“The Eminem Show” is everywhere. Because of the album’s widespread availability on the Internet, Eminem’s label, Interscope/Universal, made the rare decision to move up its release date to Sunday. Despite all these problems, the album is expected to be one of the year’s best sellers.
As a Detroit MC in 1996, Marshall Mathers released his debut 12 inch, “Infinite.” During his next two albums, Eminem gained huge popularity and shocked suburban mothers with his violent lyrics and unsettling fantasies. In “The Eminem Show,” he continues this horrible and pathetic tirade.
Some may say, “hate the game not the player,” but Eminem knows what he is doing. There is no reason to buy this album unless you’re already a fan, in which case you’ll buy it anyway. Most of the magic that Eminem once had has been lost within his twisted mind. Nonetheless, Eminem’s combination of frightening, realistic lyrics and lilting taunts is enormously popular.
It is remarkable that Eminem can melt over his precious daughter in one breath and in the next rap about kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach. But that’s the way he plays. He was abused and treated bad, and if he gets a little crazy sometime, so what? Who can blame him? A lot of people do, and in this new album he works hard to defend himself.
While not a bad rapper, Eminem’s best asset has always been his remarkable storytelling; he makes things come alive in disturbing reality. When grade school students know every word of these stories, something can seem terribly wrong.
Eminem’s albums are stories where each track is a chapter. In the story of “The Eminem Show,” all of the characters are real people: his mother, daughter, ex-wife and Dr. Dre.
On “Hailie’s Song,” he tries his hand at singing a ballad to his daughter, where he claims she mellows out his insanity. It is the songs like this that make listeners not only sympathetic to him, but make him almost likable. Eminem may feel real tenderness for his daughter, but he doesn’t stop to connect her and his references to beating and raping other women.
In “White America” and “Sing for the Moment,” Eminem tries to explain his popularity among young suburban white boys. They listen to him because they look like him, he says.
“See the problem is that I speak to suburban kids/who otherwise wouldn’t know these words exist,” he raps on “White America.” He then accuses his detractors of, “Actin’ like I’m the first rapper to slap a bitch or say faggot.”
Rap and hip-hop have a long tradition of trash-talking women and promoting violence, but no rapper had attained the power of Eminem outside the ghetto. People believe him and they want to be him.
In “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” he begins by asking, “Have you ever been hated or discriminated against?/I have, I’ve been protested and demonstrated against/Picket signs for my wicked rhymes.” Then he continues with a sob story about his relationship with his mother where he taunts her with the granddaughter that she will never see. “Hailie’s getting so big now/you should see her, she’s beautiful/But you’ll never see her, she won’t even be at your funeral.”
Just as he switches between demon and daddy, he plays back and forth between saying his rhymes are real and presenting them as a game. The deepest power of his songs is the reality, but he makes fun of people for believing them.
“It’s all political/If my music is literal and I’m a criminal how the fuck could I raise a little girl/I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be fit to,” he raps in “Cleanin Out My Closet.”
In “Without Me,” Eminem pouts about the fact that his real self has been lost behind the Slim Shady persona. This track has been the only hot single from the album so far. Eminem used to live under the power of his Slim Shady character and now he just seems like a sick little boy.