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

tripping’ out at this point. Now, I knew to
expect the unexpected whenever I was with Slim. “Yo, this shit is getting
crazy. ” I couldn’t deal with it, you know. Everybody was stressed out. Folks
were mad, people were miserable, everybody’s women had attitudes, and
you couldn’t blame them because it was supposed to be a time in paradise,
but it turned into a time of terror in Hawaii. We finally got everything
situated and organized and secured the premises. Every artist’s door
was secure on a 24-hour basis. And then some of the drama began. The
second night, we had to do a sound check for the show and, mind you,
the sound check was at the same hotel where Death Row was staying,
and they tried to bombard the facility; they tried to bum-rush the sound
check, and there were quite a few of them.The numbers were pretty equal,
you could figure, between the artists and the bodyguards; maybe we had
them outnumbered by about ten or fifteen guys. But my point was that
these guys weren’t from Hawaii but flew from California to start some
shit, and they were organized. From what I understood, they had two offduty police officers that were down with them to basically help them get
through a lot of the bullshit. A couple of the security personnel knew this
and notified hotel security not to let these guys on the premises period,
even though they stayed in the hotel, and not to let them anywhere near
the banquet level.
    When everyone from Dre’s camp, Xzibit’s camp, and Snoop’s camp
all found out that Death Row was trying to bombard the sound check, they
went downstairs to confront the issue, but the police stopped it and sent
    MC Proof and Slim clowning around in Paris, France.
    everybody back up, and I was just like, Yo, I’m staying with Slim because
he isn’t trying to run off. I was just holding him down and letting him
know what was going on, and he was kind of nervous—and drinking to
ease his nerves—and from that point on it was just really nerve-racking
because we didn’t know what to expect. That night during the show, we
had to get back on extra watch because these guys made the statement
that they were going to rush the stage, and none of the bodyguards that
night could have their weapons because of a hotel security rule. And the
police officers were the only ones allowed to carry weapons. But it went
down pretty smoothly. The only problem I ran into was one of the police
escorts disappeared on us, the one who was supposed to take us out to our
van through the back way out the venue. It was really upsetting Slim, it
really bothered me, and I chewed that guy’s ass something terrible because
he was supposed to be working under our command. We had hired the
Honolulu Police Department specifically to follow what we requested them
to do. It wasn’t ego tripping, but our lives were at stake, and we didn’t have
room for any mistakes, and when this guy didn’t meet us where he was
supposed to meet us, it made me real nervous, and it made Slim nervous.
We had to sit and wait on this guy, and I finally decided, hey, we’re going
to move without this guy.We couldn’t take these kinds of chances because
we had to beat the mob out of there because there was going to be a crowd
of people as far as groupies and whatnot, and if Death Row was going to
do something, that would be the opportune time to do it. We left about
fifteen minutes before the show actually ended.
    We got in our van and had a police escort take us back. Everything
went pretty smoothly up to that point, even though the situation was still
nerve-racking, without having the original Honolulu police escort there.
I had all kinds of thoughts going through my mind, like maybe they paid
this guy off, why was this guy missing at this point in time? You know? He
had a radio, and I had been talking to him on the radio, so there was no
form of miscommunication, so where was he? But eventually he did show
up