So.. For a long time I hated Eminem. I never judge what I haven't heard, so I bought "The Marshall Mathers LP." I hated it -- there's a track on there where he murders his wife's boyfriend, then kidnaps her and slits her throat in the middle of nowhere, shouting "Scream, bitch! No one can hear you here! Bleed, bitch! Bleed!" I almost had to pull over to the side of the road and vomit. THIS was what my students were listening to (and the critics were all praising so highly)?
Of course, Eminem can flow; he has skills as a lyricist. But as my friend Garrett pointed out, he never said anything worth hearing. I kept looking, because there had to be SOMETHING there, if everyone loved him. So I took a look at his book ("I didn't know Elton John was gay before that night") and read every article I could get my hands on, in addition to talking to my students at every opportunity. They all said the same thing: It's just a song, he doesn't mean it. In every interview, Mr. Mathers said the same thing: I'm just playing, this is just a character, I don't mean it.
So then I thought: Well, fine. Whatever. Once upon a time there were MCs who said what they meant and meant what they said. Do we, as young white people, really need white rappers to look up to? If not, then why not listen to Dead Prez, Public Enemy, The Coup? If so, then what about 3rd Bass, House of Pain? Why this farcical, identity-less idiot? (On "The Slim Shady EP," he says: "How can I be white? I don't even exist!"
Then I found out that "The Slim Shady EP" was not his first album. His first album was a record called "Infinite," which was all about how you can achieve your dreams if you try and you gotta keep your head up. It bombed, so he reinvented himself and became the homicidal maniac Slim Shady. He became a success. (My friend Jesse tells me the same thing happened to the Jungle Brothers.)
This sickened me -- he picked up on woman-hating and dealing despair in order to sell records? What kind of necrophiliac crap is that? Worst of all, he relinquished responsibility for everything he said by saying "Naw, I'm just playing." I was secure in hating Eminem. He never said anything he meant, so how could I object to anything he said?
Well, now he's saying what he means.
Yesterday I came across a video of his, for a song called "White America." It's featured on a website called the Guerrilla News Network (the web address is below), which contains many parodies. So at first I thought it was a parody. Then I realized it was really Eminem, and everything I believed about him was thrown into doubt. In the song, he points out that if he were black, he'd have sold half of the albums he's sold (something which Nelson George pointed out years ago). He points out that to white civil society, violence isn't a problem when it's in Harlem, only in Boston (which Spike Lee has been saying for years). He makes many important points about himself and America ("Fuck you, Tipper Gore!," which Jello Biafra has been saying since 1989) and now I don't know what to think.
Do I now like Eminem? Should I go see "Eight Mile," the movie version of his life? Should I give him another shot and risk fifteen bucks on "The Eminem Show," his latest album? (If only I knew someone who would burn me a copy, heh.) Have his views on women matured/become less homicidal? How does he reconcile his call for people to reach for their dreams while at the same time urging kids to "Go nuts / take drugs / rape sluts" (from "The Marshall Mathers LP")? As my lady friend Diane points out: Do the ends (becoming successful so he can be a role model and encourage kids to go after their dreams) justify the means (promoting rape, hating on gays, dismissing his whiteness)?
Eminem owes nearly all of his success to his hip-hop ancestors, and he knows it. Every other song contains a reference to Eric B. and Rakim. (Eminem's lyric: "I am whatever you say I am / If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?" Rakim, a decade earlier, wrote: "I'm the R to the A to the K-I-M / If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?") But he refuses to own up to the fact that he's white. ("The Marshall Mathers LP" contains the lyric: "I don't make black music, I don't make white music / I make fight music.") He doesn't seem to give up any props at all to the giants who allowed him to become so big (Dre excepted). A modern Elvis? No; Garrett says that Elvis DID give it up to the people who paved the way for him.
As most of you know, I write hip-hop lyrics myself. At the end of every teaching job I do, I play some of my tracks for the students; usually they get a good response, which tells me the kids know quality when they hear it. The last job I did was in Poynette, 20 miles north of Madison.
I had a student, Chris Stolinas, who wrote lyrics and sometimes read them in class. At one point I mentioned to him that I also wrote lyrics. "You should make an album," he told me. "How do you know I haven't?" I asked with a grin. "Bring it in!" he urged. "We'll see," I said. On the last day of my time there, I brought in a CD and played it for the class. Chris was absent that day; it was the opening day of "Eight Mile" and he just had to be the first to see it.
Ultimately -- to me -- the Eminem question is inextricably linked to a much larger question about the state of hip-hop today. As Dead Prez and The Coup and Chuck D and Mos Def and a host of others have said over and over again, all this bling-blingin' and G-wanna-be crap is a wretched cycle and it represents a sick state of the union for rap music.
Eminem, as far as I can tell, is just another link in that platinum chain. He does seem to be moving in a more intelligent direction (even as formerly political acts like Channel Live are doing the opposite). As with everything, I'm willing to give him another chance. But as my friend Brick Top said: "You're on thin fucking ice, my pedigree chums. And I shall be under it when it breaks."
Most of the important things I could say have already been said by someone else, so it's probably best that I let them say it. (This sentiment itself, you may recall, was expressed at the end of the film "American History X".) Therefore, I've included below a spoken-word piece by Taalam Acey, the 2000 World Slam Champion. The video for it (a very good one) is also at the Guerrilla News Network website.
Please write to me about this. I want to know what you think. Here are the websites I've been talking about:
Eminem's new video: http://www.guerrillanews.com/white_america/
Taalam Acey's video: http://www.guerrillanews.com/smoke/
My hip-hop music: http://www.ribonucleicrecords.com/dibmp3/
Peace,
eric:p
SMOKE CLEARZ
Lyrics by: Taalam Acey
And it goes like this…
And it goes like this…
Sometimes..
Sometimes I believe that some of these emcees sit down and consciously try to figure out how to get more young black men shot.
Like they figured out a correlation between making money and delivering more young black souls into the hands of the cops.
I mean, for them, its all about moving CDs out of one-stops and record shops, even if that means convincing them young brothers to do whatever they have to do in order to get the things that them emcees videos say they got.
But, yo... they ain't got.
So, how many more need to be caught shoplifting inside the Versace shop before we realize that they are not that successful.
And when Gil Scott Heron dropped Message to the Messenger, I really hoped that they would listen, but I'll tell you something
when the smoke clears them emcees gonna be all ears
when the smoke clears them emcees gonna be all ears
when the smoke clears them emcees gonna want to hear why BET don’t seem to be able to see as well as Univision.
Ninety-nine percent of the time pimping the worst parts of capitalism through record company ho's, platinum coated egos, putting out bullshit lyrics hyper marketed to supercede those revolutionary mantras of yesteryear.
Si si watu
weusi watu wazuri
pamoja tu tashinda
pamoja tu tashinda
We are black beautiful people.
Together we will win
Together we will win.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, emcees been going from record sales to prison cells.
From standing outside of strip bars to stripping behind bars: being stripped of their clothes, jewelry and cars.
Ass out, holding their jaws...
Ass out, holding their scars...
Ass out, holding their drawers...
while record execs continue to puff on fifty dollar cigars looking at pop charts trying to figure out how they are going to make the next self-deprecating black star
and, because there is so much apathy in the ghetto, they ain't gotta look far
and, since talent is no longer necessary, no matter where they look, there they are.
Thinking that hip-hop is ever going to return to the high lyrical content of the late eighties is absurd.
Cats no longer want to follow the leader, now they want to follow nigga' killers and black woman beaters and since no one forces us to watch BET and since no one forces us to buy them garbage-ass CDs and since no one forces us to support them no-talent-having-petty-thieves, I guess we simply get what we deserve.
Because if we really wanted to elevate ourselves through lyrical content in this new millennium, we would just listen to spoken word.