The Dirty Dozen (D-12) consists of 6 emcees from Detroit, Michigan. The emcees are: Eminem, Bizarre, Proof, Kon Artist, Swift and Kuniva. Each member also has a alter ego, so that makes up your twelve members or a dozen. As Bizarre says, Proof was the person who came up with the concept while in a car together while driving back from New York. Proof had said he has a idea for a rap group in which case each member would hava there own alter ego. Kon Artis And Kuniva were both in a group called "Da Brigade". The group was gonna release a EP on Federation Records but unfortunatley Federation Records had broken up before its release. An original member of the group Bugz was killed by two men coming back for revenge after he had sprayed a girl with water. They shot him in the face and ran him over. After the death of Bugz, Swift who was originally in a group called "the Rabeez" with a guy named Baredda, joined the D-12 in '98. Proof was also in another Detroit group called "The 5 Ela" and appears on thier never released EP. Some past members include Eye-Kyu and the Undetaka among others. It wasn't too long until the D-12 were recording eight-tracks in Eminem's basement... The group were signed by Re-Al Entertainment, but got out of the contract to sign with Shady Records, Eminem's recently formed record label under Interscope. The D-12 made a self-titled album [ Underground EP ] on Re-Al but it was not released because Paul Rosenberg, beleived that it would be harmful to future sales