The club joint is a noble tradition in hip-hop music, its narrative typically involving expensive champagne, punks who'd best step the fuck off and overall bootyliciousness. Obie Trice, the latest rapper to debut on Eminem's Shady Records, has a club song of his own, but one with considerably more modest goals. It is called "Got Some Teeth." As the chorus explains, "If I leave here tonight and I fall asleep/And I wake up, hopefully she got some teeth."

"It's a glorified way of saying hopefully she's fine and good-looking enough to sleep with," says Trice. The twenty-five-year- old Detroit native's album, Cheers, is one of the most anticipated debuts of the year. Though the Em connection hasn't hurt, Trice has a buzz all his own, thanks to his unvarnished, angry flow and a couple of standout moments on the 8 Mile soundtrack: the hot "Adrenaline Rush" and a verse of "Love Me," on which Trice more than holds his own alongside Em and 50 Cent. Cheers runs the gamut from goofier songs such as "Teeth," which opens on a woozy ragtime note and then proceeds to riff on Em's own "Without Me," to more anthemic tracks such as the love (OK, sex) song, "Hands on You," which features a zigzagging synth line and a chorus sung by Mr. Mathers himself -- who, incidentally, produced many of the tracks, along with Dr. Dre and Timbaland.

Trice grew up in a rough neighborhood on Detroit's West Side with his mother and three brothers. Yes, his mama named him Obie -- as he boasts on an early single, "I ain't got no rap name."

Trice's mother bought her son a karaoke machine when he was eleven. Obie would use it to record instrumental tracks by groups including N.W.A, over which he would karaoke-rap his own rhymes. By fourteen, he was attending the Detroit rap battles that would be immortalized in 8 Mile. "The battle scenes were depicted to a T in that movie," Trice says. "There was a place called the Hip-hop Shop. We'd go up there on Saturday afternoons for the battles. They were hosted by Proof, from D12. I got a response every time I went. That's when I said, 'OK, I wanna get into this music.' "Really, I didn't have a backup plan," he adds. "I wasn't planning on doing shit."

Trice's goal proved easier said than done, especially in Detroit's then-undiscovered rap scene. "There's a lot of dope and thieves in the city, and there wasn't anything happening," he says. To get by, Trice worked day jobs, though not very successfully. "I never worked one job for more than a month from '94 to like, shit, '99," he says. "I just had problems with authority -- motherfuckers telling me what to do. Working at Old Country Buffet or some shit, it's just the way people talk to you."

His big break came two years ago, when D12's Bizarre set up an extremely casual audition for Eminem. "I spit for him through the window of his car," Trice says. "He was in a rush, I guess. But when he heard me, he was feeling me. I got a call a week later."

That call led to his appearance on the 8 Mile soundtrack (and a cameo in the movie, as a parking-lot rapper), and since then he's been featured on the Anger Management and Rock the Mic tours.

But at the moment, Trice seems ready to take center stage. And even though the previous guy to debut on Em's label has racked up almost as many platinum records as he has bullet wounds, Trice insists he's not feeling the pressure. "I wasn't antsy for the record to come out, and I'm not worried," he says. "I was waiting for my turn. 50 had momentum, he been in the game longer, he did his thing. Now I'm gonna do me."

(September 10, 2003)