“I said your name but always tried to hide your face,” he rapped in 2017 on “Castles,” off of Revival, lamenting that Hailie ever had to shoulder any of his baggage just because she was his kid.
“This game is crazy / I wanted to claim my love for you but damn / I never knew it’d be like this / If I did, I wouldn’t have done it/ You ain’t asked for none of this s–t. / Now you’re being punished? / Things that should’ve been private with me and your mother is public.”
All told, Hailie Jade—either one of her monikers or just her existence—has featured in almost two dozen songs over the course of his career. (“Hailie, baby, I didn’t mean to make you 80 percent of what I rapped about,” he offered in 2017’s “In Your Head.”)
The height of his daughter’s involuntary fame probably came in 2002 thanks to The Eminem Show‘s dueling tracks “Hailie’s Song” (“My baby girl keeps getting older / I watch her grow up with pride / People make jokes, ‘cause they don’t understand me / They just don’t see my real side / I act like s–t don’t faze me / Inside it drives me crazy / My insecurities could eat me alive / But then I see my baby / Suddenly I’m not crazy / It all makes sense when I look into her eyes”) and “My Dad’s Gone Crazy.”
The latter of which features 6-year-old Hailie’s unforgettable “I think my dad’s gone cray-zeh!” hook, which, Eminem told Rolling Stone in 2004, she came up with.
“If I feel like I’m working too much, I let the kids come up to the studio,” he said, explaining how their collaboration came about. “I get this little guilt trip inside, so I would have Kim just bring her up and let her hang around the studio. So me and [Dr.] Dre were working together, and Hailie was running around the studio and she was like [in a little girl high voice], ‘Somebody please help me! I think my dad’s gone crazy!'”