Someone has to review the new Eminem album, The Eminem Show... I have just gone through it once and I had all these long and wordy thoughts I was going to offer but I won't. I don't think it is as musically cuitting edge as The Marshall Mather LP or Slim Shady LP, but it is deeply more personal, less operatic in scope (Slim Shady and Marshall Mather were two parts of one continual story).
The dude has always plumbed his personal life for his lyrics, but the tale of his mother's rejection and her various addictions were so poignant in Cleanin Out My Closet (and may be the first rap to rhyme the phrase "Munchausen's syndrome"). Kind of tore me up when he rapped, "Rememeber when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me, well guess what, I am dead, Dead to you as I can be." What is vividly clear is his love of his daughter Hailie. [Legal note: it was widely reported off the record in legal circles in Michigan that Hailie's custody with her father has never been challenged because he is an excellent, loving father.] His rap into his father abandoning the family when Em was a baby, he looks at his own child, and says, how could anyone leave their child? And the Em boy stops rapping and breaks into song on Hailie's Song. He probably maybe really can't sing despite his super rapper skills, which makes his love for his daughter more revalatory when he says, "I feel like singing." It is the most poignnat song about a parent's love for their child since Lennon's Beautiful Boy. (I say that recognizing this is still a rap song and it has some real rap characteristics.) I ended up playing this song over and over, substutuing the words "grandson" for "daughter" and "poppa" for "father" and other than a portion of the song that deals with Eminem's former wife, it works pretty good for Gage and me. The song ends, "told you I can't sing, oh well, I tried halie, remember when I told you if you ever need anything, daddywould be right here? Guess what? Daddy is here, and I ain't going nowhere, baby, I love you" and ends with the the sound of a kiss. I was surprised that Eminem took on big oil and the Bush administration in Square Dance. Some of his lyrics reminded me of the anger of late 60s political rhetoric and lyrics. There are some great beats, really great beats, and I never expected Arrowsmith's Dream On to make an appearance, and I rank it just behind Marshall Mathers as a great musical album. I was stuck that Eminem (who favoirably mentions Prince) shares with Joni a lyrical style, in that Joni and Eminem never write the very standard apply to anyone lyric but making it very personal, idiosynric. (Come one, does anyone sit in a bar and draw a map of Canada except Joni? So also Eminem makes his lyrics very particular to him.) Much of what was objected to (and I think misunderstood) from his earlier work is absent here, being so much more of a personal album. However, it is filled with words and phrases that while even Joni has said them, ie "fuck," Eminem uses them with much, much greater frequency and in many amazing variations. Not an album for the kids or weak of ear to hear. I hope Mike Y will come out of lurkdom and say more about this abu since he knows the genre far better than I, and has made much, much grerater contributions to understanding Eminem than I have or can. But I will close with this: I think Eminem is a musical genius, the complexitry of his music and the beats, the brilliant lyrics, the great wit and human insights, the opeartic way the music and rap work together. I had hoped that The Eminem Story would continue the sotry of Slim Shady and Marshall mathers LPs. It does not - it goes a different direction - and it verifies that thee is a true artist at work in this genre unfamiliar to most of us. It is easy to dismiss - but this guy is expressing feelings that are out there held by our kids, and expressing some of the most personal pain and angst that has been heard since Kurt Cobain. Of course as I am picking up people for church tonight, I suddently remember what wa sin the car cd player - made a quick cd eject! (the Rev) Vince NP: Eminem: Superman The words for Hailie's Song can be found at: http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics.php?sid=%24IxL%FC%5E%D8S
