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Devin Scillian gets Shady on new Eminem album

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4 months ago

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Devin Scillian gets Shady on new Eminem album

Longtime Local 4 anchor has a cameo on ‘The Death of Slim Shady,’ along with his colleague, Kimberly Gill.

When Eminem’s “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)” was released Friday, Devin Scillian skipped straight to the track “Breaking News,” a quickie skit on the back half of the album that features the longtime WDIV-TV (Local 4) anchor delivering a fictional news story about the Detroit rapper.

“It’s embarrassing to say,” says Scillian, on the phone Friday before anchoring the 11 p.m. news broadcast, “but rather than doing what Marshall urged, which is for everyone to listen to the album in order, I will have to cop to listening to ‘Breaking News’ first.”

Whether or not they also went directly to the track, Scillian says he heard from scores of others on Friday — from his son-in-law in Los Angeles to the woman who does his hair to his colleagues around the WDIV newsroom — about his cameo on the album, in which he appears alongside his co-anchor, Kimberly Gill.

“It’s been very, very fun,” says Scillian, who’s been with Local 4 for nearly 30 years. “I think in some ways we underestimated how much attention we would get.”

“The Death of Slim Shady” is shaping up to be Eminem’s biggest album in years; it earned 63.5 million streams its first day on Spotify, according to data from the streamer. That makes it the fourth biggest debut of the year, behind new albums from Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Billie Eilish, and it outpaces the launch of his last album, 2020’s “Music to Be Murdered By,” which earned 50.4 million streams its first day.

More: Eminem’s ‘The Death of Slim Shady’: Cameos, disses, and everything else you need to know

“Breaking News” runs just 37 seconds, and features Scillian’s voice on a fictional broadcast delivering a story about Eminem releasing an album “in which he is actually trying to cancel himself.” He then throws to Gill, whom he calls “KG,” who is reporting from a protest outside Eminem’s Mom’s Spaghetti spot in downtown Detroit, where protesters have gathered to boycott Eminem over his insensitive remarks on the album.

Scillian says he’s known Eminem for about 15 years; he also appeared on “Careful What You Wish For,” a bonus track from the deluxe edition of 2009’s “Relapse,” and he and Gill were both included on “Darkness,” a track from “Music to Be Murdered By.” He says Eminem is “fascinated” by broadcasting and the news industry, and when they’re together, there’s plenty of time for conviviality: “We spend about one-third of the time working on what we’re supposed to be working on, and the rest of the time just kind of kibitzing, and it’s great fun,” the Kansas native says. “It’s a great honor.”

Scillian and Gill recorded their parts at Eminem’s studio in the fall. There were several recording sessions, each with different ideas and concepts tossed out that they played off of, guided by Eminem himself. “He’ll just kind of work through things and he’ll say, ‘well, how would reporters say this?’ And then you go, ‘well, this is probably how we’d say it,’ and he’d say, ‘that’s great,'” Scillian says. “And then we’d walk into the recording booth — you know, Kimberly and I have been doing this long enough, it probably takes us one take or two takes — and we’d walk back into the control room, and he looks at us like we’ve just really blown him away. He’s like, ‘wow, that’s amazing!’ And I’m like, ‘Marshall, if there’s a genius in the room, it’s probably not us.'”

Because Eminem works in secrecy, there were NDAs in place that kept Scillian from spilling the beans about his work, and furthermore, he wasn’t even sure if he’d make the final cut. He says he finally got word last week that he made the album — “it was a pretty darn good text to receive,” he says — and his part was included in a teaser promo for the album that was released Thursday.

Scillian, 61, is a musician himself; he’s released four country music albums, the latest being 2016’s “Letter from London,” which he recorded in Nashville. But working with Eminem “is a different weight class altogether,” he says.

On the “Death of Slim Shady” Wikipedia page, Scillian is credited just below Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller, “and that’s as good as it gets,” he says. (Miller’s 1982 track “Abracadabra” is interpolated on Em’s “Houdini,” the first single from the album, which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.)

Scillian says he’ll be grabbing a physical copy of “The Death of Slim Shady” for his shelf at home, and he considers it a “thrill” to be a part of the album.

His job — he started as a reporter at WDIV in 1995 and became an anchor a year later — has also led him to parts in “Scream 4,” the Richard Gere thriller “The Double” and Kevin Hart’s “Die Hart 2: Die Harter.”

“It’s one of the funny things about this business, I’ve been able to do some weird things that have been these great little surprises that I would have never ever dreamed of. And I certainly never dreamed about being on an Eminem album,” he says. “That’s as good as Detroit bona fides get, I think.”  

agraham@detroitnews.com

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