The Todd Nelson Show
“You can’t miss it, it’s the only house with a 35-foot RV in front of it,” Todd Nelson says of the house in Warren belonging to Eminem’s grandmother. It’s where Nelson and his son now live.
It’s also where Marshall Mathers lived on and off for the three years he failed to pass ninth grade at Lincoln High. He dropped out and devoted his time first to being a graphic artist and then as a rapper with his first group, Sole Intent. Nelson, brother of Eminem’s mother Debbie (who’s changed her name from Mathers-Briggs back to Nelson), is eager to tell “the truth” about his nephew, “that everything he says about his past is fabricated.”
“He’s my nephew, but I call him my ‘F.U.’ I don’t like fake people,” Nelson says. “His movie shouldn’t be called 8 Mile — it should be called ‘26 Mile’!”
With his broad, round eyes and scooped-up nose, Nelson’s family resemblance to Em is staggering.
A burly ex-con with liver cancer caused by hepatitis C, Nelson isn’t looking to cash in off his famous nephew. He routinely gives out pages of Em’s early lyric sheets, “even though they’re worth about $1,000 apiece on the Internet.”
In the bungalow’s living room are snapshots of the rapper with family members interspersed with Confederate flags and other bric-a-brac that speaks to Eminem’s Southern roots in St. Joseph. Mo., where Marshall was born.
Nelson claims Eminem has made a cottage industry out of tapping into a reverse Oedipal complex of mother-bashing.
“Every white male regardless of his age has something against their mother, and he’s exploiting that, so all these white males can throw themselves a pity party,” Nelson says. “He tried bashing blacks and f*gs and when that didn’t work he started bashing his mother.”
In an attempt to prove his point, Nelson plays a tape from an early Detroit radio freestyle Em performed called “Word To Allah,” in which he repeatedly uses the word “N*GGER.”
“And listen — he sends out love to his mother,” Nelson says.
It’s not the most convincing argument that Em was once a mother-loving racist, especially coming from a guy who spent some of Em’s key developmental years, from 1992 to 1998, in prison for manslaughter.
Nelson portrays Debbie as an overwhelmed single parent under intense pressure — not unlike Eminem himself, which may explain why he acts so hateful toward Mom: She reminds him of himself.
Nelson recounts Eminem’s childhood. “His dad Bruce made wood veneer, you know, that they put on tables. They were married, but he moved to South Dakota. Debbie had nowhere to go. Her dad rejected her. She could’ve stayed there in St. Joe, where Marshall would’ve had no chance — people pick up aluminum cans and sell bait down there. But she decided to do it alone, and brought Marshall up North. She was overwhelmed. I remember her standing in the doorway of our mother’s house. I was like, ‘What are you gonna do? Come in or stay out.’ It was the wintertime, and she had that look in her eyes — she was so lost.”
Nelson doesn’t excuse his sister’s parenting, but he does say Debbie did the best she could.
“She ran a cab company — Classic Cab, she went to beauty school … She moved around a lot like everybody else,” he offers. “But I remember Marshall in Kmart when he was 8 years old throwing down his toys, throwing a fit until Debbie got him the Skeletor toy or comic book or whatever. And she’d get it for him — she’d write a bad check if she had to. He got his way.
“Listen, Marshall had a roof over his head until he was 26 — my sister gave him my grandmother’s trailer on 26 Mile — and he couldn’t even take care of it. I got the tickets around here somewhere — he got tickets for not mowing the grass.”
Nelson puts three light blue Lincoln High notebooks on the kitchen table. They provide a vivid glimpse of young Marshall Mathers. There’s a flubbed psychology test, its “D+” grade changed to an “A+” with a different color pen. In a yellow folder with cut-out pictures of Arrested Development and Salt ‘N’ Pepa there are the first scribblings of a young lyricist: “Let me introduce my band a gypsies … all of us hipper than hippies … I should go I take MCs on a joy ride and make ‘em dizzy as blonds/ I could rap around the world three times like vines/All in the same day but I don’t take planes/But if you wanna get nuts like a squirrel/We can take it to the stage and Ima shake it like a white girl.” Elsewhere, “you’res” are changed to “y’all” and “yo”’s added between words. There is the original flier for the “M&M” graphic design — with his mother’s phone number.
“C’mon, he had it rough? Where do you think he did that? His mother’s house!” Nelson says.
From these first raw etchings of “M&M” before he was Eminem and Slim Shady, it all seems kind of, well, innocent. Vulnerable, even. Someone who’s had the rug pulled out from under them is going to be more traumatized than somebody who never knew there was a rug.
Despite the heartbreak, Marshall, Nelson says, was too sheltered to end up a criminal.
Before he became a sensation, “The only trouble he got into with police was for shooting paintball guns on Woodward,” says Nelson, referring to when Em and a friend were picked up for shooting paintball guns at hookers in Detroit. It’s more the work of a prankster than a thug.
If anything, says Nelson, young Marshall lived vicariously through his uncle Ronnie, Todd and Debbie’s younger brother, who was Marshall’s age and who committed suicide.
“Ronnie was the one with the rough childhood — living out of garbage cans off the streets, being rejected by his dad. And then when my little brother died, Marshall went and got his name tattooed on him. But Ronnie didn’t even like Marshall,” Nelson says. “I got the last letter he ever wrote before he k*lled himself and he doesn’t even mention Marshall.”
Underneath the wannabe street survivor image of Slim Shady, says Nelson, was a mama’s boy.
“When he got in trouble with the gun [for pistol-whipping a man he caught with Kim in 2000] his mother was in Missouri. He called her to fly up here as fast as she could,” Nelson says.
Em’s gunplay could have landed him in prison for five years for felonious a*sault, but he copped to a reduced charge of carrying a concealed weapon and was placed on probation.
The phone rings. It’s Debbie. I ask if I can speak with her, but she tells her brother she can’t talk. Nelson says it’s part of a “contract … to keep her mouth shut … about the fake movie he’s got.”
Nelson apparently believes that Em is trying to pass off 8 Mile as authentic biography, which he isn’t.
Despite his resentment over Em’s treatment of his sister, Nelson does offer details of their relationship these days. He says Mathers is buying his mother a new RV.
“Why? To keep her mouth shut!” Nelson bellows. “He’s basically told her that if she keeps her mouth shut, he’ll take care of her. Why would I lie? I can’t stand that b*tch half the time. But I’m not gonna have some son of a b*tch sit and lie, even if it’s her own kid. But I guess as long as he’s making money and taking care of her, that’s cool with
"He tried bashing blacks" from his own uncle. He also played a tape of him saying the N word repeatedly
“You can’t miss it, it’s the only house with a 35-foot RV in front of it,” Todd Nelson says of the house in Warren belonging to Eminem’s grandmother. It’s where Nelson and his son now live.
It’s also where Marshall Mathers lived on and off for the three years he failed to pass ninth grade at Lincoln High. He dropped out and devoted his time first to being a graphic artist and then as a rapper with his first group, Sole Intent. Nelson, brother of Eminem’s mother Debbie (who’s changed her name from Mathers-Briggs back to Nelson), is eager to tell “the truth” about his nephew, “that everything he says about his past is fabricated.”
“He’s my nephew, but I call him my ‘F.U.’ I don’t like fake people,” Nelson says. “His movie shouldn’t be called 8 Mile — it should be called ‘26 Mile’!”
With his broad, round eyes and scooped-up nose, Nelson’s family resemblance to Em is staggering.
A burly ex-con with liver cancer caused by hepatitis C, Nelson isn’t looking to cash in off his famous nephew. He routinely gives out pages of Em’s early lyric sheets, “even though they’re worth about $1,000 apiece on the Internet.”
In the bungalow’s living room are snapshots of the rapper with family members interspersed with Confederate flags and other bric-a-brac that speaks to Eminem’s Southern roots in St. Joseph. Mo., where Marshall was born.
Nelson claims Eminem has made a cottage industry out of tapping into a reverse Oedipal complex of mother-bashing.
“Every white male regardless of his age has something against their mother, and he’s exploiting that, so all these white males can throw themselves a pity party,” Nelson says. “He tried bashing blacks and f*gs and when that didn’t work he started bashing his mother.”
In an attempt to prove his point, Nelson plays a tape from an early Detroit radio freestyle Em performed called “Word To Allah,” in which he repeatedly uses the word “N*GGER.”
“And listen — he sends out love to his mother,” Nelson says.
It’s not the most convincing argument that Em was once a mother-loving racist, especially coming from a guy who spent some of Em’s key developmental years, from 1992 to 1998, in prison for manslaughter.
Nelson portrays Debbie as an overwhelmed single parent under intense pressure — not unlike Eminem himself, which may explain why he acts so hateful toward Mom: She reminds him of himself.
Nelson recounts Eminem’s childhood. “His dad Bruce made wood veneer, you know, that they put on tables. They were married, but he moved to South Dakota. Debbie had nowhere to go. Her dad rejected her. She could’ve stayed there in St. Joe, where Marshall would’ve had no chance — people pick up aluminum cans and sell bait down there. But she decided to do it alone, and brought Marshall up North. She was overwhelmed. I remember her standing in the doorway of our mother’s house. I was like, ‘What are you gonna do? Come in or stay out.’ It was the wintertime, and she had that look in her eyes — she was so lost.”
Nelson doesn’t excuse his sister’s parenting, but he does say Debbie did the best she could.
“She ran a cab company — Classic Cab, she went to beauty school … She moved around a lot like everybody else,” he offers. “But I remember Marshall in Kmart when he was 8 years old throwing down his toys, throwing a fit until Debbie got him the Skeletor toy or comic book or whatever. And she’d get it for him — she’d write a bad check if she had to. He got his way.
“Listen, Marshall had a roof over his head until he was 26 — my sister gave him my grandmother’s trailer on 26 Mile — and he couldn’t even take care of it. I got the tickets around here somewhere — he got tickets for not mowing the grass.”
Nelson puts three light blue Lincoln High notebooks on the kitchen table. They provide a vivid glimpse of young Marshall Mathers. There’s a flubbed psychology test, its “D+” grade changed to an “A+” with a different color pen. In a yellow folder with cut-out pictures of Arrested Development and Salt ‘N’ Pepa there are the first scribblings of a young lyricist: “Let me introduce my band a gypsies … all of us hipper than hippies … I should go I take MCs on a joy ride and make ‘em dizzy as blonds/ I could rap around the world three times like vines/All in the same day but I don’t take planes/But if you wanna get nuts like a squirrel/We can take it to the stage and Ima shake it like a white girl.” Elsewhere, “you’res” are changed to “y’all” and “yo”’s added between words. There is the original flier for the “M&M” graphic design — with his mother’s phone number.
“C’mon, he had it rough? Where do you think he did that? His mother’s house!” Nelson says.
From these first raw etchings of “M&M” before he was Eminem and Slim Shady, it all seems kind of, well, innocent. Vulnerable, even. Someone who’s had the rug pulled out from under them is going to be more traumatized than somebody who never knew there was a rug.
Despite the heartbreak, Marshall, Nelson says, was too sheltered to end up a criminal.
Before he became a sensation, “The only trouble he got into with police was for shooting paintball guns on Woodward,” says Nelson, referring to when Em and a friend were picked up for shooting paintball guns at hookers in Detroit. It’s more the work of a prankster than a thug.
If anything, says Nelson, young Marshall lived vicariously through his uncle Ronnie, Todd and Debbie’s younger brother, who was Marshall’s age and who committed suicide.
“Ronnie was the one with the rough childhood — living out of garbage cans off the streets, being rejected by his dad. And then when my little brother died, Marshall went and got his name tattooed on him. But Ronnie didn’t even like Marshall,” Nelson says. “I got the last letter he ever wrote before he k*lled himself and he doesn’t even mention Marshall.”
Underneath the wannabe street survivor image of Slim Shady, says Nelson, was a mama’s boy.
“When he got in trouble with the gun [for pistol-whipping a man he caught with Kim in 2000] his mother was in Missouri. He called her to fly up here as fast as she could,” Nelson says.
Em’s gunplay could have landed him in prison for five years for felonious a*sault, but he copped to a reduced charge of carrying a concealed weapon and was placed on probation.
The phone rings. It’s Debbie. I ask if I can speak with her, but she tells her brother she can’t talk. Nelson says it’s part of a “contract … to keep her mouth shut … about the fake movie he’s got.”
Nelson apparently believes that Em is trying to pass off 8 Mile as authentic biography, which he isn’t.
Despite his resentment over Em’s treatment of his sister, Nelson does offer details of their relationship these days. He says Mathers is buying his mother a new RV.
“Why? To keep her mouth shut!” Nelson bellows. “He’s basically told her that if she keeps her mouth shut, he’ll take care of her. Why would I lie? I can’t stand that b*tch half the time. But I’m not gonna have some son of a b*tch sit and lie, even if it’s her own kid. But I guess as long as he’s making money and taking care of her, that’s cool with
"He tried bashing blacks" from his own uncle. He also played a tape of him saying the N word repeatedly
