The Twisted Genius of Eminem
Eminem’s 13th studio album, “The Death of Slim Shady,” proves that the fifty-one-year-old rapper is as dexterous as ever before
To hear Eminem speak in interviews, it would be easy to miss his love for words. He talks at a below-average tempo and with a laid-back drawl that feels more suited to the late Euphoria actor, Angus Cloud, than it does the man who’s by and large considered the greatest rapper and lyricist of all time.
He makes little attempt to employ the vocabulary that makes its way onto the page in his songs. But walking away from interviews and with a pen and paper in hand, he comes to life with words and metaphors in a way that most writers and linguists could stand to learn a thing or two from.
Like the non-communicative dementia patient who begins to sing when the right childhood melody emerges, there’s a prowess with words the rapper possesses that lays dormant and comes alive on the lyrics sheet alone.
One could be forgiven for believing that the rapper who said, rather inarticulately, in a 60 Minutes interview, “I think it was, uh, one of the things that helped me, actually, was having to deal with the, you know, the pressure of just being a kid and, you know, having to deal with the bullies and stuff like that,” was a different person entirely from the one who wrote the following words, walked into a booth, and delivered them so seamlessly:
Album produced by Aftermath Entertainment and distributed by Interscope Records / lyrics slideshow compiled by Rinor Susuri EMINƎM
In the few years since the song was released, his skills have hardly dwindled. There was once a time when Eminem had something to prove. But the continuation of this abrasive brand of verbal flourishes and double entendres into his fifties can sometimes appear a little gratuitous and self-flagellating.
The world of rap often centers around superiority and which new rapper can be titled king and sit on the throne. And there’s probably no hip-hop artist that’s worn that coveted crown for longer than Eminem. But to wear that adorned headpiece of jewels at fifty-one and continue rapping as though he’s got something to prove comes across like beating a dead horse. At this late stage in his career, it’s neither the money nor the recognition that he needs now.
And yet, that’s no reason for the rap superstar to stop creating.
I’d hate for his verbal acrobatics to come to an end before his passion or talent even begins to fade. The art into which his skills are channeled, at best, still feels as fresh, ecstatic, and splenetic as ever before. But at worst, it can come across as feeling stale. It feels that there’s no opinion of his that he hasn’t yet found a way to contort and craft into fifteen different songs. According to drummer and producer, Questlove, he’s a man with maybe “nothing to say anymore, but… quite a talent for saying it.”
The challenge Marshall runs into is one to which many writers and creators can relate. Sometimes, there is no new story to tell and the best we can do is find a new concoction of words to express the same old idea. Just because an artist’s style and subject matter follows a formula doesn’t mean they should put down the brush. In verbal dexterity, Eminem still excels like no other.
To read from either RollingStone or Pitchfork about the album, it would be easy to be convinced it’s devoid of merit entirely. But in the decrees that the album missed the mark, I can’t help but see a certain denial of the sheer talent it took to create. It’s true that anyone can be a critic or yell at their TV when their favorite sporting team falters. In the repeated pronouncements that Eminem’s lost it and that he’s too old to rap, though, I see people telling Eric Clapton to put down the guitar or Yo-Yo Ma to set aside the cello.
“It’s what they do to the greats
Pick apart a Picasso and make excuses to hate,”
Marshall states in the song “Renaissance.” However niche or eclectic the trade, a tepid reception or a few bad reviews is no reason to throw in the towel on a life-long vocation. But Eminem’s fan base runs deep even while the message behind his words does not.
It’s no hyperbole to say Eminem is one of hip-hop’s quintessential talents. He’s one of the very best at what he does. But what he does — write posthumous diss tracks about Christopher Reeves, insult cripples and midgets, and tend to years-old feuds with hip-hop contemporaries and rap retirees alike — is something not everyone can appreciate. If his albums didn’t still unfailingly sell platinum, I’d call his work… avant-garde.
But even for someone like myself who couldn’t care less who sits on that hallowed hip-hop throne at the end of the day, Eminem’s boisterous, erratic love for language and lightning-quick articulation have always been enough for me to excuse his expanding cornucopia of questionable content.
It’s like you came from 2000, stepped out a portal, cursin’
Hurlin’ horrible slurs towards the world and
Why can’t you make fun of people behind their backs like a normal person?
But when you reach these heights, freedom of speech dies
Do I expect the lyrics above to fully impart the value I find in his music? No. It’s the delivery that needs to be heard to be appreciated.
Do I personally care about Eminem achieving a legacy that he had more or less set in stone and cemented over by the turn of the millennium? Absolutely not.
It’s his grandiloquent flurries of vocabulary that keep me coming back. It’s the verses with more metaphors than Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty have uttered in their entire career. It’s the songs with so many depraved similes to unpack that I can’t catch them all in twenty-five listens. There’s enough for a language lover to enjoy in the verbal acrobatics that it’s no challenge to excuse the literal meaning in words like:
Now back in the days of old me
Right around the time I became a dope fiend
Ate some codeine, as a way of coping taste of opiates, case of O.E
Turned me into smiley face emoji
My shit may not be age appropri —
Ate but I will hit an eight year old in the face with a participation trophy.
Perhaps an article from The Guardian summed up the album best. “The Death of Slim Shady is an album filled with memorable lines. Some are memorable because they display their author’s nonpareil skill as a rapper: they whiz past in a perfectly enunciated, rhythmically precise gust of homophones, references and wordplay. Some because their scabrous, nihilistic wit induces precisely the reaction their author presumably intends: a kind of horrified bark of laughter despite yourself, followed by a surge of guilt so overwhelming that you don’t want to highlight the line in question, lest you be damned by association,” explained author Alexis Petridis.
Like many of Marshall’s albums before it, The Death of Slim Shady tells a story. Slim Shady, the murderous, trash-talking alter ego that’s been by the rapper’s side since the mid-90s, is arguably the focal point of Eminem’s career. Slim is the quick-talking devil on his shoulder who’s courted controversy for the trailblazing rapper at every turn throughout his enduring time in the limelight.
Quickly coming up on retirement age, Marshall Mathers, the rapper’s real name, reckons with the way that this savage side of his personality has colored his perception in the media, and in the age of “cancel culture,” is less and less at home in the world around him. The changing political climate leaves the filterless alter ego rapping in a society less and less receptive to his words.
It’s for that reason Marshall decides that the infamous devil on his shoulder needs to die — but not without first dropping an admirably verbose series of slurs, insults, and syllables, paying careful homage to the controversy-checkered highway that led to this point in his career, and thoroughly clouding the line of where Eminem ends and Slim Shady begins.
According to Steven J. Horowitz of the Variety, “He’s a contradiction that allures, entirely capable of analyzing his own tribulations but not above sandwiching them between scat and rape jokes.” It’s true that as time has gone on, his work has boasted more and more of the adult understandings we’d hope to see of the middle-aged rap icon. “Temporary” and “Somebody Save Me” are penitent and introspective songs where he addresses his daughters and a life full of mistakes.
But each moment of self-reflection is squandered in a way that appears equal parts oblivious and by lovably objection-worthy design. The skits freckled throughout the album communicate a clear awareness of the hornets nests he’s spent his career ferreting into. He understands how his words are received and continues forward in his career with an obstinacy to critics. And that staple component of the rapper’s career is as alive as ever.
This article was originally published on Medium.
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