Most readers will associate Eminem with the dawn of the 21st century, when he became not only the most popular rapper of all time, but also one of the biggest global pop stars. Following the tetralogy consisting of The Slim Shady LP (1999), The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), The Eminem Show (2002) and Encore (2004), as well as his biographical film 8 miles (2002), it is possible to think that many lost track of him and that his popular impact was declining. At the same time, specialized critics and social networks saw Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and Drake as the new kings of hip hop or the so-called New Pop.
In fact, the figures do not indicate that Marshall Bruce Mathers III (Missouri, USA, 1972) has fallen into decline in popularity, but quite the opposite. Each of the seven albums he has published since then has been a sales success. Some as notorious as Recoverywhich was the best-selling album in the world in 2010 and is still the highest-grossing digital album in history. Kanye West topped every best-of list that year with his masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasybut Eminem sold more. In 2020, when he surprisingly released Music To Be Murdered Bybecame the first artist to string together ten consecutive direct number 1 hits on the US album sales charts. Eminem was the best-selling artist in his country in the first decade of the 2000s and third in the 2010s. If we measure his popularity according to the indices of 2024, that is, on Spotify, he triumphs without palliatives: he is the seventh most listened to artist in the world, fighting hand to hand with much younger artists.
“His quality as an MC remains as sharp as ever, and his huge fan base is there for it. Let’s just say his product, which is his rhymes, hasn’t withered over the years, and despite being a successful millionaire, he doesn’t make too many public appearances like other stars or celebrities“He’s a character, and he doesn’t tire. On the contrary, he lets himself be missed,” says Johann Wald, former presenter of MTV in Spain and current commentator on current music events on Radio Primavera Sound. His fellow radio host Ben Cardew, an Englishman living in Barcelona, adds that “he’s a character, with a strong brand. Everyone knows who Eminem is. He’s like a caricature, easy to sell. Technically, he’s also a brilliant rapper. As Questlove recently stated, Eminem may not have anything else to say, but he has quite the talent to say it.”
On July 12th, and preceded by a single that had some success entitled Houdini (nothing to do with Dua Lipa’s eponymous hit), the Detroit-based rapper released his twelfth studio album, titled The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), in which he stages the death of his most popular alter ego. The promotional campaign had begun a couple of months earlier with a fake obituary of his character in the newspaper The Detroit Free PressAt the time of writing, the album has only been to number one in Australia and New Zealand, but there has been some buzz about whether it will dethrone Taylor Swift from the top of the US charts (The Tortured Poets Department (It has been there for twelve consecutive weeks.) There is even a certain curiosity to see if it manages to maintain its hegemony in the field of urban music, where Kendrick Lamar and Drake are currently breaking records. streaming brought about by their endless rivalry.
Where he has done badly is in the field of criticism, where he is receiving the biggest blows of his career (right now his scores are 49 out of 100 on the aggregator Metacritic). As an example, this is what Rob Sheffield has written in Rolling Stone: “He’s still young, barely 50, but he takes enormous pride in holding on to the opinions he formed in his teens and speaking out. Still blaming women for his problems, scared of trans people, enraged by the idea of weird people doing weird things and still complaining about his mother? He’s begging to be cancelled by audiences who don’t think about him and have no idea what he thinks of them.” According to Ben Cardew, also a music journalist freelance that he has written for The Guardian, NME and Pitchforkamong other publications, “the concept, a sort of final showdown between Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady, is interesting and a clever way to approach an album as a middle-aged rapper. But frankly, the results are a little boring.”
How to overcome “cancel culture”
Since he emerged into the mainstream in the late 1990s, Eminem has always been associated with controversy, although not always in the most conventional or expected way. He had a turbulent childhood and youth, marked by violence on the mean streets of Detroit and by domestic abuse. He also made good use of the fact that he was a white rapper in a scene dominated by blacks. “He was embraced by the entire African-descended hip hop community, and in particular by producer Dr Dre,” says Johann Wald. “From then on, Eminem had what very few white rappers have achieved: street credibility. As soon as the industry managed to elevate a white rapper, it was a given that he would triple the sales of the most successful black rapper of any era, and that phenomenon has not been repeated since.”
His lyrics have often been accused of inciting violence, misogyny and homophobia, but he has always avoided taking them literally since he invented his alter ego Slim Shady, who would be something like the spokesman for the darkest tendencies that lurked in his mind. He could also be interpreted as a semi-comic character, like a psychopath from a horror movie franchise. So much so that some people describe his musical style as horrorcoreBen Cardew notes that “even on the new album, Eminem still inhabits those two personas. Slim Shady says horrible things and Marshall Mathers apologizes, and I think that gives him a kind of denial when it comes to interpreting the lyrics as an apology for something.”
The controversies, of course, have been striking. On the subject 97 Bonnie & Clyde (included in The Slim Shady LPfrom 1999), narrated a trip of the character with his young daughter to get rid of his wife’s corpse, while in Guilty Conscience incited a man to murder his wife and her lover. It seems easy to discern the difference between fact and fiction in these cases, but Eminem’s mother did not see it the same way, and took him to court for defaming her on the album (she won the case, by the way). After an attempt at suicide by cutting his wrists, it was his then wife, Kim Mathers, who sued him for fantasizing about her violent death in the lyrics of the song. Kimincluded in The Marshall Mathers LPfrom 2000. In another of the hits from that album, The Real Slim Shadyaccused singer Christina Aguilera of performing oral sex on Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst and popular TV host Carson Daly, while in her other most popular single, Stanhe played the role of a disturbed fan who, apparently influenced by Eminem’s songs, murdered his pregnant girlfriend and then committed suicide.
Despite all this, there are not many known attempts to boycott the rapper. The most talked about was the one that the association GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) tried to organize in 2001 because they considered his lyrics homophobic. When it was announced that at the Grammy Awards ceremony Eminem was going to perform Stan with Elton John, the association tried to stop it. In reality, the darts were not so much against the rapper as against the author of the song. Candle In The Windwhom they saw as a kind of traitor. The fact is that the endorsement of a gay icon like Elton John served a lot to legitimize the rapper in the face of hard-line defenders of political correctness. “I think there is a lot more humor in his album than people think. It appeals to my black English sense of humor. We live in an era of political correctness where you can’t say this or that. I honestly don’t think people will start attacking and killing other people because of this album,” he said in regards to it. Madonna also took a stand in his favor, declaring at the time: “I like the fact that Eminem is brazen, angry and politically incorrect. He’s stirring things up, he’s provoking a discussion, he’s making people’s blood boil. He’s reflecting what’s going on in society right now. That’s what art is supposed to do.” Even Irish writer and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney praised him in 2003, saying: “Eminem has charged up a whole generation. He has done so not only with his subversive attitude but also with his verbal energy.”
In interviews, the artist always clearly expressed the dissociation between his ideology (egalitarian and inclusive) and the content of songs that were fiction. It was not enough. Other musicians such as Moby confronted him, arguing that his misogyny and homophobia were unacceptable, to which Eminem responded with another hit, Without Me. Later, both musicians came to good terms, especially since the rapper took a political stand against George W. Bush in his song Mosh. There the controversy came from another place: the secret services of the US government investigated him considering that, in the lyrics of We As Americanswas threatening to kill the president. With the subject Just Lose It (included in Encorefrom 2004), it was Michael Jackson who took offense, considering that Eminem was making fun of him, both in the song and in the video. Some networks even pulled the show, although others, such as MTV, refused to censor it.
The truth is that Eminem’s controversial profile faded in the years following 2004 and, when he reappeared, it was from a lower profile. It was really nothing transgressive to mess with Donald Trump in 2017 because everyone was doing it, but he was again investigated by the secret services, again alleging possible death threats, this time to the president and his daughter, Ivanka. That same year, and after the terrorist attacks at Manchester Arena, it was the mayor of the British city, as well as some relatives of the victims, who protested because they considered the lyrics of Unaccommodating as disrespectful.
The fact is that, from his beginnings until now, Eminem has managed to stay at the top by avoiding the alleged hegemony of political correctness or taking advantage of it to obtain more media presence. Ben Cardew clarifies that the artist “emerged in an era in which the culture of cancellation was not so prevalent, and even today, people always expect him to say outrageous things.” “I don’t know if it’s because in his most imperial period, coinciding with his album The Emimen Showmanaged to create entertainment by being a joker without mincing words, and was accepted by inertia thanks to his enormous popularity. Perhaps, as he always positioned himself as a controversial artist, who played with provocation, he has been able to avoid cancellation. Being a recognizable enfant terriblewho from the first minute had unflattering things to say about his own mother or his ex-wife, nobody is surprised by any nonsense he may end up saying. It could also be that he has reached an age where young people woke They don’t care what this grown man has to say,” concludes Johann Wald.
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