booth is lit up, but the mixing booth is dark; through the window he can just barely see Mathers dicking around with a drum machine.
"The fuck he think he doing in there?"
"Shut up," another mixer he didn't see is sitting in the corner. The recorder's running.
"You fuckin wasting my -- "
The drumbeats start, a complex roll that's almost arrhythmic, like an uneven heartbeat. Mathers starts to bob his head, reading from a notebook sitting on one of the drumpads.
...not takin nothing from no one
Give 'em hell long as I'm breathin
Keep kickin ass in the morning and takin names in the evening...
He stops to fiddle with the beat, scratch something out, write something else, lips moving silently. Fuck this shit, and Dre reaches over to turn the recording switch off when Mathers starts up again.
See they can trigga me
But they'll never figga me out
Look at me now, I bet ya prob'ly sicka me now
Ain't you momma?
I'm'a make you look so ridiculous now...
Dre blinks. That ain't cool, yo. You don't rap about your momma. Or anyone else's. Not without you wanna end up like Tupac.
There's another pause, barely noticeable, before he skips down.
I was a baby maybe I was just a couple'a months
My faggot father musta had his panties up in a bunch
Cos he split
I wonder if he even kissed me goodbye
No I don't, on second thought I just fuckin wished he would die...
The mixer has his fist in his mouth and a shit-eating grin on his face; he's biting his knuckles, trying not to laugh.
"Shit, dog," the other one says.
"Shut the fuck up," Dre hisses.
Just try to envision witnessin your momma poppin prescription pills in the kitchen
Bitchin that someone's always goin through her purse and shit's missin
Goin through public housing systems
Victim of Munchauusen Syndrome
Dre doesn't have a fuckin clue what Munchauusen Syndrome is, but he doesn't give a fuck. Neither does Mathers; he's not even fuckin reading anything anymore, he's just freestyling the kinda shit you never, ever say in public.
Wasn't it the reason you made that CD for me, ma?
So you could try to justify the way you treated me, ma?
Well guess what, you're gettin' older now and it's cold when your lonely
And Nathan's growin' up so fast he gonna know that you're phony
See what hurts me the most is you won't admit you was wrong
Bitch, do your song, keep telling yaself that you was a mom...
"Fuckin A," the mixer mutters.
Dre's watching Mathers, because now he sees why this kid is so fucking angry. And a little part of him hates that he's right there with the mixers thinkin about how fuckin great this rap is. So you could try to justify the way you treated me, ma? It's poetry, fuck the English Lit teachers who failed 'em both in high school. And it's totally fuckin new.
Mathers stops the drum machine and begins fucking with it. The mixer flicks the record button off. Dre reaches out and takes the low-grade tape they were recording it on.
"Get out," he says.
"Yo, man, your man fuckin insane," one of them says as he leaves. Mathers is still fucking with the drum machine but he doesn't really know much about it. Dre knocks on the glass and the kid's head shoots up so fast it's frightening. Dre crooks a finger.
"Fuck," Mathers mouths to himself, and even as the door to the mixing booth is opening he's got excuses. "Listen, wasn't nobody using the booth, I just though, I gotta learn the drum machine."
"Bitch, do your song, keep telling yaself that you was a mom," Dre repeats.
"Aw man, fuck."
"Your moms really fuckin do that shit?"
Mathers looks like he's about twelve, caught with his first joint.
"You got more shit like this in that notebook?" Dre asks.
"It's my notebook, I ain't gotta show you shit," Mathers answers. Dre crosses his arms. "I ain't gotta show you shit," Mathers repeats.
"You a fucked up shit, you know that."
"You tryin tell me you ain't?"
"Not like you I ain't, but you got a lotta shit to learn about this business," Dre says. Mathers' eyes are defiant blue, the cock of his head says he'll throw a punch before he gives up that notebook. Dre wonders if he's this fucking pissed off all the time.
"Your momma do that shit?"
"You give a fuck if she did? Shit, I wasn't bothering no one..."
"Shut the hell up."
Mathers obeys, sullenly.
"You rap about this shit, man, you gonna piss off every parent in North fuckin America," Dre says. "You rap about your momma and shit, we gonna make a fortune."
"You fuckin crazy."
"I told you to shut up. This the kinda shit gonna make you rich. Otherwise you just a novelty album. You Vanilla Ice with some skills. You gonna be a rapper or you gonna be a party joke?"
"I am a rapper."
"Then you gonna do like I tell you? You wanna rap that shit for reals? On an album?"
It seemed like the entirety of middle America flipped their shit when the album came out. Mathers was a shy kid in private, but if anyone crossed him he copped an attitude that you could see from here all the way to the bank.
Multiplatinum. Fuck it, man.
***
Dre started grooming Marshall for a place on the other side of the table, once he was done having his say in front of the mic.
It wasn't fuckin overnight Cinderella, either. Mathers didn't want to learn "table manners" for the investors. His momma was probably worse than even in the raps because Mathers was pretty much feral if you put him in a business suit or tried to make him small talk with someone who didn't drop his gs or know what fasheezy meant. With a posse or with the sound guys he was cool because they were his homies, but he was gonna have to learn that there were a lot of fuckers out there who were not his homies.
And he was gonna have to stop getting fucking thrown in jail.
"You know, I figure, I got this idea for the video for Business," Mathers said, while Dre guided his black cadillac through the nighttime streets. He'd let the kid stew behind bars for a while and gone to bail him out himself, at midnight, but it didn't seem to have made a dent. Mathers was staring out the window into the rain, one leg pulled up against his chest like a goddamned nine year old.
"I don't wanna fuckin hear it."
"No, man, it's awesome. You gonna be Batman and I'm'a be Robin, right, and we trick out a big-ass cadillac -- "'
Dre brought his fist down on the steering wheel, hard. Mathers stopped talking.
"I ain't your fuckin father figure," Dre said.
"Aw, shit, not that faggot-ass therapy bullshit again," Mathers muttered.
"You got issues, man. You got stacks of issues. I ain't gonna bail you out next time. Next time you fuck up I'm'a terminate your contract."
"You fuckin wish."
"I'm not fucking around. You think this is me being the ringmaster of your goddamn freak circus? This is partner-fucking-ship and if you keep pulling this shit you gonna be one lonely partner."
Silence. Dre picked up speed as they pulled out onto the freeway.
"You serious?" Mathers finally asked.
"You gonna cost me more in legal fees and shit than you make, some fuckin day."
"Aw, shit." Mathers rested his forehead against the passenger-side window, the corner of his jaw sharply outlined.
"You ain't gonna be the stage man all your life. You got more brains than that," Dre said.
"And you say you ain't my fuckin father."
"Shit, man, you think I been teaching you all this shit for my health? Someday they gonna call you old school, like they fuckin did me, and then you better know where the fuck you going. And the fuck where you are going is producing. You gonna be the first white man who fuckin knows what he's doing in this business."
Mathers was silent.
"So you cannot fuck up, shithead."
"Sorry," the younger man muttered.
"Don't fuckin be sorry. Don't fuckin do it again, or the fuck where you are going is gonna be sellin fuckin pencils on the street."
"Where we goin?" Mathers asked, as they passed the exit for the hotel he was staying in.
"My place."
"The fuck?"
"That hotel is shit for you."
Mathers shrugged.
Dre had a nice place, not the place he took women, for when he was tired and didn't feel like fucking around with a bunch of people trying to serve him. Exclusive. He was the only black man in the building. The parking guard waved him through and the doorman tipped his hat. Mathers, still the Eight Mile Road trailer park kid, looked around him with wide eyes.
Inside the apartment, he tossed his hat on a hook and wandered into the living room. "Nice place."
"Should be, for half a fuckin million."
"No shit?" Mathers kicked off his shoes and took a blanket off the back of the couch. "You need some better furniture, dog."
He flopped down on the couch, pulling the blanket over him. Dre put his hand over his eyes.
"There's a guest bedroom, asshole," he said.
***
Mathers musta found some spare clothes lying around, because when Dre came in at three am he was all but swallowed in a pair of blue pyjamas made for a larger man.
He'd only got up to take a piss, but the light in the guest bedroom was illuminating a line of yellow under the door. He didn't bother knocking. It was his fucking apartment, after all.
Mathers was sitting against the headboard, knees drawn up, writing rhymes with a pencil on paper towel.
"Couldn't find no paper," he muttered, beating out a time on his knee with the end of the pencil.
"You hardcore, man."
"Didn't fuckin get this far by bein a pansy ass."
"Aight. Let's hear it."
"Not done yet."
"I wanna hear what's got you up at three in the fuckin morning."
"Why the fuck you up?"
"Hadda piss."
"So go piss." He waved the pencil at the bathroom door. "Tell you when you done."
Dre shrugged and used the toilet, washed his hands, came back into the bedroom.
"Aight," Mathers said. "Gimme a beat, yo."
He beat out what he wanted -- one two three rest, one two three rest. Dre picked it up, patiently.
Entertainment is changin', intertwinin' with gangsta's
In the land of the killers, a sinner's mind is a somethin.
Dre laughed.
"I'll get it," Mathers promised.
But all they kids be listenin to me religiously,
So I'm signin CDs while police fingerprint me
It's all political, if my music is literal,
Then I'm a criminal. How the fuck can I raise a little girl?
I couldn't, I wouldn't be fit to.
You're full of shit too, Guerrera, that was a fist that hit you...
So like Marshall. It's not enough to dig into politics, but you gotta bring all your personal business up in it.
So for anyone who ever been through shit in they lives
Till they sit and they cry at night wishin they'd die
Till they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We nothin to you but we the fuckin shit in they eyes
"Shit, that's all I got," Marshall said. Dre didn't stop the beat. "Come on, motherfucker, that's all I got."
One two three rest. One two three rest. He wasn't done yet; there was shit he hadn't got through yet. Dre knew that much.
Rappers was honest men. Braggers, sure, boasters and storytellers but what else did they have? Shit. Shit in they lives. And more honest just meant that Marshall Mathers, who was a white boy from Detroit with a fucked up momma and a piss-ass life just had more to be furious about.
Marshall caught his breath.
"Shit, yo," he said.
One two three rest. One two --
See him walkin around with his headphones blarin
Alone in his own zone, cold and he don't care
He's a problem child, what bothers him all comes out,
When he talks about his fuckin dad walkin out
Cause he just -- hates him so bad that he blocks him out
If he ever saw him again he'd probably knock him out
His thoughts are whacked, he's mad so he's talkin back
Talkin black, brainwashed from rock and rap --
"Shit, stop the beat Dre. Fuckin stop the beat."
Dre stopped.
"Fuckin shit. Fuckin shit. I don't wanna be a rapper no fuckin more."
Dre grinned at him. "Too late, dog."
"Hey, fuck you too."
"Listen to me, o fucking kay? You gonna be the shit, Mathers," Dre said, leaning in close. "You gonna be the fuckin chosen one. We partners, aight? But you gotta stop pullin this shit just cos you ain't got no daddy. I ain't got no daddy neither and you don't see me fuckin shit up."
Marshall was quiet. Finally, he said "That was you, man. Fuckin....my moms passed out in the bedroom and Ronnie dead and all, that was the shit, you on this fuckin bootleg tape in my damn taped up walkman. That was you, man."
"Hey, Batman and Robin, right?" Dre said.
"Fuck yeah."
"Then you gotta do like I tell you, man. You gotta stop fuckin up."
"Aight, Dre." Marshall shrugged. "What you want me to do?"
Dre grinned. "We gonna fuckin rule the world, Em."
Marshall paused, and then he grinned back. "Fasheezy, dog."
END
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. . . I take it you've read the recent Detroit Free Press article about Eminem retiring?
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It's all unofficial, of course, but pretty clearly the way the wind is blowing. Yup, lots of producing and whatnot.
I'll miss his songs, but kind of glad he's going out on top--I don't have Encore but I think The Eminem Show is one of the best albums ever.
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