Eminem wasn't always Slim Shady, the alter-ego that sky-rocketed the Detroit rapper to the top of the charts. In the beginning, Marshall Mathers was simply a broke artist coming up in the scene with everyone else in addition to being an integral member of D12.
In a new interview on VladTV, his original bandmates talked about the process behind Eminem turning into Slim Shady and the monumental fame that followed soon after.
On his debut LP entitled Infinite, Mathers received rampant accusations from critics that he was copying AZ, a New York based rapper at the time.
"That was the pinnacle of him being polite and cool. He was really a straight up cool cat, but the frustration came out when he started getting criticism about the Infinite sh*t, like, 'It's kind of soft. You sound like this person or that person," explained Kuniva.
"Basically the whole thing of D12 is everybody has an alter-ego, so try to be the villain, a person completely different from who you are," Bizarre said during the interview. "That's when he took the name Slim Shady."
The group has not recorded anything together in more than a decade, but last winter Kuniva hinted that a reunion might be in the works. D12 stopped recording together after the death of original member Proof in 2006, which reportedly heavily effected Mathers and drove him into drug addiction. The potential record was allegedly inspired by the Shady XV compilation when a D12 was included on the album.
"I think a D12 reunion can definitely happen," Kuniva wrote on SOHH, "No one over here hates each other. We definitely love one another. It's just that with people, you want to go off and do your own thing. We all went out and did our own thing."
It remains to be seen whether any more collaborations will be released in the near future, but Kuniva's attitude certainly sounds promising.
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