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In the music video for “Gnat”, on Eminem’s latest album Music to be murdered by: Side B, Marshall Mathers, who wears a beard, is admitted to a treatment center for what we believe to be coronavirus. “They say these bars are like COVID,” Em raps. “You get them right off the bat.” It’s a reference to widely denied theories about the source of the COVID-19 virus, the sort of thing you might read on Facebook. At another point in the video, Eminem significantly removes his face mask to breathe on the camera – a disturbing visual even without the more pervasive anxieties of the pandemic. “I’m sick and I’m not going to cover my mouth the next time I cough,” he stammers before launching into the chorus. Later, Em reflects on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, the now-discredited drug popularized by Trump in the early days of the pandemic. It’s all familiar, though more exhausted, referentialism, the sort of thing that made Eminem’s run as America’s de facto shock in the early Aughts so prolific.
Back then, mocking the news and celebrities in a rap song was the height of political turmoil. These days things are different and Eminem has spent the last few years trying to understand where his voice fits in a more serious political moment. With 2017’s The comeback, the 48-year-old MC has tried to present himself as the only celebrity capable of bridging the deep racial divisions in our country. Our chief white rapper. (“In a country that claims its founding was based on the ideals of the United States / that killed its natives / made you sing that star spiel / to a piece of cloth that represents the ‘land of the free’ that made the people of slaves to be built, ”he proposed on“ Untouchable ”.) As a result, Em’s music, which has always suffered from a certain stubborn self-awareness, felt more and more strained and bloated, especially for a rapper whose real calling card has always been his ability to process. intricate syllable patterns like Tetris pieces. His genius is formal, not topical.
Music to be murdered by: Côté B, a surprise January follow-up Music to be murdered, is hardly devoid of the technical prowess that continues to make Eminem interesting to listen to. At the end of “Gnat,” Em launches into a signature beat-up trapeze act, weaving lines with genuinely fun dexterity. But where Eminem’s raw talent is sometimes present, he is clouded by a fixation on what looks like a mixture of personal and political grievances. Music critics, ungrateful fans, lying women, Trump, the coronavirus, police brutality, and gun violence are all equally frustrating for Eminem, making the album feel like the long political ramblings of distant relatives. Our chief white rapper, indeed.
It’s hard to understand why exactly we need a B side of Music to murder in the first place. The original, which came at the height of our year of discontent, was Eminem’s sequel to The comeback and found him hunched over in a confusing defensive position. Listening to the album, you’d swear he wasn’t one of the best-selling rappers of all time. That he had no Oscar and a widely recognized impact on the form and content of modern hip-hop. Yet despite all of Em’s gripes with the current rap game on the record, he opened up at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which could explain the decision to nail 16 more songs and call it an album. luxury.
With Side B, it’s more or less the same. On “Favorite Bitch,” Em hires eternal R&B collaborator Ty Dolla Sign to construct an overblown metaphor comparing music to women. “It will never be the same / Like the time we came from / From Nas to Pac, Rak ‘, Eric B. and Kane,” he rapped after asking the muse of the song if she would marry him again. On “These Demons,” Em’s frustrations focus more clearly on the listeners. “I want the new one, but old Shady,” he rapped, before adding “man, they keep moving the goal post, don’t they? For a song lamenting the inconstancy of the fans, you certainly have to go to the trouble of appeasing them. The track features Dallas rapper MAJ making a useful impression of Travis Scott and manages to cram into one verse a poorly thought out Mariah Carey diss, a reference to Collin Kaeperinick, the death of George Floyd, undo culture and the current recession.
On a song literally titled “Tone Deaf,” Eminem finds himself in what sounds like a South Park restitution of Hamilton, delivering lines like, “I see the rap game, then attack the verses / Turn yourself into a graveyard full of hearses,” before an extended gap on a sad with a middle-aged woman. More confusing, however, is how attractive Eminem is when he’s not complaining or trying to have a shock reaction. On “Killer”, a contagious game that could very well be a B-side of Tyga, his penchant for rhyming patterns that close like belt buckles makes it an obviously enjoyable listening. Its sinuous and elastic cadence is all the more powerful as it is not used in the service of political observations also on the nose for SNL.
And yet, like Lorne Michaels’ weekly series, Eminem is charged with what appears to be a responsibility of responding to the news. When President-elect Joe Biden authorized Eminem’s hit “Lose Yourself” for the latest ad in his campaign, the rapper may have finally been consumed by the political establishment. These days, his rants safely fall within the fringes of the mainstream turmoil, no matter how much he would like us to believe he always pushes the boundaries.
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