A friend of mine just PMed me this, a piece from the Financial Times, on Eminem:
Eminem: A nihilist with attitude
A white artist from Detroit known for his offensive lyrics has breathed new life into gangsta rap,
says Christopher Parkes.
Published: January 5 2001 20:13GMT | Last Updated: January 5 2001 20:18GMT
The style is not so much in-your-face as up-your-nose. He will spit in your eye,
wave his bare backside at your teenage daughter and chant gaily of sodomy,
chainsaws and matricide and the "peanut" in his pants.
His rants honour homophobia and misogyny. He smells of Bacardi and he does
not give a monkey's what anyone thinks. It is the way he is. He cannot help it. And
even if he could . . . you can guess the rest.
Eminem's album The Marshall Mathers LP - he was named Marshall Mathers III
by his mother, who has sued him for defamation over his lyrics - was this week
nominated for the Album of the Year award at next month's Grammy awards in
Los Angeles. He presents his own biography in the lines from "The Way I Am":
"Since birth I've been cursed with this curse just to curse, and just blurt this
berserk and bizarre shit that works."
And how. In with a shot at the music industry's top gong with only his second
big-label album, the 27-year-old has performed feats of wonder. In just two years,
a weedy white man has flogged life back into the dead horse from the black music
stable that used to be known as hard-core or gangsta rap.
He has wrung tears and protests from parents, politicians, music critics and gay
and lesbian advocates. He has sold millions for Interscope, the Universal Music
Group label. The Marshall Mathers LP has already been named album of the year
by Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times.
What can CBS expect when he shows up for the global television broadcast of the
Grammy awards ceremony on February 21? What can the world expect if he wins
and, in keeping with tradition, is asked to stand up and let one rip? Perhaps he
will choose "Kill You": "OK, I'm ready to play. I got the machete from OJ."
Harsh words indeed. Senator John McCain winced visibly this summer, when
Eminem's lyrics came up at Washington hearings on violent entertainment and he
asked a woebegone witness, Lynne Cheney (wife of vice-president-elect Dick):
"You actually put yourself through the torture of listening to this?" Mrs Cheney
nodded. "I'll say one thing for him," she replied. "You can understand every word."
She is not alone in her regard. "Tania", contributing to a mimsy discussion on the
online Music Teachers Chatboard, wrote recently: "It is not enough just to hear the
music of pop groups/ songs especially of this genre. To know what is actually
said, and what the 'topic' is, is to prepare yourself to have informed and fair
discussions."
Her Eminem recommendation was "Amityville", a withering horror travelogue on
the Eight Mile Road district of Detroit where the singer festered as a fatherless
dead-end kid, growing up "colour blind" in the mainly black alleys.
"That's why we don't call it Detroit, we call it Amityville. You can get capped [shot]
after just havin' a cavity filled. Ahahahaha, that's why we're named the murder
capital still. This ain't Detroit, it's motherfuckin' Hamburger Hill."
The vocabulary is limited, strained, almost unbearably harsh, yet communicative,
live and poetic. Black rappers strut, Nine-Inch Nails wail about depression, the
singer Marilyn Manson offers a limp wrist to mock-gothic admirers. Eminem
(whose name partly refers to M&Ms, the sweets made by Mars) gives the world,
and those closest to him, a stiff finger.
In "97 Bonnie and Clyde", he talks of enlisting his five-year-old daughter Hailie's
help to kill his wife Kim. "You wanna help Dada tie a rope around this rock? Then
we'll tie it round her footsie, then we'll roll her off the dock." The couple were
reconciled earlier this month after he was charged with assaulting a bartender
who kissed her, and separately with pulling a gun on a member of the rap group
Insane Clown Posse. Kim Mathers subsequently tried to commit suicide.
However chaotic his personal life, Eminem has proved a master in managing -
and analysing in his lyrics - his public existence since being discovered by Dr Dre,
the black rapper also nominated for several Grammy awards this week. In "Kill
You", Eminem sings of talk show hosts who want Slim Shady - the malevolent
alter ego he sometimes assumes - "on their radio shows just to argue with 'em
'cause their ratings stink".
Will Slim be the one who turns up next month to give the CBS ratings a boost?
Some may say the venerable show, now in its 43rd year, needs a kick in the rear
to remind industry worthies that it is the kids who pay their wages. Although overall
US music sales rose 4 per cent last year, rap outperformed that with a 20 per cent
surge.
Last year the Woodstock veteran Santana won eight awards and even this year
old-stagers such as Steely Dan figure prominently in nominations. With few
exceptions, recent Grammy ceremonies have resembled the tear- jerker lifetime
achievement moments at the Oscars - better suited to parents than to the young
viewers networks covet.
One thing is certain. Eminem, whose appeal embraces every ethnic group, whose
lyrics are familiar to well-brought-up Angeleno 11-year-olds, does not need a
golden gramophone to enhance his self-esteem. As he said in a recent interview,
music is a source of strength for child-ren such as him, a 15-year-old misfit being
"picked on by everyone and made to feel worthless".
If there are echoes of the bullying and taunting common in America's
muscle-bound high-school society, then his insistence that his music made
others respect his individuality is worthy of respect in turn. And if his manner, tone and language cause offense, he does not care. |
