New Eminem Single: It Sucks!

Yes, this is my second Eminem-related article in two weeks. Sorry.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while (like, since the first post), then you know I’m a big Eminem fan. I’ve even spread my adoration to other blogs. I even got the underground shit that he did with Skam. So you can imagine the anticipation I felt for this morning’s premiere of “We Made You,” the first single from Slim’s first album in five years.

Anticipation and anxiety, that is. Despite a few decent songs, 2004’s Encore was a solidly awful record, the central theme of which being that Eminem had absolutely nothing left to say. (Seriously, one of the songs ends with the line, “I just did a whole song and I didn’t say shit.”) Still, it’s been five years, right? That should be enough time to get an artist’s creative juices flowing again.

Well, here’s the video:

Eminem - New Music - More Music Videos

So yeah.

Let’s start out with the positive: This is some seriously nice flow. Eminem’s rhyming ability was never really in question, but still, in the era of Lil Wayne, it’s nice to have a working rapper who will go to the trouble of constructing lines like “Look at all the massive masses in the stands/Shady, man, no, don’t massacre the fans.” Internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance—these are the things that made Em great on a technical level, and they’re all here in abundance.

I was going to name this post “New Eminem Single: It’s… Okay…” on the basis of the wordplay alone, but the more I listen to the song, the more disappointing it seems. First of all, it’s easy to get distracted from the flow when every word is delivered in the inexplicable, irritating accent that first appeared on Encore. And while the beat isn’t terrible, one sort of expects better from Dr. Dre.

But the main problem with this song is the utter shallowness of the subject matter. The sole purpose of the lyrics is to make fun of washed-up celebrities and reality-TV stars. Celeb-bashing was a part of Em’s act from the very beginning, but even the silly first singles used to mix personal confessions and social commentary with the schoolyard insults. And besides, Britney Spears and N*Sync were genuinely popular back in the day, so when Eminem made fun of them, it actually meant something. Bret Michaels and Lindsay Lohan, on the other hand, are basically famous for the sole purpose of being made fun of, so “We Made You” is about as insightful and caustic as an episode of The Soup. The Sarah Palin gag is obvious and a few months past relevance, but at least it might actually offend someone, somewhere. MTV is already trying to grab publicity through the supposed controversy inherent in Eminem’s lyrics, but I doubt anyone will care about this song enough to get mad at it.

I still want to believe that Relapse can be good, but at this point it seems unlikely. Sorry, Marshall. It’s because we love you that we expect so much of you.

UPDATE: Remember how I said that the Sarah Palin reference "might... offend someone, somewhere"? Apparently that someone is Bill O'Reilly, who claimed that the lack of a general outcry against the Palin parody in "We Made You" proves that the liberal media is hypocritically willing to accept misogyny as long as it's directed towards a conservative politician.

O'Reilly says too many stupid things in this video for me to go through them all, but to begin with, perhaps the reason that liberal groups aren't rising in protest against this song is not because they're brainwashed Democrat loyalists (party cohesion being a well-known liberal characteristic, of course) but because the song's just dumb, and not worth commenting on. Now, I could make fun of O'Reilly for inadvertently helping Eminem, since this type of "controversy" has always been the rapper's best source of publicity. But that would assume that O'Reilly actually believes in or cares about the issue he's bringing up, and isn't just making a mountain out of a molehill to boost his own ratings.

Also, Eminem has threatened to rip Hillary Clinton's tonsils out in "Role Model" and screamed "Fuck you, Tipper Gore!" in "White America." So he's at least a non-partisan misogynist.

2ND UPDATE: Why is this type so small? Fuck you, Blogger!