 A first look at the rapper's new album"I've created a monster," Eminem yells on "Without Me," the first single from his new album, The Eminem Show, due out June 4th. Whether he's talking about his alter ego Slim Shady, the daytime drama that was his personal life last year, the legion of worshippers who've adopted his haircut or the unstoppable beast of an album he's about to drop, that line perfectly sums up the rapper's state of affairs.
"Nothing I do is private anymore," says Eminem, sitting in the presidential suite of the Townsend Hotel, near his home in Detroit. "I usually feel like a monkey in a fucking cage with people looking at me. The whole Eminem Show concept was just, 'Fuck it, if the world wants a show, here the fuck it is; here's my show.'"
It's been two years since The Marshall Mathers LP, a time the rapper has spent mostly in court with his mother, Debbie Mathers-Briggs, his ex-wife, Kim, the Insane Clown Posse or John Guerra, the Detroit man he assaulted outside a nightclub because Guerra was kissing Kim. Eminem also found some time to tour extensively and produce an album by his homeboys D-12.
The Eminem Show, which he largely produced himself, is proof of an evolved Eminem. More than ever, he's an artist in control of his skills and his persona, and ready for the controversy that follows him closer than a pack of groupies. As he raps in "Without Me," "The FCC won't let me be and let me be me/So let me see/They tried to shut me down on MTV, but it feels so empty without me."
The new album proves what fans have known all along: Em can spit rhymes and freestyle with the best. But he's also a great storyteller with a talent for structure and honesty that's rare in rap. "Cleaning Out My Closet" is a funereal semi-apology that closes the door on Em's lawsuit-happy mother and absentee father (sample lyric: "Ma, remember when Ronnie [Em's uncle] died and you said you wished it was me?/Well, guess what, I'm as dead to you as can be.")
"Soldier" is a die-hard proclamation of his dedication to rap, to his daughter and to defending the respect he has won for himself. Other tracks include an Aerosmith-sanctioned remake of "Dream On," and "Square Dance," a bizarro do-si-do that takes on everything from ho's to Saddam Hussein.
The Eminem Show also marks Eminem's singing debut, on "Hailie's Song," an ode to his daughter that almost missed release. "I made it just for her," Em says. "I'm singing on it, for Christ's sake, or trying to. I wasn't going to use it, but I played it for a few people, and they really liked it. A few of them cried, actually, so I said, 'Fuck it, I'll put it out.'"
The original version was an interpolation of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." "From what I understand, he heard it before he passed and liked it," Em says. "He was going to allow it. I don't understand the political side, but his wife has control of the music now, and she said no, so I had to re-sing it all and redo the song."
The result is a touching ballad laid over Sunday-night lounge blues and rap-sung with more emotion than a nation of Linkin Parks. The sincerity in Eminem's words plays off his insecurity about singing, as well as the unresolved sadness about his divorce from Kim. "Divorce was the hardest thing I've ever been through," he admits. "I'm not bitter. I feel like a better person because of it."
There's always been a circuslike quality to Eminem's music and his life -- as he says, "My life is on blast" -- but in the course of three albums and a lifetime's worth of strife, he's achieved some kind of peace with his situation. "I have to tell shit like it is," he says. "What I sit around and talk about in a room with my friends -- why should I not come out and say it?
How would I sound talking about my theories and views and not going out and saying them in public? This is how I look at things, and if people don't like it, that's their choice. You don't have to agree with everything I say, but you put your shit out there for the world to judge. Everyone has their own opinion, they just don't get to project it to the world like I do. This is the music I make for the people who listen to it."
Or to put it as bluntly as he always does in rhyme, heed this warning from "Without Me": "This shit's about to get heavy/I just settled all my lawsuits/Fuck you, Debbie!"
ANTHONY BOZZA (May 3, 2002)
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