He Doesn’t Sugarcoat Anything

There are three things that have everybody in rap talking about Eminem, whose major-label debut album hits the stores in two weeks.

First, the 24-year-old Midwesterner has built an enormous reputation on the underground rap circuit with a minor-label release that contains some of the most original and explosive rap in ages.

Second, he is commercially promising enough to make Dr. Dre, the most celebrated producer ever in rap, want to work with him.

And third, he’s white.

If the last one conjures images of a synthetic, fish-out-of-water precedent such as Vanilla Ice, forget it.

Eminem (pronounced “M and M,” the name is a phonetic play on the initials of his real name, Marshall Mathers) arrives on the hip-hop scene with solid credentials.

The Detroit-based artist has wowed rap radio disc jockeys across the country the last two years with impromptu, on-air performances. He currently has a hit rap single (“Just Don’t Give a [Expletive]”) and another song (“My Name Is”) getting heavy video and radio play. His well-crafted lyrics mix biting humor and violent, taboo images. Think of his new album, “Slim Shady LP,” as the soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino film about the rap underground.

Dr. Dre--the production mastermind behind hits by N.W.A., Snoop Dogg and 2Pac, among others--was so taken by an Eminem radio performance in Los Angeles that he signed him in 1997 to his Interscope-distributed Aftermath Records label.

Wasn’t he concerned that Eminem’s race would be a hindrance in the virtually all African American rap world?

“If you’re dope, you’re dope . . . period,” says Dr. Dre, who produced three songs on the album, due in stores Feb. 23. “When I got his [independent EP] I didn’t know he was white. I didn’t know he was white until the next day. And that didn’t change jack. Actually, I looked at it as an edge. I really think that we’re going to be able to get away with [lyrical] stuff that we wouldn’t normally be able to get away with.”

Marcus Reeves, associate music editor of the rap magazine the Source, agrees that Eminem will be able to achieve respect in the rap world. “He has skills, so I think in this case that skill will override the racial factor.”

While white rappers such as the Beastie Boys, 3rd Bass and House of Pain have all enjoyed critical acclaim from hip-hop journals, they were never taken seriously by most hard-core hip-hop followers because, among other things, their lyrics were never on a par with those of the day’s hottest rappers. Eminem, however, is among the most promising rap lyricists to emerge in the last few years.

Eminem doesn’t like addressing the race issue.

“I try not to look at it in that way, being white,” he says during an interview. “I don’t wake up every day and look in the mirror, ‘Oh, I’m white.’ If it has helped me, the only way that it could have possibly helped me is by catching people off guard because they wouldn’t expect it coming from a white MC.”

But Eminem acknowledges that it was an issue when he started his rapping career back home.

“Being at the hip-hop spots in Detroit, I would try and grab the mike and I’d get booed,” he says. “People are narrow-minded and stupid a lot of times.”

Eminem has taken that experience and used it in his music. “When you pop a ‘Slim Shady LP’ in, you’re gonna be able to tell what I went through. . . . I don’t really feel like it’s hurt me, it’s just affected me and I don’t know if it’s necessarily in a negative way. It’s made me backlash at people, like, ‘[Expletive] you.’ I’ve taken a lot of crap in my life. . . . I got to a point where I said I’m not taking it anymore.”

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Dressed down in a plain white T-shirt and baggy jeans, Eminem hardly looks like one of the hottest new figures in rap--someone whose skills have been lavishly praised in such street-conscious rock and hip-hop journals as Spin and the Source even before his major-label debut hits the streets.

For one thing, Eminem is not sporting the flashy rap star trademarks as he sits in his room at a North Hollywood hotel. No excessive jewelry, trendy clothes or air of arrogance.

A tattoo on his arm reads “Hailey Jade” in honor of his 3-year-old daughter. Though Eminem is on the outs with her mother, his former girlfriend, he says he spends as much time as possible with the child when he’s in Detroit.

But Eminem’s raps are anything but tame, which is a major reason why his “Just Don’t Give a [Expletive]” is a Top 10 rap single.

In the record, which is on the new album, Eminem unleashes a series of stinging, sometimes X-rated put-downs at targets ranging from rival rappers to anyone who tries to block his path.

And there’s plenty of other potentially offensive material on the album. On one track, “Guilty Conscience,” Eminem and Dr. Dre assume the roles of a good conscience and a bad conscience to debate good and evil in scenes ranging from robbing a liquor store to drugging and sexually assaulting an underage girl.

In the sarcastic, stream-of-consciousness “Role Model,” Eminem, as the album’s title character Slim Shady, gets into an encounter with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is outraged by his reference to her husband’s sexual indiscretion.

Eminem realizes that he’s likely to offend, but he also knows that the explosive nature of the words is good for sales. While the violence and outrage are familiar in hard-core rap, Eminem adds a greater-than-usual sense of cinematic detail and mixes in elements of fantasy and humor that startle as well as entertain--much like Tarantino films.

“I’ve got to take [my music] in another direction,” Eminem says of his outlandish lyrics. “I’ve got to be different. Rap, overall, is entertainment. I’m trying to bring it in an entertaining way that’s clever--you never know what’s going to come, what I’m going to say next. I try to catch people off guard with punch lines. I catch myself off guard a lot of times when I’m writing it. If you’re not different, you’re gonna lose.”

Eminem has a friendly but slightly reserved manner on first meeting. As he relaxes, however, you begin getting glimpses of the mischievous humor and foul language that color his stories.

Born in Kansas City, Mo., Eminem was raised by his mother after his father left the family soon after Eminem’s birth. By his teens, he was living with his mom in a poor, predominantly black neighborhood on the east side of Detroit.

The pair moved frequently, so it was difficult for Eminem to make friends. He got into a lot of fights, and rap music became a refuge and a confidence-builder.

Engaging in competitive lunchroom rhyme battles with his classmates made school more tolerable. Even though he would eventually leave school to work at a series of minimum-wage jobs, his love for hip-hop never wavered.

Hoping to win respect on the city’s rap scene, Eminem released his debut album, “Infinite,” in 1996 on Web Entertainment, a small Detroit label. Much tamer than his current work, “Infinite” pretty much copied the style of such hit rappers as Nas and AZ, and failed on all levels. Eminem didn’t like the faceless album; neither did Detroit hip-hop followers.

With a new focus and a confrontational lyrical attitude that was inspired by LL Cool J, Eminem recorded a second Web Entertainment collection, the eight-song “Slim Shady EP,” the following year. On the project, he criticized Detroit radio stations for ignoring his first album and lashed out at anything and everything that had made his life disappointing.

The collection caught the ear of several key hip-hop players, and Eminem was soon invited to participate at the publication Rap Sheet’s 1997 convention in Los Angeles. While here, he passed his EP to people from Interscope Records and appeared as a guest rapper on radio station 92.3 the Beat. That’s when Dre heard Eminem, and he remembered seeing Eminem’s tape at Interscope’s offices.

“Not too many people can turn me on off the first listen, without a visual--just on a demo tape,” Dre says of his first listen to Eminem’s EP. “His [stuff] was complete. I could tell he spent time on his lyrics and that he was a perfectionist with how he delivered them.”

The rapper’s reaction to working with Dre? “It was a dream come true for me,” Eminem says. “I had to shake the butterflies at first. But it was also anxiousness to just get in there and show him what I could do. Ever since the first day we got in the studio and got down, I knew we had a chemistry.”

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That chemistry is so strong that Dr. Dre has enlisted Eminem’s help for his own “Chronic 2000” album.

He was also offered a chance to record a song with Interscope label-mate Marilyn Manson, but Eminem says he will probably opt against that collaboration because it might strike rap fans as a calculated business move. He has, however, recorded with another Interscope act, the popular but lower-profile alternative-rock group Limp Bizkit.

Unlike other white rappers who have been branded “alternative” because of their work with rock bands, Eminem views these ventures as no different from teaming with a rapper.

“The trend right now in hip-hop is to get every dope rapper you can and get ‘em on your album,” he says. “But I’m not really a collaboration-type MC unless it’s somebody that I’m extremely cool with. If I see somebody that I like and respect, then I’m gonna get down with them. It has nothing to do with what type of music it is. Hip-hop is my first love, but I can listen to a little bit of alternative.

“I just love rap. It’s such a huge market now to where it’s starting to bring every culture, all walks of life, it brings them all together.”

In fact, one of the most striking things about Eminem’s album is the absence of guest rappers--a rarity these days.

“I wanted to show that I don’t need them other MCs,” he says. “I can stand on my own. I can write my own [stuff] and make my own stuff dope. I’ve already got enough backing and enough credibility to where I don’t need to ride anybody’s coattails into the game.”

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Eminem will perform Feb. 22 at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 9 p.m. $12.50. (323) 848-5100.