That's It, Hater

At some point when ughh was having big clearance sales (good times), I noticed an Eminem diss on vinyl for $2 by somebody I didn't know. I google'd the guy and it turned out he was one of those guys from The White Rapper Show. So I passed on it. Then, I noticed the price dropped down to $1, but I still wasn't interested. Then fifty cents. Finally, it hit twenty-five cents[!!], so I decided fine, I'm curious enough to throw it in the cart with some other stuff for a quarter. Now, I could take a cheap shot and say this record still wasn't the price I paid for it, but no. I'd say .25 was a fair price for the value.

So, here's what I did when it arrived. First, I skipped straight to the Eminem diss, which is actually track 3 on the 12". Then I went back, and played the other songs through. Then I put it away and forgot about it. But recently I came across it when putting some other records away and thought it might be amusing to revisit it and blog about it. You know, before I put it away for another couple years.

So the guy's name is Dasit, and apparently he was voted off The White Rapper Show in the first episode. Not a good sign. He's also "mentored" by Hammer (another bad sign), and he sounds exactly like Eminem. It's something he addresses (of course) in his first song, "Dasit:"

"'Cause people see my songs and say, 'you sound just like Slim;Your style, your voice, everything sound just like him.'
[At this point, the music turns into a quick reinterpretation of "The Real Slim Shady"]
Got you thinking we bought his first CD
Got as far as the first song and said, 'I'm the real Slim Shady.But all I hear is stereotypes"

...Now, I'd have more sympathy if he just happened to have a voice like Eminem's and yet everyone gave him a hard time about it. But as he even admits in his own bars, it's not just his voice... his flow, his delivery, his structures, the way he does his back-up ad-libs with silly voices, even the production is a complete rip-off of Eminem - he's worse than Asher Roth. He might claim to be "blessed with a curse of Eminem's vocal tone" (seriously, he wrote that in his CDBaby bio), but I don't buy it - this has to be an intentional impersonation.

He even signed to Big Willz Records, his manager's label. Never heard of 'em? Well, that's the personal label of Byron "Big-Naz" Williams, Eminem's former bodyguard who wrote a tell-all book about Em and recorded his own Eminem diss record with his crew, The Wadsquad, called "Shady Bizness." Yeah, that's his label and manager. So this shit's straight out of Eminem Hater City.

So okay, back to the record at hand. The first song, as I said, is called "Dasit." He explains his name ("it's like 'that's it,' but usin' slang") and freestyles on a bunch of random, autobiographical non-sequiturs, which are really just excuses to cram in a bunch of punchlines. It's produced, like the rest of this 12", by somebody named Frankie Biggz; and it all just sounds like low budget Slim Shady records. To be fair, though, there is an aspect of his raps that doesn't sound entirely like Eminem. The way he forces awkward jokes into his flow, and the maybe slightly higher pitch to his voice... he's not so much Eminem as - god help us - Eminem meets Hot Karl*. Check out these bars, for example:

"I told my mom,

I'm gonna marry a black woman when I'm ready.

She said, "if you do that,

Then I ain't coming to your wedding."

"I'll start my own clothes line,

Call it G-Y-A-I-T.

(What's that stand for?)

Get Yo' Ass In These jeans!"

God, he goes so far for these cheap laughs (if the first one is even meant to be funny... I'm not sure). He even changes voices for the roles of himself on the phone and his racist mother. Then he gets somebody else to jump on the record just to ask him what the name of his imaginary clothes line means. I'm sincerely embarrassed for him, listening to this.

I'd feel sorry for bagging on a clearly underdeveloped amateur here, but there's such an ugly side of crass marketing in the way he latches onto Eminem in a cynical attempt to cash in. And we didn't even get to "Hater (Eminem Diss)" yet. He lays it out oddly on the line, asking in his song, "am I really a fake rapper trying to be just like you, comin' from a fake city with a fake ass crew? Tell me it ain't so, Slim; tell me you didn't say this! Do I really join the list of Everlast and Limp Bizkit?" Apparently, though, Dasit has a specific grudge that spurred on this particular diss song:

"I just wanted to do a song on your soundtrack,

Was that so bad?

There's a reason I didn't tell you my manager

Was Big Naz.

Just wanted you to listen

And give my music a chance.

And you listened to it in your trailer,

Turned it up loud,

And the word is

That you don't like me now."

The hook even goes, "Eminem, why you don't like me? Why you so angry - you wanna fight me? Why, I ain't do nothin'. It's like you mad because another white guy is tryin' to steal your light or somethin'." He's literally whining.

I can imagine the reason Eminem never answered this record - I mean, besides the obvious - is because Dasit said what Eminem would've already said back anyway. "Yeah, you lied about your management and gave me a song for my soundtrack. I listened to and didn't like it, so I didn't use it." Is Dasit aware he's supposed to be making the other guy look bad in a diss track? The rest of the track consists of more general disses, and at least directed towards the right party, but it's all so juvenile. Like, check this out:

"Hold on, I gotta mention this.

Your fans won't believe this shit you did, Slim.

(What he do?)

Had sex with a girl in Arizona...

(Oh, that's not so bad.)

But he forgot he had a sex change!

(Oh my god, Eminem's a fag!)"

But that's still not everything. You get one more song on this song, called "C.O.P." At no point during the song does he tell us what C.O.P. is supposed to be an acronym for, but the hook of the song is "cops ain't shit!" So you get the idea. It's another Eminem sound-alike song, with him complaining about how he's unfairly persecuted by the police. Example? He was pulled over for his license plate light being out. Really. That's in the song. It may actually be the first song of this nature that makes you feel bad for the police, having to deal with whiny little punks like this all day. But even if you're going along with the sentiment and shouting, "hell yeah, cops ain't shit!" to the chorus, he undercuts the whole thing by repeatedly stopping to point out, "I just wanna say, I know a lot of good cops and detective put their lives on the line every day. It's just a few bad apples makin' ya all look bad." I mean, that's true and I guess that makes the message of the song a little better, but way to suck the energy out of your own song. It would be like if "Fight For Your Right To Party" had an extra verse saying, "except don't party so hard that you neglect your responsibilities. Work hard and get good grades to the best of your abilities. Don't drink too much, ingest illegal substances or neglect to shower. Treat girls with respect and get to bed by a reasonable hour!"

Anyway, this is a single-sided 12", and comes in a generic white sleeve. For twenty-five cents, it's kinda fun to have a silly footnote in hip-hop history like this on your crates. Apparently, this guy has a bunch of other CDs and even 12" records... I'm not sure how low the price would have to get for me to check out those.

Update 2/27/12: It turns out, five years after this record (so, 2007), Dasit released a "Hater 2" via mp3 only. Instead of going after Em some more (though, amusingly, he bites another of his styles), he goes on about The White Rapper Show... he has some generic disses towards Serch ("mad at me 'cause I can't get no whiter" - what does that even mean?), and some of his fellow contestants who nobody remembers anymore. I had a hard time finding it, because this song's drifted pretty far off into obscurity... which is probably right where it belongs.


*He made a much better podcast host, though.