How D12 really felt about playing second fiddle to Eminem
On ‘My Band’, one of their most successful singles, the other members of D12 express their frustration with how outsized their bandmate Eminem’s fame is compared to theirs. It’s clearly tongue-in-cheek, but were there any lingering resentments for real?
D12 originally came into being in 1996, when Proof drew together a crew consisting of fellow Detroit rappers Eye-Kyu, Bizarre, Kon Artis, Kuniva and Bugz. They released their first EP in 1997, which only featured Eminem as a guest performer.
In 1999, group member Bugz was shot and killed. It was after this tragedy that Eminem became a full-time member of the group, with Swifty McVay also jumping in as a part of the crew.
With Eminem now in the fold for good, D12 entered into a period of success with the release of their first album, Devil’s Night in 2001 and its follow-up, D12 World in 2004. The group was a big deal during the period, but, unavoidably, Eminem was the true star. He had already become a sensation in his own right, and the other members were, realistically, operating under his shadow.
Members Swifty McVay and Kuniva reflected on this period during a recent appearance on the CadillacChroniclesTV interview series, where the latter noted that the situation was such that, at some gigs, Eminem would be provided with a dressing room, whereas the other members wouldn’t be.
“We hanging out in front of Em’s dressing room like it’s a corner store,” Kuniva recalled, “Chilling out, drinking in front of Marshall’s dressing room, and we ain’t have one”.
But while this might have been expected to foster resentment, the group took it in their stride. They understood that Eminem’s fame far exceeded their own, and that the popularity of the group was, largely, tied to his. They didn’t mind, and they were happy to play around with the idea in their music.
That was the basis of 2004’s ‘My Band’, where they played into the notion that they were jealous of Eminem. “We were just poking fun of ourselves and how the media portrayed us as Eminem’s homeboys and his background singers and all the rest of the shit and we just threw it back to their faces,” Kuniva explained.
He claimed that the other D12 members were only ever “grateful” for Eminem’s presence within the group. He was their “big bro”, as he put it, and they “still got that family type of bond with him”. Despite the deathly jealousy expressed in ‘My Band’, the truth was apparently much more serene.