The Deaf Rapper on Eminem's First Label Signed Eminem's Super Bowl Set in Sign Language

Sean Forbes signed to the Bass Brothers' label in 2010. The story of how he got there has never been told this fully, and it starts with a stolen CD.

Buried in the middle of the F.B.T. Studios interview that surfaced last Friday is a story that has nothing to do with Eminem and ends up being entirely about him.

Sean Forbes is a rapper from Farmington Hills, Michigan. He lost roughly 90 percent of his hearing as an infant, most likely to meningitis, though it was never formally diagnosed. He started playing drums at five. Around 2005 he was interning at 54 Sound in Ferndale, the studio owned by Joel Martin, Eminem's publisher, and the room where the Bass Brothers cut most of Eminem's major-label work.

The CD

Jake Bass, then fifteen, tells it like this. Studio policy was that no disc left the building, because it was the Napster and LimeWire era and material was leaking constantly. "Like taking a CD home with you was an absolute no-no. Major major issue."

Forbes took one anyway.

"He was ballsy and took one, and it didn't say nothing. But he went home and started writing to it, and was like, these songs are coming out so good. I got to say something. So he came back and confessed that he stole a CD."

They asked whose it was. The disc had one word on it. "It just said beats on it. And when they played it, they're like, oh, those are Jake's. And he is like, okay, well, I need to meet Jake."

The A&R set it up. "I met him, didn't know he was deaf."

Then Forbes played him what he had written and performed it in ASL at the same time. "It blew my mind." Jake invited him to the basement studio and they made a song called "I'm Deaf." Jake did the music, Forbes did the lyrics.

"I'm Deaf," May 11, 2010, directed by Adrean Mangiardi. Over a million views, and the reason the label signed him.

The label did not get it, then it did

Jake played it for his father and uncle. Their first reaction was not enthusiasm.

"They didn't really see what we saw, because they were like, wait, deaf people can enjoy music? Like it was so foreign. But when we put it together and he actually performed it in sign language, it made sense. So they were like, we're going to sign this."

Web Entertainment signed Sean Forbes in 2010. It was the Bass Brothers' own label, the one that put out Infinite in 1996. The video went up on YouTube in its early days and, in Jake's words, "took off like crazy, because there was nothing like that, where there was a rapper rapping original songs in American Sign Language at the same time. And using his voice."

Then came the part Jake still sounds surprised by. Marlee Matlin, the Oscar-winning deaf actress, saw it and reached out asking to be in the next video.

"And we were like, we don't even have another song yet."

They wrote one. Matlin flew in. "Let's Mambo" went up on May 31, 2011, choreographed by Fabian Sanchez, her partner from Dancing with the Stars in 2008. Jake places Matlin on that show at the time; she had actually finished it three years earlier and was on Celebrity Apprentice in the spring the video came out. The choreographer is the part that carried over.

"Let's Mambo" with Marlee Matlin, May 2011. An album and a tour followed.

February 13, 2022

Seventeen years after the CD, Forbes got a call about the Super Bowl.

At Super Bowl LVI, Forbes and Warren "Wawa" Snipe performed the ASL interpretation of the Pepsi Halftime Show, the Dr. Dre set with Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent and Eminem. It was the first time ASL had been built into the halftime show itself rather than the anthem. The dedicated feed ran on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app. Sandra Mae Frank signed the anthem and "America the Beautiful" separately.

Forbes took the Eminem and Snoop portions.

Jake, on the tape: "He got the call to do the ASL interpretation for the halftime show when Marshall performed. And it was like, how amazing is this, to bring it all together and bring it home?"

Worth being precise. That halftime show won Outstanding Variety Special (Live) at the 2022 Emmys, and it is still the only Emmy Eminem has. The ASL performance ran as a separate digital feed and is not on the award's credits. Forbes did not win an Emmy that night. He signed the set that did.

Still going

Forbes co-founded D-PAN, the Deaf Professional Arts Network, in 2006 with Joel Martin. Its early work was ASL music videos, including one for "Lose Yourself." Perfect Imperfection followed in 2012, packaged as a CD and DVD so it worked for deaf and hearing audiences, and Little Victories in 2020.

He and Jake Bass are still working together, label or no label. "Confidence" arrived in April 2026, produced by the two of them, with Forbes' father on background vocals.

"Confidence," April 2026. Twenty-one years after a stolen CD marked BEATS.

The through line is one small circle of Ferndale rooms. The Bass Brothers heard a kid on Detroit radio in 1995 and had him in the studio the next day. Ten years later Jeff Bass's teenage son met an intern who had taken a disc he was not supposed to take. Both of them ended up at SoFi Stadium in February 2022, one rapping and one signing.

Sources. Jake Bass quotes are from "Jake Bass Talks F.B.T. Studios, Eminem's Infinite, & The Bass Brothers Legacy," posted by The Eric Barber on September 4, 2026; the Sean Forbes section runs from roughly 31:20 to 35:10. Forbes was interning at 54 Sound, Joel Martin's Ferndale studio, when he took the CD; he was signed to Web Entertainment, the Bass Brothers' label, in 2010. "I'm Deaf" was posted May 11, 2010, directed by Adrean Mangiardi. "Let's Mambo" featuring Marlee Matlin was posted May 31, 2011. Jake recalls Matlin finding the first video on Twitter; contemporaneous reporting says she first heard about Forbes through an NPR segment and messaged him. Matlin competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2008 with Fabian Sanchez, who choreographed "Let's Mambo"; Jake's recollection that she was on the show at the time of the shoot is three years off. Perfect Imperfection released September 2012 on D-PAN and Web Entertainment; Little Victories in February 2020. "Confidence" was posted April 3, 2026, produced by Sean Forbes and Jake Bass. Super Bowl LVI was played February 13, 2022 at SoFi Stadium; the ASL halftime performances by Forbes and Warren "Wawa" Snipe streamed on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, with Sandra Mae Frank on the anthem and "America the Beautiful." The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show won Outstanding Variety Special (Live) at the 2022 Creative Arts Emmys. All three embeds are from Sean Forbes' own YouTube channel.