Devin Scillian and Kimberly Gill are in the business of reporting the news, not making it. But the two broadcast journalists are getting as much attention as some of their leading stories as part of Eminem‘s new album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace).
The two anchors for WDIV, the Detroit NBC affiliate, are featured in the skit “Breaking News,” reporting on the hometown rapper’s supposed attempts to “cancel himself” with the release. Over background music composed by Eminem and regular collaborator Luis Resto, Scillian introduces the faux news segment and throws it to Gill, who is covering fan protests outside Eminem’s Mom’s Spaghetti restaurant in Detroit.
“It’s a lot more than either one of us expected,” Scillian, who’s an award-winning songwriter and performing musician himself, tells Billboard. He’s actually been on two Eminem tracks before — “Careful What You Wish For” from 2009’s Relapse and “Darkness” from 2020’s Music To Be Murdered By, which also includes Gill — but says there’s more excitement surrounding this appearance.
“The other ones passed by with just a little bit of notice it seemed. This one has been kind of crazy,” Scillian notes. “I guess it speaks to the anticipation for this album in general.” Gill adds that, “especially since Devin said my name when he tossed it to me in the report, my whole name is on an Eminem album. That’s the difference.”
Gill and Scillian only learned they would be included on the album a couple of days before its release. “I think that’s part of the reason we didn’t get too excited about it,” Gill explains. “You never know if he’s going to use it or not. We do these things, they ask us not to talk about it, we leave there and forget about it. Months pass, and before you know it the album comes out, and there we are. We made the cut!”
Scillian adds that they’re well aware that, “The cloak and dagger world of music relies so much on secrecy. It’s a need to know basis, and apparently we didn’t need to know.”
The pair worked with Eminem in his studio over several sessions, as far back as two years ago and as recently as this past spring. They’ve found him to be “very collaborative” as well. “He gave us an idea of what he wanted but he also was very interested in knowing how we would do it as real journalists,” Gill says. “So that was a really cool thing; here we have Marshall Mathers asking us for advice on how to say something.”
“He’s very hands on,” Scillian says. “He knows what he’s looking for, but he’s also having you do a couple of different things. It’s almost like he’s using them as water colors; he’s just starts playing with them later and you never know whether you’re gonna be on a song. on the skit in this case, or not. And it’s really fun… After we were done (Eminem) was like, ‘Wow, that was just crazy you could do that in one shot.’ We look at each other and say, ‘If there’s one genius in this room, it’s probably not the two of us!”
Another thrill for Scillian came when the album’s full credits were finally revealed; “I looked on Wikipedia, and we are under Musicians on the list,” he says with a laugh. “My name is right below Steve Miller. That’s about as high on the horse as I can get.”
Scillian is about to head to Paris to cover the Summer Olympic Games for WDIV. So what’s bigger — winning a gold medal or being able to say “I’m on Eminem’s new album?” “I’m going to put it on a T-shirt,” he says with a laugh.