I've mentioned this in passing before, but I've finally decided it's worth revisiting. I love Eminem. Is that weird? ...It's probably a little weird. But I promise I have reasons to back it up.
[Disclaimer before we start: There are a lot of inappropriate words in this post. If you hate Eminem for the stuff he says right now, you probably won't like him anymore at the end of this. So you may want to sit this one out altogether. If you are an Eminem fan...extra points if you know which songs all the quotes I'm about to use come from.]
First off, he's completely ridiculous and 100% offensive and disgusting and rude. And I love it. I think the only reason it works is because he is so 100% about it. He doesn't dance around the point he's trying to make, he makes the point in the most blunt and over-the-top way.
My friend Rachel and I always end up completely accidentally playing this game where one of us will say something we're thinking. "I love cats." And the other person will expand on it, but make it a little more absurd. "You love cats...for dinner." Then the original person will expand more, making it more over-the-top. "Yes, I love cooking cats for dinner...that's what we had last time you came over." Finally, at the end what we come up with is so exaggerated and ridiculous we would have sounded insane had that been the original thing we said in the midst of conversation. "No no, I honestly only eat cats for dinner like, once a week maybe. They can get really pricey."
Eminem just cuts straight to the punch line of the whole thing: "I just want her back, I know I'm a liar. If she ever tries to fucking leave again I'm'a tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." Yikes. "You don't know how sick you make me. You make me fucking sick to my stomach. Every time I think of you I puke." Soo...you're saying you don't like her?.. "So you can suck my dick if you don't like my shit. 'Cause I was high when I wrote this so suck my dick." Subtlety is not his strong point. It's actually not his point at all. But to explain why I like it so much, I'll go ahead and quote him again, "I'm like a head-trip to listen to 'cause I'm only giving you things you joke about with your friends inside your living room. The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all and I ain't gotta be false or sugar-coated at all." He's got a point there. He's essentially playing the game Rachel and I play, only he's way better at it.
The next reason I think Eminem is great is that he acknowledges and embraces the fact that he is hated...and that he's hated for a lot of reasons. And he raps about it...but not always to say that he doesn't care. Of course, most of the time he'll say he doesn't care: "I'm the bad guy who makes fun of people that die in plane crashes, and laughs as long as it ain't happenin' to him." "I don't give a fuck, God sent me to piss the world off!" But after his Relapse album was terrible, and he came back with Recovery and openly admitted the fact that his last album was terrible: "That last Relapse CD was ehh, perhaps I drove them accents into the ground..." I feel like a lot more people would like Justin Bieber if he'd just sing about how he's well aware that everyone over the age of 18 hates his music but he's not trying to appeal to anyone older than that anyways, so screw everyone! (Yeah, I just put Eminem and Justin Bieber in the same paragraph. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?)
Lastly, I love Eminem for rhetorical reasons. The guy uses literary devices like a champ. You have assonance: "And it seems like the media immediately points a finger at me..." Consonance: "'Cause I'm back na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na fix your damn antenna, tune it in 'n' then I'm gonna enter it in under your skin like a splinter..." Alliteration: "With his own private plane, his own pilot." Internal rhyme: "Picket signs for my wicked rhymes, look at the times. Sick as the mind of the motherfuckin' kid that's behind."
So there's my defense of Eminem. Like I said before, I doubt it will change minds. But it definitely should get some songs stuck in your head.
"Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records. Well I do, so fuck him, and fuck you too."
-Eminem, The Real Slim Shady
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