We wanted to be lyrical slingers western-type philosophy.' '… I was like, 'Yo, we need to start a group together, put some MCs in it it Dirty Dozen.' At this time we thought the Dirty Dozen was gunslingers. Before we even thought about making records, our only goal was to be like verbal ninjas and kick ass.' In an interview with MTV.com, Proof remembered telling Eminem they should start a group. 'Later, when we started battling once a moth at Maurice Malone's Hip Hop Shop, everybody had a crew. I used to sneak Em into my school lunchroom just so he could battle,' Proof stated on the D12 website. 'We all knew each other growing up in Detroit.

They all knew each other from infamous Detroit clubs like the Hip Hop Shop. They asked friends Eminem, Kon Artis, Bugz, and Kuniva to join in. Known for their frequent wins at freestyle rap battles in underground clubs in Detroit, at the dawn of 1990, rappers Proof and Bizarre decided to put together a loose collective of some of Detroit's best underground MCs. Made up of six area rappers, including Eminem, D12 is often thought of as Eminem's side project when in fact, D12 was in place long before Eminem released his first record. The members of Detroit rap collective D12 often get lost in the shadow their high profile member, Eminem.

D12 world zip