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The War
By Charles O'Brien
Peace
Timothy Mayer
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© 2001, 2002 First of the Month
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Genius — Not!
Eminem Melts in Your Hands
By Armond White
A knowledgeable hiphop lover’s list of the best rap artists
would not include Eminem, the 30-year-old white rapper (born
Marshall Mathers III) from Detroit. Lacking Scarface’s
sonority, Chuck D’s vision, Biggie’s fluency, L.L. Cool
J’s flair, Slick Rick’s humor, Jay Z’s brilliance,
Ice Cube’s astuteness, Rakim’s flow, Ice-T’s
roguishness, Flavor Flav’s ingenuity, Snoop Dogg’s
slyness, Eminem’s critical acclaim is due not to vocal
virtuosity or verbal mastery. Instead his endorsement by the
mainstream media has everything to do with the spectacle of
whiteness. Even some black rap fans participate in this adoration;
they’re grateful for white attention to a black cultural form,
even when the goal is to expropriate it. Eminem’s assertion of
underdog status — imitating the black rapper’s
stereotyped vitriol — actually works to reinforce racial myths that
separate whites from blacks. That’s why Emimen — and not the
rappers mentioned above — has been acclaimed a genius.
Eminem appropriates styles of speaking and behaving that white
pop audiences have coveted since Norman Mailer’s 1958 essay
“The White Negro” brought race-envy out of the closet. This was
confirmed last summer when The New York Observer asked
oldster journalists Paul Slansky and Janet Maslin for testimonies
to the white rapper. Soon after, the Village Voice’s
Robert Christgau raged against a colleague, Richard Goldstein, for
calling Eminem homophobic. Goldstein dared to challenge
Christgau’s (and the media industry’s) coronation of
Eminem as “a genius.”
Eminem’s songs deflect attention from the inequalities that
derive from racial oppression. Never identifying with blacks, he
avoids expressing solidarity with the frustrations black rappers
feel. And that’s not simply because his experience as a white
suburbanite is different; his industry triumph depends on asserting
the privilege of being white in America — the prerogative to whine
about petty shit while leaving one’s “brothers” behind.
It is this malcontent’s style of white rap — as opposed to
the good-time rapping of Vanilla Ice, Beastie Boys, 3rd Base, Kid
Rock — that reinforces racial polarization. Eminem limits
hiphop’s usual themes (songs that variously recall the
tradition of social protest from Negro spirituals and Civil Rights
era agitation) to mere juvenile griping, trashing rap’s
political potential while connecting to the triviality of corporate
pop. This has been praised as Eminem’s “rock move,” an
assessment that (in its very reliance on rockist attitude)
only mystifies social and cultural difference. Anthropologists
agree that race is an unscientific concept, but rock critics
won’t admit that Eminem’s swaggering racial identity
satisfies their own need for advantage over other people, citizens,
artists.
Eminem has to be proclaimed a “genius” (the same way Christgau
ordained P.J. Harvey a genius while never so honoring Mary
J. Blige’s musical expression of personal female dilemma) in
order to sustain the group-esteem of whites. This mindset rules the
major institutions of pop journalism (Eminem’s
Vibe and Rolling Stone and New York Times
cover stories) and now the film industry (with the release of
Eminem’s mediocre movie 8 Mile). Indifferent whites
always thought rap was a sociopathetic art and Eminem’s
aberrant imitation seems to confirm their misperception. His
belligerence is respected as if it came from a deeper hurt, a
smarter head than those squabbling Negroes. None of this
indicates the arrival of a great or innovative artist; it’s
the old story of racial aggrandizement — the pressure to
distinguish one mischievous white from hiphop’s horde.
Behind this white-as-genius charade is the notion that black
artists live through their bodies not their minds — a prejudice
that bebop fought against in the 50s and that hiphop should have
countered definitively. In the 80s, it was explicitly disputed by
the r&b-inspired postmodernism of white artists like Green
Gartside, whose group Scritti Politti put an academic gloss
on the musical structures and vocal expressions that were
taken-for-granted (that is, considered un-intellectual) when
employed by Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson or Debarge.
(Green’s interviews, cover-art and studio collaborations with
Miles Davis, Chaka Kahn, Marcus Miller were veritable footnotes
citing black genius.) Despite the creative deconstruction
and reflexivity in innumerable hiphop compositions, artists from
Public Enemy to De La Soul, Son of Bazerk to Jay-Z have never
received the commendations immediately heaped upon Eminem. Denying
them praise is fundamental to racist hegemony. It implies that
before Eminem there was no genius in hiphop.
This is how pop media works: There were too many Beastie Boys to
focus the same white-media admiration — plus, the over-celebrated
Beasties weren’t much interested in playing out the separatist
overtones (after all, they’re Reform Jews and Buddhists). But
Eminem reaps the benefits of playing to white nationism. (“I never
would have dreamed in a million years I’d see/So many
motherfuckin’ people who feel like me/ Who share the same
views and the same exact beliefs ...”) He emphasizes grievance
without inquiring into its social/political roots — a method of
rabble rousing as old as Dixie.
Love will bring us together, as fellow Detroiter Kid Rock knows,
rising out of the Motor City’s white working class with loud,
funny tales of ambition and lust and black-white awareness. But the
anger shtick keeps Eminem singular — a lightning rod not just for
gay and feminist groups offended by the epithets and taunts in his
lyrics but also for the subconscious resentments of empowered,
“liberal” whites. Eminem’s bitterness connects with their
sense of entitlement and his rap venom unloads their hidden fear of
losing power; giving them leverage (pop cred) against all those
highly vocal, aggrieved young blacks who have previously commanded
the cultural stage.
Thus Maslin’s approbation: “A lot of what [Eminem] says
makes me uncomfortable but the bottom line is if it’s good you
have to acknowledge that. And it is. It’s very cathartic to
listen to him.” One wonders if Maslin felt catharsis from Geto
Boys’ “Still,” Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care
About Us,” Public Enemy’s “Nighttrain,” Morrissey’s
“Nobody Loves Us”? Similarly uninformed, Paul Slansky says: “There
should be no stigma attached to being an Adult who loves Eminem.”
Desperate to appear with-it, these middle-aged writers outdo the
embarrassments of naïve young record-buyers who confuse
Eminem’s belligerence with brave truth.
No artist can be blamed for being what he is not, but when
Eminem’s unenlightened tirades are over-praised, his specious
stance must be closely criticized. Rather than a figure of cultural
resistance, he’s the most egregious symbol of our era’s
selfish trends. With his bootstrap crap and references to rugged
individualism reminiscent of the 80s, he’s a heartless
Reagan-baby — but without the old man’s politesse. Unlike most
black rappers, Eminem rejects fraternity and his hostility
toward women (his mother and babymama in particular on the songs
“Kim” and “Cleaning Out My Closet”) betrays rap’s usual call
for social unity. His first single, “My Name Is” confessed a
carefully calculated psychosis; Eminem’s multiple
personalities (including Slim Shady) conveyed the bewilderment of
reactionary youth. His three albums of obstinate rants culminate in
the egocentric track “Without Me,” making him the Ayn Rand of rap —
a pop hack who refuses to look beyond himself. On the song “White
America,” he asks “Have you ever been discriminated?” insulting
blacks but shrewdly alerting his white-flight constituency. It
suggests that Eminem speaks the feelings of poor, disenfranchised
whites but that’s mostly a marketing myth. I observed at an
8 Mile screening that his most enthusiastic audience are
those middle-class, middle-aged whites reveling in the peculiar
animus they feel towards Americans who might be gaining on
them.
***
Eminem has become a star for exactly the reasons the media
excoriates black rappers — his enmity and anger. Saying it’s
white folks’ turn to vent, however, isn’t the same as
acclaiming this rapper — out of all rappers — a genius. That
belittles rap as mere aggression. But minus righteousness, angry
rap is dismissible. Rap is exciting when it voices desire for
social redress; the urge toward public and personal justice is what
made it progressive. Eminem’s resurrected Great White Hope
disempowers hiphop’s cultural movement by debasing it. His
“Soldier” gloms on to black rap’s rebel posturing but
its “controversy” and “playa hating” are clichés. It makes
no original statement like Biggie’s “Mo Money, Mo Problems” or
Willie D’s “I’m Goin’ Out Like a Soldier.” And
nothing’s duller than a pop star calling himself radical or
complaining about being rich. “This is not a game this fame...No
one ever puts a grasp on the fact that I sacrificed everything I
had,” Eminem says in “Say Goodbye Hollywood” (a tune more like
Billy Joel’s lugubrious ballad than L.L. Cool J’s
funny-rueful “Goin’ Back to Cali.”). How spoiled, how
appalling!
“Cleaning Out My Closet” is even more petulant, with its draggy,
flat final accent — a dull, mean flip of Tupac’s “Dear Mama.”
There’s no emotional development here, no compassion;
it’s a thoughtless, ponderous song. (As a black female BET
comic said, “How you gonna teach your daughter to love by refusing
to let her grandmother ever see her?”) But reviewers overlook the
pettiness of Eminem’s attitude. “Imagine witnessing your mama
poppin’ pills in the kitchen,” he raps. Less sympathetic than
the Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper” or “19th Nervous
Breakdown,” its cock-rock arrogance sets a new low in hiphop
sexism. Malcolm McLaren’s pioneering ‘80s Buffalo Gals
project offered an affectionate example of cultural borrowing with
ebullient female metaphors (and featuring ersatz do-si-dos sampled
on “Without Me” and “Square Dance”) but Eminem simply steals from
McLaren and rejects his cross-cultural positivity. Even “Square
Dance’s” lyrical climax is lame and repetitive: “Nothing moves
me more than a groove that soothes me/ Nothing soothes me more than
a groove that boosts me/ Nothing boosts me more suits me
beautifully/ There’s nothing you can do to me/ Stab me shoot
me/ Psychotic hypnotic product/ I gotta take antibiotic/ Ain’t
no body hotta and so on/ And yada yada gotta talk a lotta/ Humm de
le le lada/ Oochee walla walla/ Hmm de dada dada/ But ya gotta
gotta.” Fact is, you gotta be ignorant of the past year of hiphop
to think this is anything but derivative. And his threat “to ambush
this Bush generation” never rises to the level of the stinging
political commentary in PE’s cogent jibe “Son of a Bush.”
“Square Dance’s” politics aren’t radical or genuinely
subversive — just a fretful rejection of any American
authority. Not biting the hand that feeds him. It’s mere
spite. The sputum of a Ritalin kid.
***
When Eminem invites Dr. Dre, Nas, Busta Rhymes, to “come square
dance with me,” he inadvertently exposes white pettiness, inviting
black rappers to join his pity party. Eminem’s meanness
overcomes no social obstacles and so must be heard differently from
marginal voices that express exhaustion, effort, justified
opposition. Boasting “I could be one of your kids. Little Eric
looks just like this/ Erica loves my shit/I go to TRL/ Look at how
many hugs I get,” he enjoys both the censure and the money the
white majority gives him. But he foolishly presumes he’s the
first pop star to fight for his right to be dirty/arty — “The ring
leader of the circus of worthless pawns/ March right up to the
steps of Congress and piss on the lawns of the White House/ To burn
the flag and replace it with an advisory sticker/ To spit liquor in
the face of this democracy of hypocrisy/ Fuck you Ms. Cheney/ Fuck
you Tipper Gore/ Fuck you with the freedom of speech this United
States of Embarrassment would allow me to have.” Ice-T and Luther
Campbell already made this argument. So did Twisted Sister. Yet
Eminem’s trite puns are supposed to pass for profundity.
He raps, “We sing for these kids who don’t have a thing/
Except for a dream and a fucking rap magazine” as if pledging
fidelity (keeping it real). But if he thinks capitalism works that
simply — or answers generational despair so easily — then he’s
a worthless, deluded folk fraud, shilling for the industry instead
of thinking his way through desperation. When Eminem shouts in
“White America” about “a fucking army marching in back of me,” the
reference is to that stunning MTV Awards moment when scores of
peroxide-blond white boys in t-shirts marched behind Marshall
Mathers into Radio City Music Hall — a processional toward media coronation
that was political as well as fashionable. A kid from
militia Michigan should know such a “rebellion” humiliates
democracy, rather than demonstrating its radical fulfillment.
It’s awful to celebrate Eminem’s juvenile manner, his
inability to work through personal/political issues. On
“Without Me” the line “This looks like a job for me” comes from
superhero comic books but really just describes a money-making
opportunity. Eminem’s carpe diem lacks any feeling for the
complex legacy of working class struggles, which should be familiar
to any Detroit area resident. Springsteen did much more with
work-life on Darkness on the Edge of Town. For
Eminem, factory town life, trailer park life, white working class
economic stress never even inspire a good, resonant couplet.
Speed rapping and over-rhyming instead, Eminem simply plays
back music critics’ praise: “Everybody only wants to discuss
me/ But this must mean I’m disgusting/ But it’s just me/
I’m just obscene/ Though I’m not the first king of
controversy/ I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley/ To do black
music so and use it to get myself wealthy/ Hey, here’s a
concept that works/ 20 million white rappers emerge/ But no matter
how many fish in the sea/ It’ll be so empty without me.”
Obviously, Eminem never heard Chuck D’s caveat, “Don’t
rhyme for the sake of riddling.” At least the song’s
la-la-la-la-la chorus is funny, blending with his whiney voice into
a bratty update of early Beastie Boys. White critics love the mischievousness; it’s a
bourgie outlet. But let’s be unfair for a bit and compare
“Without Me” to an Hypnotic Biggie boast: “My car goes 160/
Swiftly/ Wreck and buy a new one/ Ya crew run run run/ Da doo run
run” Biggie adopts the history of pop to portray his largesse, not
squeezing rhymes into one pinched scheme but expanding the rhyme
and rhythmic pattern. This is true genius rap and it gets better
when Biggie slides into a fantasy pimp scherzo:
Tell them hos,
Take they clothes off slowly
Hit em with a force like Obi
Big black like Toby
Watch me roam like Romey
Lucky they don’t owe me
When they say show me
Homie
The awesome, pop modernist range of Biggie’s references
cohere with the brevity and plausibility of the rhyme sources —
Star Wars, Roots, Frank Sinatra, the street — without
ever explicitly defining what comprises his fantasy world.
It’s sexual, criminal, historical, musical and, in the end,
what Eminem never is: affirmative.
***
Isn’t it time we stopped calling Dr. Dre a great
producer and overlooking the odious content of his material? (“I
lit a flame up under his ass,” Eminem raps, making no mistake who
the star is.) Anyone who’s heard the production that Jay-Z, R.
Kelly and Tone got on the dazzling but neglected The Best of
Both Worlds cd (or recalls how Hank Shocklee, Prince Paul and
Easy Mo Be redefined the art song and brought new vision to the
concept-and-party album) would know that Dr. Dre has competition —
if not superiors — in the game of beats, flow and thrills.
He’s done no production for Eminem that matches his work for
Snoop Dogg, Blackstreet or Tupac and that fact underscores
Eminem’s lack of originality. Taking behavior lessons from
drug-glamorizing, woman-beating Dr. Dre is bad business. Eminen
conspires with Dre to promote the worst kind of cynicism in the 50
years of rock and roll’s existence. You hear it most clearly
in “Stan.” Unlike the M&Ms candy from which Marshall Mathers
took his stage name, this song is not sweet and it melts in your
hands upon examination:
“Stan,” Eminem’s most celebrated track, folds an epistolary
rap into a horrorcore scenario. Eminem begins by portraying an
adoring but troubled fan whose letters get angrier when Eminem
doesn’t answer. (The fan locks his pregnant girlfriend in a
car trunk and commits suicide.) Critics impressed by the
song’s turgid O’Henry coda had already fallen for
Eminem’s political con, his pretense of embodying the
anxieties of white working class youth. Metal groups have told
similar tales with more panache. There’s merely self-pity in
Eminem’s version. (When he answers his fan with corny advice,
it’s too late). Dre gives Eminem a doomy soundscape, paced by
samples of Dido’s “Angel” that schmaltzes-up the fan/star
relationship. There is plausible pathology here (“Sometimes I even
cut myself to see how much it bleeds!”) but the solipsistic,
defensive braying has the same disingenuousness as Eminem’s
trailer-park demagoguery. In “Paint a Vulgar Picture” (1987)
singer-lyricist Morrissey of The Smiths evoked the lonely
working-class yearning that Eminem exploits by dangling the carrot
of pop fame. Eminem distorts hiphop fans’ enthusiasm whereas
Morrissey understands the classic star/fan dynamic — his song
is, by far, the greatest pop treatment of the way private desire
becomes public and obsession turns into critique. Trivial in
comparison, “Stan” appeals to American music critics (who were
apathetic to The Smiths’ ambisexual Brit pop) because it flows
with their sense that male vanity is sacrosanct. Suckers for
“Stan’s” false drama, their readiness to cling to
Eminem’s machismo was an early sign that enthusiasm for him
would be regressive
Here, in “Stan’s” quandary and desperation, we find the
conventional power mechanism behind Eminem’s straight white
male spectacle. “Stan” coddles male insecurities that Morrissey
queered by daring to offer a sensitive (romantic) insight that
challenged rock’s heterosexual hegemony (“In my bedroom in
those ugly new houses, I danced my legs down to the knees”) as well
as record-industry greed (“Reissue, repackage...slip them into
different sleeves/ Buy both and feel deceived”). Morrissey detailed
heartbreakingly mundane pop experience while Eminem only
sensationalizes and sentimentalizes it — a double-whammy
which suggests he’s cramped by a fear that empathy is weak,
unmasculine. But that’s precisely what makes Morrissey’s
perspective transcendent, subversive, humane.
The Pet Shop Boys’ disappointing answer to “Stan” and
Eminem’s homophobia, “The Night I Fell in Love,” also falls
for Eminem’s spectacle — unhelpfully eroticizing it as rough
trade, a negotiation with conventional (and hostile) masculine
symbolism. While their one-night tryst with Eminem can be heard to
offer an embrace instead of censure, it’s really a rare moment
of The Pets painting a vulgar picture, succumbing to hegemony.
Their song may be an object lesson in teaching-by-example, but
Eminem, a revanchist cultural figure, represents a stubborn
ideology. Christgau excused him by saying “The reason Eminem means
more than the Pet Shop Boys at his best is how provocatively and
passionately he [tests] the tension between representation and
authenticity that’s given rock and roll fans that funny
feeling in their stomachs for nearly half a century.” For some of
us, that funny feeling is nausea.
The best hiphop narrates the journey of boys into emotional
maturity. Goldstein’s essay decrying Eminem’s homophobia
pointed to the acceptance of hiphop’s backward turn.
Eminem’s tracks — unlike Morrissey’s or The
Pets’ — pander to juvenile bad-boyness (“I write fight music
for high school kids”) in ways that anyone over 13-years old
should see through. Hateful or ironic, his white Negro parody is
not a purposeful ruse. In the silly “The Night I Fell in Love” The
Pets are being pitifully forgiving — sissies — to ignore that
real art is about sincerity. They endorse Eminem, wanting to be
hip. Christgau and his ilk want to be young again and irresponsibly
free to hate.
Eminem has started something more twisted and complex than
ordinary ignorant behavior. He has perverted the way we perceive
hiphop’s history and promise through his degradation of
everything the culture previously stood for. Randomly choose any
pre-Chronic rap track — say, Ice-T’s
“Somebody’s Gotta Do It” — and, despite the crass
pimpology, the record exudes pleasure. Listen to the sounds, beats
to wordplay; there’s an expansive generosity you never hear in
Eminem. (“‘Yo, Ice, your homeboy Adnan Khashoggi called up;
wanted to borrow some more money.’ ‘No problem! Small
thing to a giant!’”) For three minutes hiphop joyously redeems
sexism, materialism, the whole rotten world. Eminem (screaming from
his little cell in “hell”) traduces hiphop’s oppositional and
affirmative roots — as did Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. But
this time the pop media makes sure that all benefits accrue to the
standard figure of American power: a hateful, selfish, childish
white male. The status quo, yo! When you hear Eminem get personal
on “Hailie’s Song” (dedicated to his daughter) it’s
hair-raising to realize how much enmity and pettiness he passes on
— bequeathing emotional death to his own child, and marketing it to
all America’s children.
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