D12's Proof is shot and killed at a Detroit after-hours club

Why it matters

DeShaun Holton, who recorded as Proof, was shot and killed at the C.C.C. after-hours club on 8 Mile Road in Detroit on April 11, 2006. He was 32. The shooter, Mario Etheridge, was killed by Proof's bodyguard in the same incident. The episode happened around three a.m., after a fight over a pool game. Proof was Eminem's closest friend. He had grown up with Em in Detroit, had been the one who convinced Em to take rapping seriously when both of them were teenagers, had been Em's hype man on tour, and was the founder of D12, the Detroit group that included Em, Bizarre, Kuniva, Swift, and Kon Artis. The Eminem in 8 Mile (the character B-Rabbit) is partly modeled on Proof. The death is the proximate trigger for Eminem's two-year retreat from public life after 2006. Em's prescription painkiller addiction, which had been building, accelerated badly after Proof died. The 2009 Relapse album is, in part, about the years between Proof's death and Em's recovery. You can hear it in the writing. The loss is the spine of the record.