Friday, 12 November, 2004
Our Shadows Will Remain
There's another series of Encore reviews out there that we'll get to shortly. Or at least after we get some sleep. For the moment, we figured we might as well get our own feelings on the record. Don't hold us to them quite yet. Give us a couple days to live with them. And a couple more listens to the album. But we think we think these things. Feel free to think otherwise (apparently, most everyone else does... so far). Because of the wonky release date it didn't come together in time for this week's column. But it will likely appear in some form next.
Note: This is largely unedited. And the sun is about to come up. So no guarantees.
***
Marshall Mathers was born in 1973, but he is very much a child of the 90s. His formative years were spent in a decade dominated by the twin pop culture personalities of Kurt Cobain and Bill Clinton - two men who came from nothing and ended up with too much, each ultimately defeated by their own success. Faced with the same proverbial crossroads Eminem finds himself at with his latest record, Encore (rush released this week to beat an Internet leak), they got ahead of themselves and ended up deceased and impeached respectively.
Mathers, the most self-conscious pop star since Madonna lost the plot, knows better as a result. And ever in control of his image and various alteregos, he has made his own Monica Lewinsky. Then put a gun inside his mouth and declared Eminem dead.
Though only some critics seem willing to come right out and say so, Encore is without doubt the worst record of Eminem's surprisingly short career. This is not the shock and awe of his debut, The Slim Shady LP. Nor is it as inventive or passionate as the follow-ups, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show. Even the spark of his most recent material, Lose Yourself from the 8 Mile Soundtrack, has all but faded.
Fittingly, it seeks first to close some of his still pending accounts. To those who deemed him a racist after hearing the ancient, but recently unearthed, mixtape on which he insults black women: he's sorry (Yellow Brick Road). To the other rappers he's beefed with over the last five years: he wishes to call a truce (Like Toy Soldiers). And to those who roll their eyes at his bleatings about the trappings of fame (as he does again in a soft-focus profile in the current issue of Vanity Fair: he realises his own absurdity (XXXX).
Oh, he still hates his wife. Still loves his daughter. And still blames his mother. But he's worried about the future of the country now (Mosh). And, as many critics have too hastily clung to, this is a kindler, gentler - more mature - Eminem. This is the first sign that something here is amiss.
Eminem, the potty-mouthed persona created (while on the toilet, mind you) by Mathers as a means to helping a short white kid get his ends, is not kind or gentle or mature. He is merciless and profane. Witty, but wicked. Vindictive and violent. Self-identified insane and sometimes unbearably dark. That Eminem would hate this Eminem.
Not that Mathers hasn't allowed his character to explore more rational thought before. But ever then there was a quick and inflammatory counterbalance of fiendish fun. Here, well, you get puke.
That's the sound and the track that follows Mosh, his call for revolt-by-vote. Another in a long line of lyrical Dear Kim letters to his ex-wife it is intolerable, but, more disconcertingly, uninspired. The former is something you've often been able to say of Mathers, but the latter is a criticism, for all his sins, that never applied.
Great stretches of Encore find Eminem sounding entirely disinterested. He mocks Jessica Simpson and Christopher Reeve. He lusts over the Olsen twins. He impersonates his old friend Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. This sort of fare used to seem brazen and hysterical. But on album five, it's tired. And Eminem knows it (as apparently does his producer and mentor, Dr. Dre, who supplies a series of uncharacteristically stale beats). Three classic albums and a much-touted perfectionist streak tell us he's too smart to know otherwise.
When Just Lose It, the album's first single, reached Internet and radio, the reaction was almost universally negative among amateur and off-duty critics. Of course it stormed up the charts, but then that just seemed to prove the tracks point - that Eminem could all but fart into a microphone (something he does on Just Lose It) and the faithful would still eat it up.
A conspiracy theory soon took hold that this was a case of self-sabotage. That maybe in stringing together some of his weakest rhymes and poking fun at everything he'd done to date, Mathers was trying to undermine expectations; convince the critics that he couldn't possibly match his work to date, surpass or justify the Artist of Great Importance that he had become.
This was half right. It was a case of self-sabotage, but not to fool the critics. Instead, it's meant to prelude an end - something that comes violently on Encore's final track.
In a pair of skits between Eminem and his manager, there is mention of a "new gun" (something that should ring bells for those Cobain-obsessives). After the music fades, Eminem bids farewell, but the crowd - depicted in the cover art as a bunch of well-to-do aristocrats - continues to chant his name. As per the album title, Eminem returns, only to turn that new gun on his audience, the whole scene audibly (and visually in the liner notes) playing out as shots are fired and bodies hit the ground. There is a pause and then Eminem turns the gun on himself (this too is pictured). His body falls to the floor. And the album closes with a message from the tiny robotic voice Eminem uses in one of the previous skits: "See you in hell. Fuckers."
This isn't a cry for help. This is the last testament of an artist who has learned from Cobain and Clinton - who has seen the mistakes that can be made when celebrity, expectation and ambition join forces. Why wait for the Ken Starrs of the world to tear you down when you can do it yourself? And why commit suicide when you can just pretend and accomplish the same goal? Why, ultimately, would you let anyone else gain control?
Would we ever have let him walk away from this character under any other circumstances? Probably not. So Eminem is dead. But long(er) live Marshall Mathers.
There's another series of Encore reviews out there that we'll get to shortly. Or at least after we get some sleep. For the moment, we figured we might as well get our own feelings on the record. Don't hold us to them quite yet. Give us a couple days to live with them. And a couple more listens to the album. But we think we think these things. Feel free to think otherwise (apparently, most everyone else does... so far). Because of the wonky release date it didn't come together in time for this week's column. But it will likely appear in some form next.
Note: This is largely unedited. And the sun is about to come up. So no guarantees.
***
Marshall Mathers was born in 1973, but he is very much a child of the 90s. His formative years were spent in a decade dominated by the twin pop culture personalities of Kurt Cobain and Bill Clinton - two men who came from nothing and ended up with too much, each ultimately defeated by their own success. Faced with the same proverbial crossroads Eminem finds himself at with his latest record, Encore (rush released this week to beat an Internet leak), they got ahead of themselves and ended up deceased and impeached respectively.
Mathers, the most self-conscious pop star since Madonna lost the plot, knows better as a result. And ever in control of his image and various alteregos, he has made his own Monica Lewinsky. Then put a gun inside his mouth and declared Eminem dead.
Though only some critics seem willing to come right out and say so, Encore is without doubt the worst record of Eminem's surprisingly short career. This is not the shock and awe of his debut, The Slim Shady LP. Nor is it as inventive or passionate as the follow-ups, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show. Even the spark of his most recent material, Lose Yourself from the 8 Mile Soundtrack, has all but faded.
Fittingly, it seeks first to close some of his still pending accounts. To those who deemed him a racist after hearing the ancient, but recently unearthed, mixtape on which he insults black women: he's sorry (Yellow Brick Road). To the other rappers he's beefed with over the last five years: he wishes to call a truce (Like Toy Soldiers). And to those who roll their eyes at his bleatings about the trappings of fame (as he does again in a soft-focus profile in the current issue of Vanity Fair: he realises his own absurdity (XXXX).
Oh, he still hates his wife. Still loves his daughter. And still blames his mother. But he's worried about the future of the country now (Mosh). And, as many critics have too hastily clung to, this is a kindler, gentler - more mature - Eminem. This is the first sign that something here is amiss.
Eminem, the potty-mouthed persona created (while on the toilet, mind you) by Mathers as a means to helping a short white kid get his ends, is not kind or gentle or mature. He is merciless and profane. Witty, but wicked. Vindictive and violent. Self-identified insane and sometimes unbearably dark. That Eminem would hate this Eminem.
Not that Mathers hasn't allowed his character to explore more rational thought before. But ever then there was a quick and inflammatory counterbalance of fiendish fun. Here, well, you get puke.
That's the sound and the track that follows Mosh, his call for revolt-by-vote. Another in a long line of lyrical Dear Kim letters to his ex-wife it is intolerable, but, more disconcertingly, uninspired. The former is something you've often been able to say of Mathers, but the latter is a criticism, for all his sins, that never applied.
Great stretches of Encore find Eminem sounding entirely disinterested. He mocks Jessica Simpson and Christopher Reeve. He lusts over the Olsen twins. He impersonates his old friend Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. This sort of fare used to seem brazen and hysterical. But on album five, it's tired. And Eminem knows it (as apparently does his producer and mentor, Dr. Dre, who supplies a series of uncharacteristically stale beats). Three classic albums and a much-touted perfectionist streak tell us he's too smart to know otherwise.
When Just Lose It, the album's first single, reached Internet and radio, the reaction was almost universally negative among amateur and off-duty critics. Of course it stormed up the charts, but then that just seemed to prove the tracks point - that Eminem could all but fart into a microphone (something he does on Just Lose It) and the faithful would still eat it up.
A conspiracy theory soon took hold that this was a case of self-sabotage. That maybe in stringing together some of his weakest rhymes and poking fun at everything he'd done to date, Mathers was trying to undermine expectations; convince the critics that he couldn't possibly match his work to date, surpass or justify the Artist of Great Importance that he had become.
This was half right. It was a case of self-sabotage, but not to fool the critics. Instead, it's meant to prelude an end - something that comes violently on Encore's final track.
In a pair of skits between Eminem and his manager, there is mention of a "new gun" (something that should ring bells for those Cobain-obsessives). After the music fades, Eminem bids farewell, but the crowd - depicted in the cover art as a bunch of well-to-do aristocrats - continues to chant his name. As per the album title, Eminem returns, only to turn that new gun on his audience, the whole scene audibly (and visually in the liner notes) playing out as shots are fired and bodies hit the ground. There is a pause and then Eminem turns the gun on himself (this too is pictured). His body falls to the floor. And the album closes with a message from the tiny robotic voice Eminem uses in one of the previous skits: "See you in hell. Fuckers."
This isn't a cry for help. This is the last testament of an artist who has learned from Cobain and Clinton - who has seen the mistakes that can be made when celebrity, expectation and ambition join forces. Why wait for the Ken Starrs of the world to tear you down when you can do it yourself? And why commit suicide when you can just pretend and accomplish the same goal? Why, ultimately, would you let anyone else gain control?
Would we ever have let him walk away from this character under any other circumstances? Probably not. So Eminem is dead. But long(er) live Marshall Mathers.
// posted by Aaron @ 5:21:00 AM
