I admire eminem. The scourge of rap. The target of so much commentary. I’d heard him on the radio, Slim Shady and Without Me and such, didn’t really feel one way or t’other. He had a different sound and his flow was tight, but nothing really made me notice him. Until I heard Lose Yourself. I think it's from 8 Mile, but I haven’t seen it yet so I don’t know.
The thing is, one of the first things you’re taught as an artist is to do what you know. Write what you know, paint what you know, act what you know – if you try to do anything else, it comes off fake. As you grow in your voice, your manner of expression, you become better adept at what you don’t know. The thing I like about em is he takes us to his vulnerability. In a genre where you want to come off as The Snap, he’s not afraid to show us where he’s screwed up in life. He’s choked. He’s been booed. But the thing is he kept coming back.
"The soul's escaping, through this hole that it's gaping
This world is mine for the taking
Make me king, as we move toward a, new world order
A normal life is borin, but superstardom's close to post mortem
Another important lesson writers need to learn - convey the idea in the fewest words possible: Fame is not all it’s cracked up to be. You lose something when you gain success. I think that last line is brilliant.
I was playin in the beginnin, the mood all changed
I been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage
But I kept rhymin and stepwritin the next cypher
Best believe somebody's payin the pied piper
All the pain inside amplified by the fact
That I can't get by with my 9 to 5
And I can't provide the right type of life for my family
I’m not saying dude doesn’t have his issues. Whether everything he writes about is real or imagined, we’ve met a lot of recurring characters in his music and sometimes he does contradict himself, talking about his relationships with his mother, exes, daughter…he has some serious issues with women. But like a journal, his songs lay it all out there. We may take issue with how he says things, but I’m sure most of us can relate to the insecurites he has about life.
HAILIE’S SONG
My baby girl keeps gettin' older
I watch her grow up with pride
People make jokes, cuz they don't understand me
They just dont see my real side
I act like s**t don't phase 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
CLEANIN OUT MY CLOSET brought a lot of controversy. Yeah, he says a whole lotta not nice things about his mama, but just from what hit the news, I’m fairly convinced he’s giving us only part of the story. It's not an easy song to listen to, it's not meant to be. But was it wrong for him to record this song that is so hateful toward his mother? I don’t know. One of the markers of this generation is living your life in the public eye. What used to stay hidden is now out in the open. Look at the blogging community, for example.
I think the whole song is a response to the very last line. What kind of mother/son relationship do you have when your own mother wishes you were dead? How does that teach you to respect the relationship?
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, see what hurts me the most is you won't admit you was wrong, bitch, do your song, keep tellin' yourself that you was a mom, but how dare you try to take what you didn't help me to get, you selfish bitch, I hope you f*****n' burn in hell for this s**t, remember when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me, well guess what, I am dead, dead to you as can be...
Em’s daughter, Hailie, is in and on quite a few of his songs. This is the one that clinched my admiration. I love the honesty. And the way he makes a lyrical scrapbook for her, not holding back, feeding her a bunch of clichés that kids don’t really believe anyway when their parents are breaking up.
MOCKINGBIRD
We did not plan it to be this way, your mother and me
But things have gotten so bad between us
I don't see us ever being together ever again
Like we used to be when we was teenagers
But then of course everything always happens for a reason
I guess it was never meant to be
But it's just something we have no control over and that's what destiny is
But no more worries, rest your head and go to sleep
Maybe one day we'll wake up and this will all just be a dream It's funny
I remember back one year when daddy had no money
Mommy wrapped the Christmas presents up
And stuck 'em under the tree and said some of 'em were from me
Cuz daddy couldn't buy 'em
I'll never forget that Christmas I sat up the whole night crying
Cuz daddy felt like a bum, see daddy had a job
But his job was to keep the food on the table for you and mom Papa was a rollin' stone, momma developed a habit
And it all happened too fast for either one of us to grab it
I'm just sorry you were there and had to witness it first hand
Cuz all I ever wanted to do was just make you proud
That's practically a Hallmark special - a poor family, Christmas, no money, a rocky marriage. All that's missing is the happy ending.
What prompted my entry today was a conversation I overheard between two women. Mothers in their thirties. Volvo Driving Soccer Moms (listen to the song by Art Alezakis!) Basically they were saying that they thought he should be taken off the air. That his influence was bringing America down. Why hang it all on one man? I wondered if it was because he is white and successful in a black genre. That they expected blacks to have a rap, but not blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boys that looked like their own sons. Did they expect better of Marshall Mathers because he is white? I mean they weren’t against Dr Dre, DMX, Wu Tang, Ying Yang Twins, Nelly, Ja Rule, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent….. and they’ve all had a round or two in the top ten. The radio stations play more of those artists than Eminem, so if they’ve heard him they had to have heard the others.
Check out these lyrics from WHITE AMERICA. I think em may have hit the nail on the head.
straight out the tube, right into your living room I came, and kids
Flipped when they knew I was produced by Dre, that's all it took, and they were instantly hooked
Right in, and they connected with me too because I looked like them, that's why they put my
Lyric's up under this microscope, searchin' with a fine tooth comb, its like this rope, waitin' to choke, tightening around my throat, watching me while I write this, like I don't like this,
Nope, all I hear is, lyrics, lyrics, constant controversy, sponsors working 'round the clock, to
Try to stop my concerts early, surely hip-hop was never a problem in Harlem, only in Boston,
After it bothered the fathers of daughters starting to blossom, so now i'm catchin' the flack
From these activists when they raggin', actin' like i'm the first rapper to smack a bitch, or
Say faggot, s**t, just look at me like i'm your closest pal
So I guess my bottom line is why is it wrong for him to write his life and profit from it? If that was a glimpse of what his real life actually was, why does society want him to sugar-coat it and present it as morally acceptable? Like Jackson Pollack, who drank, smoked and bled into his paintings - they are not just a part of him, but the essence of him, his struggles, his misery. Em's experiences shaped him into what he is today. Its his story. We don’t have to listen, but its his right to tell it.
