My Love-Hate Relationship With Eminem
If Eminem ever spoke to R. Kelly on the phone I would assume it would go like this, “Robert..bro..you are not supposed to actually rape and beat up women in person, rape is only okay if you rap about it”
I remember the feeling as a kid when a Eminem song or music video would air. Eminem’s music was like stand up comedy. You were hanging on the edge of your seat waiting for his punchlines that were filled with un-filtered jokes about pop culture. Many of those jokes had subliminal and deeper meanings about politics and double standards. On his song “Who Knew”, off the classic Marshall Mathers LP, he called out the hypocrisy within society,
“Yall want me to fix my lyrics while the president gets his dick sucked?”
Clearly a shot a Bill Clinton who was president at that time.
I honestly do not think Eminem gets enough credit for his political music. There was “White America”, in which he literally calls out White America for being scared of what he represents, and “Mosh”, which criticizes Bush for his illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even in 1999, the same year as the Columbine High School Shooting Massacre , Eminem touched upon how the media and the world treats white shooting victims, while black people in the inner city were being gunned down for years.
“When a dude’s getting bullied and shoots up his school
And they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn)… and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it’s at
Middle America, now it’s a tragedy
Now it’s so sad to see, an upper class city”.
The Marshall Mather’s Album LP, is one of my favorite albums, mainly because of the production. I feel like every kid had that moment, when they thought they were a rebel, angry at their parents so they locked their door and allowed Eminem’s rage vent for them.That’s how I felt about Eminem growing up. Now at 25, I view him as being in the same boat as Brett Kavanugh and Trump. Both are people who oppress, yet claim to be the victims. For example, Eminem’s 2002 song, “Cleaning Out My Closet”.
“Have you ever been hated or discriminated against, I have- I’ve been protested and demonstrated against?”
I mean.. is he trying to win cool points or something?
People protested against him because he wrote music about killing people in their community. That is not an example of him being discriminated against. It actually reminds me of when people use the phrase,“reverse racism”.
Why would anybody protest against Eminem? Rap lyrics are just rap lyrics, purely entertainment. For example, Eminem performed a song about killing his estranged wife. She asked him not to perform the song but he did it anyway. After the concert she went home and attempted suicide.
But hey music is just music and entertainment. I would go as far as to say one of Eminem’s biggest legacy will be, desensitizing a generation of boys towards violence towards women.
Eminem’s misogynistic lyrics didn’t die off in the 90's.
In 2014, while in his 40’s, Eminem joked about the horrible incident in which the NFL player Ray Rice knocked his wife out unconscious.
“ But I may fight for gay rights, especially if they dyke is more of a knockout than Janay Rice/ Play nice? Bitch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain sight of the elevator surveillance/ ’Til her head is banging on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens.”
Eminem, is this supposed to be funny?
No man on earth can tell me this isn’t normalizing violence towards women. In this verse Eminem is also normalizing an even scarier epidemic, the abuse of black women, which is a whole different story.
People think an example of normalizing something would be him telling men to go out and rape and beat women. Turning an actual epidemic into a joke or a punchline is normalizing it.
I’ve compared Eminem to Trump many times and I still stand by that. No, Eminem is not a politician, but he probably has just as many fans, considering the fact that he has sold 100 million albums world wide. Most males in their 20’s-30’s grew up fans of Eminem, not Trump. When a person uses a world wide platform to promote or normalize violence towards a group of people, it is working towards the same goal as Trump.
One might say, “What about all of these other rappers whose lyrics are misogynistic? “It is not just Eminem.”
Show me one mainstream rapper who has rapped about slitting the throat of a woman or whose album cover was of their girlfriends body in a car trunk.
According to a study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, “22 percent of “gangster rap” portrays violent misogyny.
This same study showed that Eminem raps about violence against women 78 percent of the time. Violence against women was on 11 of the 14 tracks on Eminem’s, “ The Marshall Mathers LP”. It is clear, when it comes to rapping about violence towards women, Eminem is the greatest rapper of all time. Every album Eminem has made for the last 20 years has contained lyrics about violence against women. I get it, Eminem has mommy issues, but at what point does the guy look in the mirror and say ok, I am almost 50 years old, maybe I should vent in therapy and not put this message out? Then again, he is a millionaire and I am not. Why would he stop rapping about killing women though, it is clear his method of selling albums is working, right?
P.S. as it pertains to people who call Eminem the greatest rapper of all time, he is super talented but there are so many black artists whose flow is just as good as Eminem. Due to the fact that he is white he stands out more. This isn’t me hating. Eminem even admitted it himself in the song “White America”. Before Eminem, America had never seen a white rapper who could rap like black people. It is similar to when people “hype” white women that make twerking videos when black women have been twerking for years. People just aren’t used to seeing white women twerking, simple as that. Eminem is indeed a lyrical genius, but all I’m saying is I would have loved to have heard the type of music the legendary Harlem rapper, Big L could have put out, had he had the opportunity to have access to Dr. Dre’s musical production and was not murdered of course.