Throwback Thursday: D12 – “Purple Pills”
The Dirty Dozen, or D12 as most of us know them, probably made their biggest splash with the single “My Band,” which if you weren’t familiar with you would probably just think is an Eminem song. Their 2001 debut album Devil’s Night contains a lot of explicit content about the expected drugs, sex, and violence, but I was really surprised to find out that Eminem was lead producer on the album who put together and created the beats for the songs. Off the album, the single “Purple Pills” is the diamond in the rough. It’s funny because the song is about drug use, and since it wasn’t really appropriate to play on radio stations, the group made a clean version (called “Purple Hills”) that has so much changed to it that I think it loses too much of the song to really be considered a good replacement. Then again, I think Clean versions often take away much of what makes the songs anyways. The Detroit group of rappers hasn’t made much noise since the death of Proof, but hopefully we’ll see Eminem come back and lead D12 to prominence once again.
