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Eminem: As the Left Turns
By Tom Smith
I was "turned on to" Eminem when my daughter's
fourteen year old friend asked me to cut her a CD of
tunes off of Napster in late December 2000. Just out
of curiosity I checked out the tunes she listed, one
of them being "Stan" by Eminem. It was obvious from
the first listening that we had here a new and fresh
talent. I went on to check out the rest of his tunes
and was blown away. While I struggled with the
appropriateness of the music for young kids, it was
clear that the social commentary was the most real and
honest that I have heard for most of the past thirty
years, with the exception of some rare punk tunes.
Not only was this guy Eminem giving voice to issues of
substance, most of which fit what I saw as the crisis
of American Men, but he was positioned in one of the
strongest areas in the history of pop music; another
crossover white guy exploiting a black genre. He rang
the big bell of contemporary American social issues
and at the same time assured himself a place in music
history no matter what else he did.
I then got very curious and asked myself how this low
life out of Detroit got where he is? Did he just
stumble into it or was there something he knew and
then exploited the situation? The first explanation
was in the music form itself, rap music. I was in
Attica in the mid seventies for pot and loved watching
the black guys banter. This essentially is the roots
of rap. I knew then that this was a special and
precious indigenous American art form needing a
vehicle. Five years later rap would come on the
scene. A large part of Em's (Eminem) charm is the
rap music itself and his skillful representation of
it. Because of my jail experience and subsequent
friendship with black men, I had developed an ear for
this style of art. So I knew right off that Em was
being true to it. But there was an added dynamic to
the music he was making, and that was that he was 100%
white which gave the music a whole other dimension. I
also had an ear for how white males expressed
themselves and Em was also true to that. You can
especially hear it in his song "Guilty Conscience"
that he does with Dr Dre (the Dee Barnes slapping
part). In that segment he is rapping true to form but
at the same time being his white guy self, very
different from how black guys would do the same rap
(more in your face and "edgy")
The next explanation that I came up with for his
stellar performance was in his life at the time he was
making the tunes. The first element was his early
"hook up" and procreation...he knocked up his
girlfriend and was trying to follow through
responsibly. He got a lesson that many of us never
get and those who do usually find out much later, and
that was divorce with kids for a father in America.
On top of that he was poor and saw in stark detail
that no one gave a fuck about him or his fatherhood.
On the contrary, he was actively oppressed by the very
people who were supposed to be representing him, the
democratic party with it's legions of blacks,
feminists and gays. He gives voice to this in one of
his songs when he laments about being criticized for
doing rap and not being black and he says, "I'm white
and don't exist" to the rest of the world. Then he
adds he wants the whole world to kiss his big white
ass. There's all kinds of other laments in his music
about this and being a father with no support from the
rest of society, some very touching and others
humorous.
Also out of his experience at the time he was writing
those tunes was the situation in pop music in the late
nineties. Most of the nineties were dominated by
female performers and the only male performers on the
scene might as well have been females (Eddy Vedder,
the "boy groups", etc). Even I was complaining at the
time to my young pre-adolescent son that his male
contemporaries were doing didley in pop music. I'm
sure this situation didn't escape Em and he clearly
makes jibes about it in his music. So his music and
the inordinate amount of testosterone that it contains
is in part most likely a response to that limp period
in pop music.
But the main reasons Em (Marshall Mathers III) has
done such wonderful work is thirty years of feminism
and all the balless men he has seen around him in his
twenty eight years of life. Any young man witnessing
this debacle of American Manhood would have to be a
fool if he didn't complain loudly. Yes, I know, most
young American Men are fools when it comes to women
and it isn't anything new. The only difference is
that in past times men had some semblance of power,
this is the only time in history where they not only
have no power, but are actively ruled over by women
(the feminist democratic party and those traditional
traitors of men, the republicans).
Maybe now with the emergence of a bold, honest and
talented American Man like Marshall Mathers the Third,
we will see American Men begin to be reincarnated.
Tom Smith
The American Union of Men (AUM)
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