Whatever You Say I Am Page 4
In 2000, the American mood was also growing skeptical of the government and the good-times high began to dissipate as the economy turned downward. The country watched as Bill Clinton renamed the Oval Office and O.J. Simpson evaded a murder charge. Eminem was a joyous irreverent Bronx cheer, be it in the face of the marketed, pre-fab talent of teen pop or the authority of and blind belief in society’s leaders. It was solace to fans who found nothing for them on MTV and nothing but lies on the evening news. From the beginning, Eminem’s music was as hard to ignore as a turned-on television and every bit as saturated with images. How could a generation bombarded with sound bites and jump-cut visuals since birth not be immediately drawn to him?
The playful, vicious stylings that caught the world’s attention on The Slim Shady LP skewed darker on The Marshall Mathers LP, released May 23, 2000. One week later, Eminem was arrested outside of the Hot Rocks Cafe, a Warren, Michigan, nightclub, for allegedly pistol-whipping a man he caught kissing his then wife, Kim Scott. Less than twenty-four hours before that event, Eminem brandished an unloaded gun at Douglas Dail, tour manager for Insane Clown Posse, a schlocky white Detroit rock-rap group whom Eminem had mocked onstage and off for quite some time. The famous was turning infamous, as the rapper’s new album too closely predicted his life.
Despite his brushes with the law and the curse of the sophomore slump (in which an artist follows an amazing debut with a rushed, less-than-stellar follow-up), Marshall Mathers thrived. On his second album, Eminem evolved into a grade-A pop instigator—the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and a top-notch lyricist like Rakim rolled into one—who delved deeper into his own pathology and commented on the taste of celebrity he’d had in the past year. The snapshot of Eminem’s private life hinted at on The Slim Shady LP grew into a detailed collage on The Marshall Mathers LP. Gone is the predominant mood of The Slim Shady LP, the gleefully violent zaniness. The Marshall Mathers LP is rarely as perversely upbeat. It exudes a raw darkness, at once a challenge to and defense from the eyes of the world Eminem had begun to feel on him. The antics of his debut had won him the class-clown attention he craved; for better and worse, he now had more than he needed.
The Marshall Mathers LP, more than Eminem’s debut album, anticipated and assumed—and rightfully so—the fame and infamy that followed. The theme of the album isn’t a closer look at Marshall Mathers the man, as the title would suggest, but an explanation, criticism, and visualization of how and why he is the most misunderstood man in America. Eminem points out his deliberately inflammatory ways but he also portrays himself, Slim Shady, and Marshall Mathers as he would soon be seen by the mainstream—as one and the same, a moral criminal, a menace in the eyes of the nation, not as an artist but as a Pied Piper whom the kids love and the parents fear. In this sense, the album is aptly titled: After its release, Marshall Mathers was the man held accountable.
The Marshall Mathers LP sold nearly two million copies in the first week of its release, nearly breaking *NSYNC’s 2.25 million record. It debuted at number one, blowing Britney Spears’s Oops! … I Did It Again out of the top spot it had held on and off for nearly five months. At number twenty-nine the same week was The Slim Shady LP, enjoying its eighty-fourth week among the Top 200 records sold in the nation. In the following two months, eight million copies of The Marshall Mathers LP would be sold and the mainstream media would begin to comment, realizing this wasn’t a novelty. Only a year after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed twelve students and one teacher in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, mainstream culture was still searching for scapegoats in society. People were not ready for an artist so directly confrontational as to rap about his stolen machine guns and black trenchcoats (“Remember Me?”) or the sonic murder cinema of a song like “Kim.” Eminem would spend the year explaining himself by criticizing everyone else: parents who would rather blame entertainment than own up to their shortcomings, the media who judged an artist by his words out of context, and everyone incapable of digesting a complex piece of entertainment no more violent than an R-rated film.
Many didn’t agree with him. Throughout 2000 and 2001, Eminem’s concerts were regularly picketed by women’s rights and gay groups, culminating in a protest outside the forty-third annual Grammy Awards, at which, to illustrate the fiction and reality axis in his music, Eminem performed with openly gay singer Elton John and took home three statues to match the two he won for his work on The Slim Shady LP.
Though Eminem was reduced to the sum of his controversies in most of the newsprint around the country in 2001, the publicity brought record sales and exposure that eventually landed his name in Congress, delivered to a committee on the tongue of Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, who led a hearing on unsuitable violence in music. Despite and to some degree because of an older generation’s reaction to Eminem, he became a unanimous hero to the teenage music-buying public, even those who enjoyed the teen pop acts that Eminem routinely lampooned. His singles were played on classic-rock stations, alternative-rock stations, as well as Top 40 and hip-hop stations. His disaffected stance appealed to rebels of all stripes. To mainstream teens The Marshall Mathers LP was to boy bands what Nirvana’s Nevermind was to Guns n’ Roses in 1991, when hair-metal bands held the top of the charts even as the Seattle trio turned rock upside down.
A Mr. Shady to see you: Eminem, 2001.
Eminem spoke of situations many of his fans shared—broken homes, dead-end jobs, drug overindulgence—while exploring taboo emotions many couldn’t face—parental hate, gender hate, self-loathing. Eminem was the antihero who had ambushed the pop show.
By the end of 2001, Eminem had five Grammys in his trophy case and millions of albums sold worldwide. His fans were so diverse that he could carry a festival with rap-rock bands like Papa Roach on the Anger Management Tour as easily as roll with the hip-hop elite if they had organized a festival that year. He had the attention of the country—between his weapons-possession arrests, his foul-mouthed agitation, and his runaway success, even the unimpressed were watching.
Between 2000 and 2002, Eminem had lived a reality-TV life, his every move broadcast, his rhymed confessionals recorded. He touched his audience with music that is the equivalent of a cinematic, panoramic Survivor, Big Brother, and Making of the Band all in one—you could call it “The Rapper.” From the first line of his first single “My Name Is,” Eminem had provided a running commentary on his world, expanding the breadth of the subject matter to suit the steady increase in “viewers.” Unlike other reality shows, The Rapper’s star makes all the creative decisions, crafting the plot of his show in the editing room without an audience vote. As usual, Eminem’s elocution of the times was impeccable: America’s hunger for reality TV in 2002 and 2003 was insatiable. The Roman Coliseum of bad taste mediated by Jerry Springer in the late nineties evolved into a more stylized desire to be concerned and improperly involved in the lives of strangers for amusement. Shows like Married by America, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Joe Millionaire, The Family, American Idol, and the ironically titled (considering the B-level talent) I’m a Celebrity—Get Me Out of Here! filled a voyeuristic void in America and established a societal addiction (or affliction) fully entrenched in England and Europe.
Always evolving his sound, Eminem characterized The Eminem Show as being inspired by the seventies rock he’d grown up with, particularly among his relatives in Kansas City, Missouri, and in the white Detroit suburb of Warren. The beats on the album are generally not syncopated or complex; they are straight-ahead rock-and-roll rhythms that lay a simple foundation for Eminem’s verbal gymnastics. The album also ties together Eminem’s various styles—the lunacy of Slim Shady, the intensity of Marshall Mathers, and the savvy of Eminem—often in the same song, as in “Square Dance.” In this song’s second verse, Eminem interlocks polysyllabic rhyme patterns into consecutive lines, compacting the language until it is no longer possible to continue the structure, all while laying down as much of an antiwar sta
tement as Slim Shady is bound to make: “Yeah you laugh ’til your motherfuckin’ ass gets drafted.”
Despite critiques to the contrary, Eminem did not soften up to win mainstream acceptance. The Eminem Show is every bit as demented as his other albums. There is less homophobia, but there is just as much misogyny on this album, if not more. “Drips” is a cautionary tale about easy women who are out to steal your money and leave you with venereal diseases while “Superman” revels in a harsh groupie fantasy. Songs like “My Dad’s Gone Crazy” and the aforementioned “Square Dance” turn Eminem’s eye to terrorism by comparing Slim Shady to Saddam Hussein and claiming that Eminem has more pain in his heart than a little girl in a plane heading for the World Trade Center.
In a post-9/11 world, Eminem is less shocking, and understandably so. Zealots who don’t like America have beaten up on our country. The violence and hate in Eminem’s music that was once such a bone of contention for Lynne Cheney is the soundtrack of the times: America is angry, poor, out of work, misunderstood, and gunning for revenge, a country who has had it up to here and is ready to flush reason and act rashly. America had to understand Eminem in 2002—America had become Slim Shady.
The Eminem Show debuted at number one in the United States the week of May 23, 2002, and sold 1.3 million copies in its first week, going on to sell 7.6 million copies by the end of the year. The narrator here hasn’t created a monster, as he says on the album’s first single, “Without Me”; he’s written a play and he’s playing every part, including the audience and the theater critic; it is the stance of a savvy media manipulator. The release of 8 Mile in November 2002, however, brought a new demographic, or several, to Eminem’s table.
Where he’d live if he could: Eminem in the studio with rap legend Rakim in Los Angeles, 2002.
The film took in $54 million in its first weekend, and it ranked twenty-one in the year’s top grossers, landing $115 million in just two months. The film reflected the American dream just as Eminem reflected the American mood: Like a Horatio Alger story from the turn of the last century, the film’s protagonist, Jimmy “Rabbit” Smith, struggles against poverty and adversity and strikes out alone in pursuit of his dreams. The film is as full of hope as Eminem’s lyrics are full of rage; it’s as much a story of unity as Eminem’s lyrics are of alienation. It is the kind of story that renews a belief in the American way.
If Slim Shady had directed 8 Mile, it would be an X-rated horror porno. Left to Marshall Mathers, the hurt and angry misunderstood underdog, the film would be a controversial after-school special. But Eminem, the Hollywood player, was behind 8 Mile—the only one of the three personas who would think to wield the power of the big screen. The film was an outlet for Eminem to elevate his story to the universal plane, by translating it into more accessible terms. It was also an opportunity for him to recast preconceived notions, to explain himself better than a Barbara Walters sit-down, without the coaxed tears and soft lighting. The film showed exactly where Eminem was from, simultaneously reasserting his street cred and capturing a time and place where hip-hop was pure.
Eminem’s acting leap is logical: It is phase two of rap-career expansion, which generally follows the launch of an artist’s record label and clothing line, and if they’re as talented as Eminem, their efforts as a producer. By the end of 2002, Eminem had bagged them all, signing a deal with Macy’s to feature his Shady Ltd. clothing line, to be manufactured by Nesi Fashion Brands, the company that makes Jay-Z’s Rocawear, which made about $200 million in 2002.
8 Mile was the jewel in the crown, a showcase for Eminem’s considerable acting skills, before only seen in his videos. But, above and beyond the end product, the film was a stroke of public-relations genius, effectively distancing and differentiating Marshall Bruce Mathers III from his life on record better than any disclaimer of his or any critic’s analysis had. It allowed Eminem the space to express a range of emotions at once and in the eye of the public, so that he became, in playing a real, rounded person, a character, once again. The result is like watching a well-executed interview, conducted and edited by the subject. After so much self-defense, it was the rapper’s only recourse to clearing up the misconceptions about him. As with film reinterpretations of classic literature or world history, 8 Mile became, for those who weren’t already fans, the story of Eminem. It accomplished what Eminem had been trying to do all along: show the world where he came from so that everyone would understand who he was and, maybe, why he felt the way he did. In short, it focused the story for those who couldn’t see it through the music.
To paraphrase New York Times contributor Neal Gabler in his 1998 book, Life the Movie, Americans are so enslaved by cinematic and televised entertainment that we are no longer satisfied watching it on a screen, we want to live on that screen. So at the turn of the millenium we took a logical next step—we brought the screen to us and made entertainment out of our lives. From the billion-dollar beauty industry (including Botox and home chemical peels) at the ready to make anyone appear more like a celebrity, to the continued popularity of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Real TV, and the bushel of other reality programs that dominate prime time on the major networks, it is clear that, in one way or another, Americans want to be on the screen any way they can be.
Eminem is an example of the next level: a celebrity turning his life into entertainment before the public can. He does so, as it happens, while mocking the same trend. He’s the reality-TV music star, one whose series was expanded into a film after its third season. He exists as a whip-smart wiseass sitting in his own living room, watching his life unfold on the tube and laughing at it with his friends. Eminem’s view isn’t the gritty documentary eye of hip-hop’s best-known black lyricists such as Nas and Tupac. Eminem’s stance is in the control room, reveling in the camera angles, re-creating, in his image, the hours of television watched and comic books read as an antisocial introspective child.
8 Mile puts a twist on Eminem’s reality art that echoes fictionalized celebrity biographies past, all of which gained an advantage in the retelling. The film adaptation of Howard Stern’s autobiography, Private Parts, brought out the New York shock-jock’s sensitive side, portraying him as the odd, sex-obsessed nerd whom radio listeners knew him to be, but more empathetic than his years of berating strippers could allow. Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, starring reggae artist Jimmy Cliff as Ivan O. Martin, is an example closer to 8 Mile. Inspired by a legendary Jamaican 1950s gangster named Ivanhoe Martin, Cliff’s character was a more loosely veiled version of Cliff than of his gangster namesake. Set in the early seventies in Jamaica, the story starts with Cliff’s character leaving his family’s farm for the big city of Kingston with dreams of becoming a reggae star. Like the character he plays, Cliff spent his early years struggling against the corruptions of payola and poverty before making a name for himself, though the heightened international fame Cliff reaped from the role can’t compare to Eminem’s big-screen rewards: a seven-time platinum album, a five-time platinum film soundtrack, and an Oscar win for “Lose Yourself” in the best song from a soundtrack category. Eminem’s big-screen debut also bears a resemblance to Elvis Presley’s role of Vince Everett in Jailhouse Rock, not so much in the plot similarities of the two films, but in regard to the effect 8 Mile had on Eminem’s public profile. In Jailhouse Rock, Everett, a convict serving his time, meets a country-western singer who inspires him to pursue a life in music upon his release. Everett is quickly disillusioned by the music business until, with the help of a friend, he paves his own way to overnight superstardom. Everett is given a new lease on life by the music business, just as the movie business transformed Eminem from a sinner to a saint in the eyes of mainstream America.
The timing was right for 8 Mile and Eminem’s redemption in the American pop-culture landscape. The country needed a real American story, that of a hero overcoming obstacles. In a year full of escapist fantasies such as Spider-Man; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets; Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones; and Men in Black II, 8 Mile reasserted a philosophy that America was built on (as Eminem says in the film’s theme song, “Lose Yourself”): “You can do anything you put your mind to, man.” The Lord of the Rings allowed Americans to root for the allies’ fight against a shadowy evil in a far-off land while our nation moved closer to war with a nation similarly portrayed by the government. But 8 Mile reminded people why they were fighting.
In 2002, Eminem was the cultural locus of America, the man who in just one year seemed to have garnered the entire world into his card-carrying fan club without having campaigned. In the weeks following the release of the film, “Eminem awareness” was even greater than it was when he was infamous. It was surreal watching who came on board as an Eminem fan. Even those he had cruelly lampooned had nothing but kind words. At the 8 Mile premiere, Christina Aguilera gushed, “Everyone has that right to get out and be artistic in any way, shape, or form and express themselves. I’m a big supporter of someone who’s trying to go out there and do their thing.” Barbra Streisand’s reaction was supremely strange: “Most of the language I couldn’t understand,” she said of 8 Mile. “It was like watching a foreign film. But it’s a real slice of life. This kid Eminem is really interesting, I can relate to the truth and I can relate to the emotion and I can relate to him in some strange way. I was raised in the projects, I was born in Brooklyn. We were poor. I relate to that stuff because it’s my heritage. That’s a big part of me, that kid playing in the street.” Strangest to see, though, was Eminem as the topic of coffee talk on The View in December 2002. Cohost Mererdith Vieira admitted to liking him, as did guest Whoopi Goldberg. A short discussion ensued when the raspy-voiced Joy Behar reviewed 8 Mile as if it were a home movie from the Mathers’ family archive and predicted that Eminem would lose credibility with his fans for appearing vulnerable in the film. “Once a tough guy like that shows he’s vulnerable, it’s over,” she said. “No one wants to see that.”