Word: eminem
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...more this week. DMX, through his publicist, announced plans to turn himself in to authorities to serve a 15-day prison sentence for a traffic infraction (in my critical opinion, the judge ought to tack on a few more days just for DMX's last two CDs). Eminem, also this week, pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon, and prosecutors agreed to drop an assault charge against him (the Grammy folks, who nominated Eminem's bigoted but best-selling "The Marshall Mathers LP" for album of the year, should probably plead guilty to soliciting...
...Vince McMahon and designed for ultraviolence (fair catches aren't allowed, but roughing the passer is). The G.O.P. courted the Rude Boy vote by putting the WWF wrestler the Rock onstage at its 2000 convention. And after selling more than 11 million copies of The Marshall Mathers LP, rapper Eminem not only garnered a best-album Grammy nomination for his tales of homophobia and misogynist violence, but he may even perform at the Feb. 21 awards show...
Youth rebellions are old stories. But today's rebel has to figure out how to alienate today's been-there, smoked-that elders, so the Rude Boys aim straight at the squishy heart of baby-boom values. On the simplest level, this means offending boomer tolerance: there's Eminem; there's Mr. Wong, the animated series at Icebox.com about an elderly Chinese houseboy, which, depending on whom you ask, cleverly subverts or shamelessly perpetuates an ethnic stereotype. But these insurgents also attack the cult of self-esteem, the notion, advanced in the protest and therapy movements, that everyone has dignity...
...take Eminem. There's a lot to criticize in his woman- and gay-bashing lyrics, but without excusing him, it's hard to say that he makes himself look good delivering the message. In his most violent songs, like Kim, he comes off as an unbalanced, whiny creep brutalizing women (his wife, his mother) out of weakness. He can barely issue a boast ("Shady will f___in' kill you") without undermining it with a pathetic image ("I'm like a mummy at night.../Frightened with five little white Vicodin pills bitin...
...this dance between crotch-grabbing and self-abuse? Part of the answer seems to involve deep personal issues with women. But one shouldn't underestimate the Vanilla Ice effect--the defensiveness, plain on Eminem's records, of the white rapper. Certainly Caucasians have no monopoly on Rude Boy culture--last summer the Wayans brothers out-Farrellyed the Farrelly brothers with the $157 million gross-out hit Scary Movie. And the Rock is African American and Samoan. But there's an undeniable white-boyness to much of this trend--that familiar envy, from the '50s and on back, of the roguish...