Eminem’s latest songs hit close to home, bringing his daughter to tears as she listened to the raw lyrics. “I didn’t realize how bad things were,” she said, shaken by the depth of pain and struggle woven into his words.
Eminem’s daughter has watched her dad’s latest music video — and she never will again.
Hailie Jade, the 28-year-old daughter of the “Without Me” rapper, shared on her “Just a Little Shady” podcast on Friday that she cried watching the video for her father’s song “Somebody Save Me” and finds it too emotional to ever revisit.
“I watched it in (its) entirety, and I don’t think I can do it again,” she said. “I definitely cry every time I hear it at all.”
In the track from Eminem’s latest album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce),” the Grammy winner references his children by name and apologizes to them, saying he doesn’t “even deserve the father title.”
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“Hailie, I’m so sorry / I know I wasn’t there for your first guitar recital / Didn’t walk you down the aisle / Missed the birth of your first child / Your first podcast, looking down sweetie / I’m so proud of how you turned out,” he raps.
In reality, Eminem and Jade shared a father-daughter dance at her wedding in May. The song appeared to imagine a scenario where the rapper, who has been open about his past struggles with drug addiction, never got sober.
Eminem goes on to tell Hailie in the song that he’s “sorry that I chose drugs and put ’em above you” and “didn’t love you enough to give ’em up.” He also apologizes to his children Alaina and Stevie, rapping, “Alaina, sorry that you had to hear me fall in the bathroom,” and “Stevie, I’m sorry I missed you / Grow up and I didn’t get to / Be the dad I wanted to be to you.”
The music video, which dropped last week and features Jelly Roll, intersperses home video footage of Eminem’s kids. He shares Hailie Jade with ex-wife Kim Scott and adopted Alaina and Stevie.
Jade shared on the podcast that she “audibly sobbed” while listening to both “Somebody Save Me” and another one of her dad’s new songs, “Temporary,” which he says is for her to listen to after he dies. “Hailie Jade, I wrote you this song / To help you cope with life now that I’m gone,” he raps on the track.
“Watching the video back and listening to the songs, I feel like my parents did such a good job growing up where I didn’t realize how bad things were,” she said. “But now, as an adult in hindsight, it’s so scary to think about. I think that’s why I get emotional.”
She added, “If you’ve ever lost an addict or a loved one, I feel for you.” Though she finds it too emotional to rewatch, Jade said the “Somebody Save Me” video is “great” and that it’s “fun to see clips of us when we were younger.”
In a more lighthearted track from “The Death of Slim Shady,” “Houdini,” Eminem curses out a series of people including himself and “my own kids,” calling them “brats.”
Eminem, who dropped “The Death of Slim Shady” last month, celebrated 16 years of sobriety in April. He previously said on the “Paul Pod: Curtain Call 2” podcast that he nearly died from a drug overdose in 2007 and was at one point taking “75 (or) 80 Valium a night.”
In 2010, the rapper said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine that his kids have helped him stay sober, telling the outlet, “I love them so much, and they’ve helped me through so many things.”
