Free "Shady Bizzness: " Life as Eminem's Bodyguard in an Industry of Paper Gangsters" by Byron Williams

field of work that I’m in. I’m around a lot of those gangstas all the
time. Whatever their affiliation was, I respected that. Being from Detroit,
we don’t get off into gang banging.
    After the Source Awards, we went to the studio; Slim wanted to
do some recording. He tried to do some recording, but he couldn’t really
focus. Slim was shaken up from the Death Row situation. First thing I
did when we got back to the studio usually was read a book. I had some
downtime when we were at the studio, and I usually read during that
period. I felt very ignorant about what was going on, and nobody in the
business out there really wanted to talk about the history of Death Row,
plus the history of the gang life. I took the initiative to find out, because
you can’t really be out there and not know what’s going on. I was basically
already sitting in California naked, meaning with no guns and no vest. I
was basically out there with my wits and the Lord’s Prayer. That’s what
kept me alive—the Lord! I was reading my Bible and working my wits.
    I have plenty of street smarts.You can’t go out there and disrespect
their culture, because if you do you are definitely going to have some
problems. I had a sleepless night, spent trying to figure out what was
going on and what was going to happen, and grasping the fact that I was
in the middle of some bullshit that I didn’t really know anything about.
Regardless, I was in the middle of it and had to deal with it. The next
morning, I got up bright and early, went and had some breakfast, and
found a bookstore and bought this book called Have Gun Will Travel by
Ronin Ro. Basically, this book was built on interviews from Death Row
members, members of Interscope, and people from Loud Records and
tells of their encounters with Death Row. It tells about the rise and fall of
Death Row Records, about Bad Boy, and also about the killing of Tupac
Shakur and Biggie Smalls. It tells about the good times and the bad times.
Basically, it covers about ten years of hip-hop, and tells how Death Row
was formed, how Suge used to help out artists who were getting screwed
over, and how he went in and straightened everything out. It mentioned a
lot of good things and a lot of bad things, and it answered every question
I had and made things a lot clearer to me. What I realized was, OK, this is
why Interscope acts like this with this group of guys, and this is why this
guy is in the studio doing this and so on and so forth. I felt like I wasn’t
completely in the dark anymore, but I knew I had a lot to learn. It took
me about a week to read this book, and I read a lot of chapters over and
over to get a feel for how these Death Row guys think. Being from Detroit,
there’s a different way of thinking.You have to respect their mentality out
there.You might not like it or agree with it, but you are going to respect it.
You must abide if you are going to survive.
    I did some research on California gangsters. I studied their
approach. I don’t know if this is factual, but from what I’ve read and what
I’ve seen, they always approach a person with some conversation first, to
see where your head is at and to see where your heart is. And the next
time they are on some intimidation shit, and if you aren’t feeling what
they are saying, then God help you. And I can honestly say staying in my
Bible and staying focused helped me through it. No disrespect to Death
Row, I am just explaining the situation that I went through with them. If
I got beef with anybody, it’s with Paul and Slim for paying me $185 a day
to be dealing with that shit, plus doing extra work that I wasn’t supposed
to be doing. Now you tell me if $185 is worth all that—hell no—not in
anybody’s life. Being certified and qualified at that time, I said,Yo, it’s time
for me to act a little bit quicker to get some more things under my belt,
making things happen. So, at this point in time, we were