Let me just say that the new Eminem album is pretty damn good. It’s a journey; a session on the couch of Eminem’s shrink replete with Ice Cube-style power rap, angry lyrics about those who have wronged him (ranging from his mother to Tipper Gore), yet tender near-ballads tipping his hat to his daughter Hailie, whose name appears in the lyrics nearly as much as the dastardly United States government. I liked this album from the moment I pushed play - the beats laid by Em and his collaborators such as Dr. Dre are catchy, and the emotionally drenched lyrics are enthralling. I find myself just wanting to listen to the album -- not as a backdrop to reading a book or other activities -- but listening to the album as an experience in and of itself. Some songs make you want to get up and dance (like the first radio hit, Without Me), others lure you out of your seat in fist-pumping shared rage (such as the album opener, White America.) Eminem lays it all out for us -- what's happened to him, his family, and his country since his 2000 release, the Marshall Mathers LP.
Eminem has been regarded as a controversial artist for years. I don’t think the controversy he spends so much time lamenting is as undeserved as he claims – through his lyrics, videos, and his headline-making personal life, he’s cleverly manipulated the media into giving him lots of free press. He’s even cooked up alter egos to share the spotlight with. But it’s a method that works. Whether positive or negative, every time his name is mentioned on television or in print, more albums are sold. The Emninem Show has spent six weeks at the top of the charts, and not without good reason. In listening to the album the overriding feeling I walk away with is that it’s so very honest - it’s funny, it’s angry, and at times even scary. People are taking notice and spending their money on it.
The album’s first single Without Me kicks off with the addictive lyrics, “Two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside, round the outside” and only gets better as it goes on. He raps in double-time over catchy old school beats of how everyone from the FCC to MTV brings him down but the world feels so empty without him. And you know something? Now that he’s back with such force, I realize how empty it really is without him. Even Moby isn’t safe from his lyrical wrath in this selection, yet even to the lyrics that I don’t completely agree with, I find myself tapping my toes.
In Hailie’s Song, the ode to his daughter, he actually takes a stab at singing, confesses to his insecurities and his softer side, and pulls off a slow song as well as any of the brasher works on the album. He talks about wanting to give Hailie a better life than his, lending a tender side to the often otherwise misogynistic lyrics elsewhere in his work.
White America is a wake up call about how race is still prevalent to record sales, how artists are accountable for the messages they transmit, and how we must constantly fight for our freedom of speech. These messages and more are delivered with in-your-face, frenetic vocals from Eminem. In speaking of the secret of his success, Em refers to his audience’s approval of his Dre-backed music. “That’s all it took, and they were instantly hooked right in, and they connected with me too because I looked like them.” As I learned throughout this album, the lyrics speak for themselves and summing them up seems superfluous, like trying to rewrite Shakespeare. As Eminem stated in a recent interview with Rolling Stone when asked where he is his most honest, “In the songs. ... Why do I have to sit here and explain myself? Just listen to the fucking songs. They will tell you everything.”
Eminem dares to say what others only think about, and he has grown not just as a person but as an artist, with this album, right before our ears. The music itself is likeable, even if unremarkable - it acts as the waves on which his vessel of message sets sail. There are some ol’ standards present – the signature “duet” (this time in Sing for the Moment he partners up with a sample of Aerosmith’s Dream On ), and of course no rap album would be complete without an STD song (Drips). Still the music is powerful and addicting -- soaked with catchy riffs and beats. It will make people angry, it will make people think, but ultimately it will make people dance.
It’s a refreshing change to have an entire album that impresses - The Eminem Show has been on continual loops in stereos since May when bootlegged copies circulated weeks before the album’s actual release. The listening audience is fickle, though, and it’s tough to say how long this album will reside at the top of the charts. Who knows, it could be a repeat of the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, which we all raved about and danced to non-stop upon its release, but within three months we had completely tired of it. Even Eminem’s nemesis Moby was on constant repeat with his last album Play, but when I hear it now I run from the room. As long as it doesn’t get driven into our ears ad nauseam in the months to come, The Eminem Show will be a noteworthy album in many collections years from now.
And now, let’s take Em’s advice and let lyrics speak for themselves.
-And suddenly it seems like my shoulder blades have just shifted – it’s like the greatest gift you could get, the weight has been lifted (about being awarded custody of his daughter in Hailie’s Song.)
- I’m just playing America, you know I love you. (surprising disclaimer at the end of White America)
-There’s no such thing, like a female with good looks that cooks and cleans (Business)
-Keep kicking ass in the morning and taking names in the evening. (Cleaning Out My Closet. Also listen for the clenched-teeth “Ma”s he punctuates his statements to his mother with. Ouch.)
-Lyrics lyrics, constant controversy, sponsors working round the clock to try to stop my concerts early. Hip hop is never a problem in Harlem, only in Boston, after it bothered the fathers of daughters starting to blossom. (White America)
-Look at these eyes, baby, blue baby, just like youself. If they were brown, Shady lose, Shady sits on the shelf. (White America)
-I’d slice my gums, get struck by fuckin’ lightning twice at once and come back as Vanilla Ice’s son, and walk around the rest of my life spit on, and kicked and hit with shit everytime I sung, like R Kelly as soon as “Bump and Grind” comes on (when reflecting on the worst case scenarios in My Dad’s Gone Crazy)
-I do know one thing though. Bitches, they come, they go. (Eminem’s bi-polar relationship in Superman)
-Psychotic, hynoptic product, I got the antibiotic (From Square Dance –also listen for the gothic piano and strings in this one.)
-What's gotten into me? Drugs, rock and Hennessey. (Square Dance)
-Shady’s back. Tell a friend.
