It was backstage in Australia, of all places, that D12 got serious. “We was on Snoop Dogg’s I Wanna Thank Me tour in 2023,” remembers the Michigan hip-hop collective’s co-founder Kuniva.
“We was kicking it in his dressing room and he said, ‘Yo, did y’all hear that crowd out there when y’all came out? Man, y’all need to keep this going. The world needs D12. If they askin’ for it, you gotta give it to them. And they're screamin’ for it. Don’t stop now!’”
From the fateful day in 1996 when late Detroit rapper Proof assembled Motor City’s greatest street-poets under the banner of D12 – followed by their explosion on 2001’s Devil’s Night, with a peak-fame Eminem at the helm – the band’s legend was cast in stone.
But they only released one more full album – 2004’s D12 World – before Proof’s fatal shooting in 2006 and Eminem’s hiatus slowed their studio activity to a trickle. On 2018’s Stepping Stone, the ice-blond rapper went so far as to declare: “The moment that Proof died, so did the group. D12 is over.”
You could have fooled us. With Kuniva first to join today’s Zoom call, the faces start popping up like mushrooms. Here’s Swifty McVay: the friendly, thoughtful OG who’s mostly happy just to sit in. There’s Jeff and Jake Bass: the father-and-son studio team who produced and played guitar and bass on long-awaited third album D12 Forever.
The banter begins. “You're looking like Hugh Hefner over there, Jeff, with the robe and little fucking pipe and shit!” Kuniva tells his freshly showered collaborator as he exhales a flume of smoke.
“Minus the women,” drawls Jeff in response.
That industrial-strength chemistry shouldn’t surprise. Long-standing D12 fans know that Bass Snr’s association goes right back to the mid ’90s. One fateful morning at 3am, the story goes, Eminem and the D12 crew turned up to his studio on 8 Mile Road (the address should sound familiar) and put their sound in the hands of Jeff and his brother Mark, collectively billed as the Bass Brothers.
From that moment, right up until Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery, Jeff was a studio fixture (and fixer), sporadically producing and co-writing, while playing guitar, bass and keys for both groups.
“I remember when I first met them,” he reflects. “They were young and nobody knew anything about anything. But after Em blew up, he brought his boys in, and we continued working with them. It’s been a lot of years.”
The pick of the back catalog is probably Jeff’s brittle, pulsing, angry-hornet guitar intro to Eminem’s inescapable 2002 8 Mile soundtrack hit, Lose Yourself. “I never talked about that song with any of the guitar magazines,” he says, “because everybody thought it was just a sample.
“Y’know, Tone Lōc, back in the day, had used Eddie Van Halen’s Jamie’s Cryin’ on Wild Thing – but that was a sample. When I began to play the guitar parts live on these records, it gave hip-hop a different sound. D12 came along right after that, and they were using guitars in their work, too. And that’s the Detroit sound. You mix a little bit of everything together.”
I wanted something with constant motion,. If you break that guitar part down, you’ll see there’s seven or eight harmonies going on to give it that fullness
Jake Bass
Jake Bass was not yet a teenager when those classic albums went down –but already the kid had his antennae up. “I was 11 when they did Devil’s Night, and I was nerding out, studying what my dad did on that first record in real time,” he reflects. “I watched which guitars he chose, which Line 6 POD settings he used on the session for These Drugs. That kidney bean was the best!”
“You never know what your child's watching you do,” chuckles his old man. “Thank God that Jake picked up on all that kind of shit, as opposed to the drugs and the alcohol that I used to be fucking around with. He chose the right substance!”
For D12 Forever, Bass Jr took charge not just of production at Michigan’s FBT Studios, but the bulk of the album’s guitar and bass parts. “I went with that old-school Run-DMC/Beastie Boys vibe, but I did it all real and original and live on my PRS 40th anniversary McCarty SC56,” he tells us of the fiery rhythm work on recent single Tear It Down.
“I just wanted something with constant motion, because it was so high-energy. Something they could just go crazy on as far as rapping. If you break that guitar part down, you’ll see there’s seven or eight harmonies going on to give it that fullness.”
Another guitar standout is Tenderism, Jake’s snakecharmer lick coiling around a guesting Method Man’s bullet-belt vocals. “I wanted a hybrid of what would happen if D12 was mixed with Van Halen, mixed with the Ohio Players. And for the bass parts I used the exact same P-Bass my dad used on Devil's Night.”
“I bother Jake at all times of the day and night!” laughs Kuniva. “I call him up with ideas and he’s like, ‘Okay, I'll do it soon as I put the kids to bed!’ He’s always on deck for whatever you need. That's just a dope thing when you have someone who’s that in tune with your sound.
“Shit that I can't explain with words, Jake knows what I mean. He can play damn-near anything. Y’know, he comes in with a flute sometimes, or a mandolin.”
Those jawbreaker tracks couldn’t be further from the vibe of What If?, where Jeff steps up with a sunbeam outro solo beneath Melanie Rutherford’s vocal. “This album is Jake's baby,” nods the veteran.
I was always a Strat guy back in the ’90s, on Eminem and D12’s early stuff. Now I tend to gravitate more towards a fuller-bodied guitar
Jeff Bass
“But I was honored they asked me to play the guitar on that track. I used a 335. I was always a Strat guy back in the ’90s, on Eminem and D12’s early stuff. Now I tend to gravitate more towards a fuller-bodied guitar.”
“What Jeff played on What If? just pulls at my soul,” reflects Kuniva. “I get choked up when I hear it.”
But the most poignant cut of all is saved for last – with Forever airing unheard posthumous vocals from the band’s fallen leader. “All the things that Proof happened to say on that recording were just so appropriate in such a beautiful, eerie way,” says Jake.
“It’s like, ‘It’s not over; it's not the end – it’s not gonna stop.’ I wanted the guitar to reflect that. There’s no chorus in that song; it’s just a constant motion.”
Along with Snoop’s pep talk, remembers Kuniva, Forever threw down the gauntlet, convincing D12 to raise their game, push this third studio album over the line and commit to their future.
“That song is so powerful, y’know? And I speak for all of us – when we heard the Proof verse, it was like, ‘Man, there’s something crazy in the air here that we have to match.’ It just means a lot to still connect with someone who was such a force in in your life.
“We came into this game not caring what other people thought about us. We’ve defied so many odds, survived so much, endured so much. So we’re really making a statement on that song – ‘Yo, no matter what happens, D12 is always gonna be here. We’re never going away. We’re gonna live forever!’”
- D12 Forever is out now.
