| It was around this time that Eminem met his first girlfriend Kimberley Anne Scott. The two met through mutual friends. "She came by, and I remember I was jumping all around the furniture while lipsynching L.L. Cool J songs," Eminem recalls. The two quickly became inseperable. "Detroit is really segregated and to get to Kim's part of town, I would have to walk through all-black neighborhoods. I would always get my ass beat; I even got shot at once. But Kim would usually meet me halfway. Or sometimes we would walk down the railroad tracks- nobody would fuck with us there," Eminem recalls. According to Eminem's grandmother, Betty Kresin, Deborah took Kim in at age 12 after she was kicked out of her house. "They fought like brother and sister," Betty says of Eminem and Kim's early relationship. "But then all of a sudden it reversed and they became intimate." Eminem made his first radio appearance at age 15 on the Detroit radio station WDRQ (93.1) At the time he was going by the stage name M&M. DJ Lisa Orlando says, "We basically let 'em call, and they'd rap for us on the phone. If I thought they had some talent, we'd bring 'em down and put them in the production room. It was all live on the radio. You'd point to the kid, and this street kid would have to just start doin' his thing." Eminem made the cut and him and his crew became regulars on Open Mic Night. "He was different," says Orlando, "but he was shy. He was a little more timid when he was doing the show. At the time, he wasn't the one that I thought would make it. But he'd come down, and his raps would always be funny. The other guys would all talk about some girl or getting into fights, your typical gangsta rap stuff. And he'd come in talkin' junk- he was unique." During one of his radio appearances, Eminem was discovered by local producers Marky and Jeff Bass. After meeting with Eminem, they signed him to their independent label Web Entertainment. That year, Eminem faced another encounter that could have cost him his life. While walking through the neighborhood one day, a car full of guys gave Eminem the finger. He returned the gesture and didn't think much of it until he turned the corner and saw them waiting for him. They stripped him down to his boxers and pointed a gun at him. Luckily, a truck driver pulled over, pulled out a gun of his own and scared off the attackers. In 1989, after failing grade nine for the third time, Eminem dropped out of high school to pursue his career as a rapper. After quitting school, Eminem was constantly struggling to find work as well as become an MC. After working on an assembly line and painting pictures on clothes, Eminem got a job at a family restaurant called Gilbert's Lodge. He worked there for $5.50 an hour with his high school friend Mike Ruby. The two of them also recorded songs in Mike's basement, which they dubbed Bassmint Productions. Mike went by the stage name of Manix and Eminem took the initials from his real name and came up with M&M, later modified to Eminem. The only song that has materialized from Eminem's days with Bassmint Productions is the track "Crackers N Cheese." Before long, Eminem decided to take his rhyme's outside of Mike's basement, but found it difficult to find a receptive audience. At the age of 16, he would often go to hip hop clubs to rap but very few people wanted to hear some skinny white boy rhyme. So Eminem became a battle MC, and he finally found an accepting audience at the Hip Hop Shop. "He was getting in everybody's ass. It was kind of political at first, because he was an outsider," says House Shoes, a DJ at St. Andrew's Hall. "After he bit a few heads off people, it got to the point where people looked forward to him coming out there." Eminem became so well known that a local emcee named Kuniva, who is now a member of D-12, once battled Eminem to boost his credibility. |