It looks like Eminem’s finally planning to stand up to his old schoolyard tormentor-in court.
Slim Shady wants a Michigan judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a playground peer who allegedly taunted and terrorized the then-prepubescent hip-hopster back when the two were in grade school, the Detroit News reports.
Eminem, born Marshall Mathers III, is expected to appear in Macomb County Circuit Court before Judge Deborah Servitto on August 18 to ask her to toss the suit filed in 2001 by DeAngelo Bailey. Bailey’s seeking $1 million for the injury he claims to have sustained to his reputation when the 30-year-old rapper trashed him as an inveterate bully in the track “Brain Damage.”
Mathers’ attorney, Peter Peacock, petitioned for the dismissal last week, arguing that Bailey was merely attempting to make a fast buck off the Grammy-winning artist. In his motion, Peacock also claimed that Eminem’s rhymes regarding Bailey were accurate since, the lawyer says, Bailey constantly threatened and intimidated poor little Em when the two attended fourth and sixth grade together at Dort Elementary School outside Detroit.
“I was harassed daily by this fat kid named DeAngelo Bailey/An eighth-grader who acted obnoxious, cause his father boxes/So every day he’d shove me into the lockers,” Mathers rhymes in “Brain Damage,” a cut off his mega-selling breakthrough, The Slim Shady LP. “And he had me in the position to beat me into submission/He banged my head against the urinal until he broke my nose/Soaked my clothes in blood, grabbed me and choked my throat.”
Bailey, who now works as a sanitation worker in Roseville, decided to settle the score the old-fashioned way-in court.
He asserts that the stinging refrains in “Brain Damage” have also damaged his chances to switch careers and become a big-time Grammy-winning rap superstar just like Eminem.
Bailey’s attorney, Nicholas Hanzes, could not be reached for comment about the motion for dismissal, but previously he has labeled the allegations that his client ever picked on or roughed up Em a bunch of garbage. No word whether Bailey will be there in two weeks to face down his old schoolmate.
Peacock was also unavailable for comment.
Lending some credence to the accusations of bullying, Eminem’s mom did file a lawsuit in 1982 against the Roseville school district claiming her son was being beaten on a regular basis by school bullies who had caused the future king of hip-hop to have headaches, nausea and exhibit antisocial behavior.
