D12 - Devil's Night (2001)

I had a close enough relationship with an honorary cousin* - we were often mistaken for brothers, so he had found it more convenient to say that we were cousins, rather than go through all the motions of saying "just friends." For the first, oh, I dunno, 18 years, he was a big part of my life.  His mother and my father had met on their first day in university* and over time, our parents had become very good friends.  It's all gone now, as nothing lasts.  But my cousin had a healthy interest in rap.  Through him, I had learned that there was a West Berlin school of Turkish rap, and that there were pretty quirky acts in the underground, trying to find their way.

As a somewhat mirror of me, he was calling himself MC Oksit (Oxide), was hanging out with breakdancers that gathered in a park near his house, and was writing rhymes in his mother tongue. He was a huge Eminem fan (who wasn't?), mostly because the guy he had bumped the cassette (Marshall Mathers LP) off of had also given him a bunch of other stuff*.  When I agreed to spend five days in his parents' summer home, I wasn't expecting to find a whole bunch of albums, some of which we had in common, some not... among them was D12's debut.

D12 is a rap crew (rap doesn't do "bands") composed of six individuals, each with a separate, second identity (a-la Slim Shady.) You have: Kuniva (Rondell Beene), Kon Artis (Denuan Porter), Bizarre (Peter S. Bizarre), Proof (Derty Harry), Swift (Swifty McVay) and Eminem (Slim Shady.) D12 is Eminem's old Detroit crew which also featured on Marshall Mathers LP on Under the Influence and the bonus track Shit On You; Bizarre was also on Amityville.  Produced by Eminem's new record label, Shady Records, this album looked like a beast.

Then I snuck off to listen to it in peace and got possessed.

Devil's Night was a darker album than Marshall Mathers LP, in that the darkness it chanelled made it known that although fun-loving on occasion, it was the product of six daemons who brought their best evil game and put it on tape. This is perhaps more apparent in the deranged, utterly psychopathic American Psycho* or the positively diabolical Devil's Night.  Other instances were more violent and supercharged, like the clenched-teeth, white-knuckle-tight-fist, top-of-my-lungs scream of Revelation, or the sharp-tongued Fight Music.  Other songs played the gangsta angle; from Swift's marvelous Instigator or the aptly-named Pistol Pistol were all school-of-hard-knocks tales of mayhem and shootings.

Mercifully, Devil's Night also has a playful side.  This is mainly the case whenever Bizarre appears, as he is sometimes so beyond over-the-top ridiculous with his rhymes that it's impossible to not laugh at what he's saying, even if it is sick beyond the telling of it.  But that requires a sick sense of humour in and of itself; otherwise, D12 know how to do upbeat, fun songs with lots of jokes.  From the party tune It Ain't Nuttin' But Music that pokes fun at concerned parents and contemporary scandals to the sexin' it up tune of Nasty Mind (helmed by Bizarre, of course) to the drug-addled Purple Pills overflowing with amusing rhymes about drug trips, the album has its fun along with the blood-soaked devilry.  This had struck me as being in line with the dual secret identities thing.  One one side, you have the first six, who are nasty assholes, but they know how to laugh.  On the other one, you have absolutely soulless daemons, here to paint the world red.

Speaking of which, this was also my first introduction to how rap crews worked; sort of like songs with guest features, but it wasn't just in the trading of verses.  Every personality came through loud and clear, bringing together a cohesive whole.  Slim Shady was the usual fanfare of nasty and fun-loving; Proof was a heavyweight, throwing punches and not afraid to get down and dirty; Swift was an Instigator, who also happens to spit one of my favourite lines on the entire album*; Kuniva was the street-hardened criminal who was a bit more mellow; Kon Artis was sharp as a razor, but more focused on having a good time and Bizarre... well, it's all in the name, isn't it? Even the Steve Berman skit, the follow-up of the one in Marshall Mathers LP had Steve asking Slim, "Who the fuck is Bizarre? Do you need a CAT scan? Where the fuck did you find this guy?"

There were, however, some points of divergence.  Blow My Buzz, as a party tune, doesn't really fit in anywhere on the album.  Oh it's all positively-charged and all that, but Devil's Night does it a few times before it gets to this track, and as such, it seems a bit excessive.  Secondly, Shit Can Happen and That's How are both sort of in between the other extremes, where the fun is not that fun and the sickness is not that sick.  They're imbued with a rather sickening overall mood, smeared with a blurry color palette, and if they weren't so good, I would count them as unnecessary.

The bonus track of Devil's Night was Girls, where Eminem was going on about a dispute I had only then heard from him: something about Limp Bizkit, and how Fred Durst had done him wrong.  This was sort of apparent, as there were several references to DJ Lethal, Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit throughout the album, but at the heart of it laid a rather small dispute that in the hip-hop world would indeed be cause for beef.  What I could gather was this: Eminem had, or was going to diss Everlast, and DJ Lethal would have appeared on the track.  Except he hadn't, and later he was on TV talking about how Everlast would kick Eminem's ass in a fight.  Things were made worse by Fred Durst who was supposed to back him, but didn't.

Girls was a mezmerising track, not because it was a diss, but because despite his general candid nature on a pad, I had never heard Eminem get down to something like this before.  I wasn't entirely a stranger to dissing, I knew the word and what it meant, but I hadn't actually heard an entire song based entirely on this.  The fine art of using the truth, the one side of the truth and nothing but was a new experience*.

But beyond all, Devil's Night gave me more drive to write.  To be better, to rhyme better, to go profound rather than shallowly dark.  It was a positively inspirational experience, and I still consider it one of my favourite albums.

The Summer of 2001 had another contender for that particular throne, a contender that'd later upstage itself with a member of its back catalogue.  It was time to legalize it, as I found an album I wasn't exactly looking for one day...

*Footnote: 1- Out of all the days of my 28-years-long life, I have seen my actual cousin on my mother's side for about a week, if even that.  Although elder relatives tend to insist, I consider him less than a stranger.  I don't value blood ties all that much.
2- The story goes that after the obligatory opening ceremony for freshmen, she and my father happened to coincide out in the hall.  They introduced themselves, and began to walk, chatting up a storm.  It was only when they came to an intersection that my father asked her where their auditorium was.  Her answer? "Didn't you know? I was following you, 'cause you looked like you knew!" Before my father could respond, someone interrupted them, "So neither of you know where to go? Great, then why the hell were we following you?" Twist: most of the freshman year had followed them.
3- Which included Nefret (Hatred - Ceza & Dr. Fuchs), Sagopa Kajmer, Silahsız Kuvvet (Unarmed Force) and the like.
4- Second favourite (set of) line(s) in this, by Kon Artis: "Being pressed caused the stress that caused the Ritalin / Pressed stressed and Ritalin caused the cop's feelings to be hurt / after they seen what I did to those children"
5- In an interview, Proof (R.I.P.) had said that he just didn't think there was any sense in trying to say it all proper-like.  In an age when everything in censored, he thought it was just appropriate that they take a word that would usually be bleeped out (shit) and put it right at the start.
6- "He blew his head back right in front of the prestinct like *boom* ya hear that?" During the Year in Bratislava, I wrote this down to say, "this is what I have on the mind right now" on a journal given to me by the school counselor.  Needless to say, there was a long talk about suicide a few days after I turned it in for a read-through.
7- One of the most famous disputes in hip-hop history is perhaps one between Cypress Hill and Ice Cube, based on whether or not Ice Cube had stolen the hook of Cypress Hill's Throw Your Set In the Air.  For anyone who wants to see how these things work between rappers (and not a rapper and a rap metal band), look it up.