The lil’ stinker of the rap world, Eminem, done done it again this week, releasing a new lyric video in which a version of himself who looks tailor-made for some sort of Eminem mobile game—and Jesus, why do we give this shit a chance to manifest in our heads?—wanders around various night clubs and semi-abusive relationships with women, reminding everyone he encounters that they better not try to cancel him, because, gosh dang it, he’s Eminem!
Said video comes attached to “Tone Deaf,” a track off last year’s Music To Be Murdered To – Side B, which falls pretty clearly into the modern Marshall Mathers style, i.e., unobtrusive production designed to give maximum space for Eminem’s rhymes, which range from actually pretty clever, to too clever for their own good, to rhyming “Kris Kristofferson” with “Pissed Pissed-offerson,” which is as close as we’ve gotten lately to a pure headache rendered in lyric form.
But while there’s the standard blend of misogyny, self-deprecation, braggadocio, genuine wit, and references to the pop-culture of several years ago—including a fun few couplets name-checking both Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein—the video more-or-less makes its point perfectly, i.e., who would bother trying to “cancel” Eminem? To the extent that he’s ever been slapped with consequences for his actions, it was back when those actions were actually relevant, not when he was releasing novelty records about how he wants to be friends with Venom or explicitly patterned on old Alfred Hitchcock albums.
97 Comments
I remember when Em was played in clubs. Can’t nobody twerk to this!
I do really like that Labi Siffre song (2:10 mark and on), but the one whole song is worth listening too.
Nobody should twerk, ever, it isn’t and has never been attractive.
Agreed; I’m an ASS-MAN, and I don’t find twerking remotely sexy. It just looks like a girl was vomitting and went into a seizure. My first thought when I see a chick twerking is to pull her hair back, shove a wallet in her mouth, and call 911. Especially painful to watch skinny women do it. Jeebus.
You got a stick up your ass a mile long.
I remember I once joked here that Mariah Carey won their beef with “Obsessed” and the Eminem stans were in my replies for days… I was honestly surprised that anyone felt that strongly about it.
Mariah>>>>>>>>>>>>Eminem
Mariah Carey’s the only reason why my mom likes a Busta Rhymes song
I actually enjoyed the music videos Busta did in the ‘90’s. All fish eye lens. All the time. This has to be my favorite.
Yes, sir, this song and video are both excellent. Although I prefer Busta as an actor/martial artist. Halloween: Resurrection is my cultural touchstone.
Annoying thing>>>>>>Slightly more annoying thing.Although Eminem has never made a terrible Christmas record that somehow gets brought back every year , so balls in his court I guess.
If you’re going to be offensive and provocative and do debatable things just fucking do them and keep doing them. Don’t whine about being “cancelled”. It might make me and others hate you, but you shouldn’t care if you’re so hardcore right?
I think this is going after the same demo who’s still going to see Louis CK do standup.
I go, but in my defense it’s only for the backstage pass. The aftershow is virtually career-destroying!
Louis CK makes jokes about what he did, but at least he never acts like hes being persecuted. He admits he was wrong and makes fun of himself, not the people doing the complaining. He comes right out and says “dont do what i did, ever”,
Trying to figure out what Eminem did though. He said lyrics.Curious what he did though.
Uhh…what show are you talking about? The last set I saw was him basically bitching about his scandal, and it wasn’t even funny. Loved his work, but I can’t see myself enjoying any of his post-MasturGate material.Not “canceling” him…I’m not even mad about what he did (more confused; did he really think women wanted to see him jack-off? what was the endgame here?), but last I heard from him, he was whining like a bitch and acting like he was being persecuted.
1. His standup is still good.
2. He’s not whining about cancel culture at all-he said he fucked up, he’s sorry, he doesnt blame anyone but himself, he moved on. His act is as good as it ever was.
Nah people need to call out this cancel nonsense. Otherwise venues cave in and start denying permits for concerts, radio stages cave and refuse to play songs etc. It is sad when people with no significant life experience try to tell everyone else what they can or can’t listen to.
“you can’t cancel me!……please try, though.”
I mean he wasn’t being cancelled when this released though.At the same time, he’s always been getting cancelled before that word was even used.
Yes “cancellation” isn’t new it’s just a new phrase for it. Marshall feels left out and has cancellation aspirations.
ahh umm, I think it comes back to platform. Slim Shady has a global reach of tens of millions if not billions. He can speak and express whatever he thinks whenever he wants, and the fans listen. there needs to be accountability.
“Pissed Pissed-offerson,” brings adjectives to mind, but ‘clever’ is not among them.
Eminem and Drake are competing to see who can put more lame dad jokes in their rhymes.
It doesn’t flow as well as some forced rhymes in rap music. It’s no “earius” or “toolio” from “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See”. Seriously, earius is a perfectly cromulent word.
What a duketastrophie!
Earius is a name…unless there’s an Earius in Flip Mode, it doesn’t seem very cromulent at all!But Bustah’s one of those musicians who just has so much damn fun with his music that I don’t really care if he makes-up words or uses them incorrectly.
Eminem is almost 50 years old. Some how I find that almost impossible to fathom.
Well, it’s not that hard to fathom. It’s not like Axl Rose being 59.
Should I purchase ‘Chinese Democracy’, a very good G ‘n’ R album? .. Yes, am currently listening to Cheap Trick @ Budokan dbl cd.. FU. Guns ‘n’ Roses is still one of best bands ever. Fact. Cheap Trick, Guided By Voices, & Bob Pollard too.‘Well, it’s not that hard to fathom. It’s not like Axl Rose being 59.’
Yo I was just listening to that song because of Mulan, 2020.
After drinking too much beer yesterday, this was one of the interwebs & txts engagements was involved in that don’t remember. Am sorta relieved cause was not too bad etc 🙂 Hate waking up & wondering what venom I spewed forth ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wish hadn’t used “FU” though. Okay, Over/Out.
lolNo worries! I cussed the shit out of my boss yesterday over the phone (for, liek, 10 minutes). It was my day off and she was wondering why I didn’t come in…when I told her I was black-out drunk she just laughed and said, “Oh, OK!”I feel your pain! Drinking-and-Dialing is an epidemic!
Ha! Good one! :-)‘Drinking-and-Dialing is an epidemic!’
‘Chinese Democracy’, a very good G ‘n’ R albumYou should probably get your hearing checked.
He liked the free soda we all received when it was released.
Mr. Pibb responds* ;-)https://www.wired.com/2008/10/dr-pepper-to-ma/‘He liked the free soda we all received when it was released.’ *
Gold
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVMgMdYqIEkbiG4IX-bbhz8-ANoKN5qK0
Yes, I’m familiar with that turd Axl spent years squeezing out. I’m not sure how you think posting a link to the fucking thing helps your case any, but maybe you’re just drunk.
That’s… actually younger than I would have thought.
He’s not is he? I thought he was like 70 or something? Wasn’t he alive during the 80s?
Oh, you bitch.
You either die a rebel, or you live long enough to become the establishment that gets rebelled against.Or, I guess if you’re Axl Rose you just alienate your bandmates and become culturally irrelevant.
Wait, he’s only one year older than my dad? Wow. I thought he was at least 10 years older.
I listened to ~15 seconds of the track. In that segment he said something like “Imma do this til my hair turns gray.”My only thought was “So…you’re done then?”
The really troubling part of this is not his, ahem, “provocative” lyrics, which are exactly as troubling as a teenage rendering of The Aristocrats (and which come from more or less the same place): what’s troubling is that high profile, mainstream-adjacent artists tapping into the “anti cancel culture” movement in order to keep their star shining are legitimising this boring and dangerous coarsening of the discourse purely to line their own pockets.I know that’s capitalism in action and one needn’t be surprised, but this mobilisation against the imaginary threat of the Woke Patrol is kind of like a more dangerous version of Manowar or The Kiss Army or whatever: buy my stupid shit in protest against those who would persecute we true believers.It’s MAGA without the red caps. Eminem can go fuck himself, he’s deliberately pretending this is just Bugs Bunny doing “ain’t I a stinker” when there’s no way in hell his management and PR people haven’t explicitly told him to chase the financial rewards of courting the “political correctness gone mad” army who have already been able to unduly shore up their legitimacy lately, and are realistically just waiting for a few high profile entertainers to add the cherry on top.
When America devolves into fascism, don’t forget this.
Post-Fascist America: oh if only that rapper hadn’t made songs ridiculing self-righteous pearl clutchers for his entire career!
If that’s what you got out of my post then, uh, have a nice day.
And to you
Not that I’m here to position Eminem as a bastion of consistency, but he did explicitly tell Trump and any Trump supporters who like his music to fuck off. That was in a rap some time ago, though, so who knows.
Well I said it was “Maga without the red caps”, and perhaps I wouldn’t clear but the implication was supposed to be that it’s functionally identical to Trump’s mobilisation techniques, even if the specific ideology or agenda is different.
No, we can’t possibly tolerate any sort of nuance here!
Big Sean – No Favors (featuring Eminem):
And fuck Ann Coulter with a Klan poster
With a lamp post, door handle shutter
A damn bolt cutter, a sandal, a can opener, a candle rubber
Piano, a flannel, sucker, some hand soap, butter
A banjo and manhole cover
Your man don’t want it, Trump’s a bitch
I’ll make his whole brand go under (yeah)
I think there was a freestyle he did as well calling Trump out…I honestly think he’s using the “cancel culture” language ironically. He’s definitely left-leaning.
I’m not sure how you can know anything about the culture war bullshit that predated Eminem by a mere decade (all the way up to the halls of Congress, repeatedly!) and think that somehow a bunch of paranoid rappers are a harbinger of fascism.Artists in exactly the “Eminem slot” were getting it from the pro-fascist assholes (including some triangulators on the Democratic side of the aisle, like Tipper Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Lieberman) long before the anti-bigotry crowd amassed enough power to be any real concern to anybody.From the perspective of somebody whose paychecks and ego revolve around making rap music, I’m sure a lot of this feels like “same shit, different day.” Just one more group looking to knock the cocks out of their mouths unless they get with the new program. And yeah, Eminem’s established and comfortable enough that his personal reaction to it feels disproportionate and forced. But stop for a moment and ask yourself what it would look like if you applied that same pessimism and skepticism to all artists and celebrities who are superficially standing up for a principle instead of just for money and ego. You might begin to attribute some insidious, growing, profit-driven conspiracy to all the ones that superficially agree with you, too.
Me? I’m fairly comfortable in my intellectual consistency. I wasn’t impressed by the “it’s not technically censorship” rhetoric back when Wal-Mart was an 800lb. gorilla demanding censored versions of albums from the labels, who were yet another 800lb. gorilla, with artists just sitting around covered in gorilla shit and trying not to get mangled. I’m not impressed with it now. Likewise, the “neener neener neener it’s just the free market” line doesn’t land when you’re talking to someone who’s been denouncing the ills capitalism for decades.
Mate, my post was long enough without talking about all the other artists. The reason I singled out Eminem was because, er, the article was about him. I didn’t say anything to suggest it was new, or unique to him. If it matters to you (and I doubt it does), I do apply the same level of scepticism across the board. There was nothing partisan in what I said.
everything you have said is embarrassingly dumb.
I mean you didn’t read it properly though so I’m not too fussed by your takeaways
Going to be blunt: if multiple people are having trouble reading what you are saying, its likely not on them.Particularly if these people are within similar circles as you.
Well given that the only people who have indicated that they misunderstood me are people who have whole-cloth attributed things to my post that are not contained within it, I respectfully disagree.
Like if I said, in response to what you’d just written “Oh so you’re saying I’m a fascist?” I don’t think anyone would take seriously the notion that it was your fault for being ambiguous.
capitalism also fuels the opposition, so…
Yeah, I didn’t say anything to indicate otherwise.
Okay, so then…what do you suppose compels Eminem to choose this specific avenue of art as opposed to something else, if capitalism fuels all of it?Perhaps Eminem is just like this? I don’t know much about the fellow but I get the impression he was vulgar even before he had an agent.
capitalism fuels both sides
When you start calling literally EVERYONE who disagrees with you MAGA and ‘fascist’, attributing it to this big-brain thinking right here, then yes, you’re going have people who take issue with it.
I didn’t do either of those things though. I didn’t call “literally everyone” fascist and I made a comparison to MAGA, I didn’t say this was MAGA. I didn’t even call Eminem fascist or MAGA so even if everyone died overnight and he was the last person alive, you would be attributing something to me that didn’t happen.What I did suggest was that the MAGA ascension came about as a result of the same “trolling” horseshit that Eminem is deploying here, and that these dumb fuckin’ “go ahead and cancel me you sensitive snowflakes” provocations in this latest song, are also the same kinds of actions that legitimise this narrative of “political correct warriors out to censor you” or whatever the fuck. It fuels paranoid and coarsens the discourse, and Eminem (like Trump) profits from it at the expense of the culture.Hopefully that clarifies it for anyone who just scanned the keywords and saw “Eminem=Trump”
HAHAHAHAH when America devolves into fascism says someone who cannot legitimately define fascism. Do those pearls get any bigger? Half of your post sounds like nonsense Qanon conspiracy bullshit.
Yes, I’m pearl clutching. Because entertainment culture has never, in the history of the world, been deployed or appropriated to political ends so there’s no way in hell that a man with a massively wide reach telling people to feel paranoid about “cancel culture” could ever be inadvertently laying the groundwork to further legitimize those messages is there? Gosh it’s a good thing that CPAC gave no indication this year that they’ll be pushing the cancel culture narrative over the next period, I’m so relieved that it’s all just hot air!
What are you even talking about? It sounds like you have no concept of what happened in history. Eminem has been doing stuff like this for like 30 years. Not to mention other artists before him. The woke people are just as bad as the ultra right people (along with some conservative democrats) that went after eminem when he first became popular, before that they were attacking groups like NWA. Its scary how intolerant the left has become of pretty much everything. Trying to cancel songs and musicians now? Some of gen Z needs to be put in their place.
I agree with most of your post (his shtick about people trying to censor him or being outraged over his music got tired ALONG time ago)…that being said, he’s still a talented lyricist and a shitty person (he raps about that all the time), so I’m not really all-in on ditching Eminem.I was speaking with a bi coworker recently about the whole Manson ordeal and told her, “Yeah, I ended-up deleting a bunch of his shit off Spotify” (I was cleaning-up my Spotify and decided I didn’t like most of the stuff I had saved) and she responded, “I try to separate the art from the artist.” It completely surprised me that she was so generous, but I 100% agree with her. I’ve enjoyed some Nazi metal in the past, but nowadays I just tend to enjoy the music and lyrical abilities of any given artists.Early Em / D-12? That was some good shit! Modern Eminem? Also good! But around the 8-Mile / Relapse period he really sucked, at least musically. He’s an asshole, no doubt, but at least he’s honest about it. There’s nothing worse than a phony, IMO.
I listened to the song and I think his attacks on “cancel culture” are overstated. He goes after it in the chorus but not very hard. The verses barely seem to mention it at all and seem less offensive than his early stuff.
But relevant enough to write a whole ass article on it…
I mean they also wrote an article on someone losing at The Price is Right, so “relevancy” is a low bar in the 24 hour news cycle.
Low IQ writer alert. I was going to cancel you……but you ain’t earned the right to be cancelled. You deserve to keep showing the world how moronic your thoughts are always. FUCK YOU
Oh, I’m sure they’ll get to him sooner or later. Marilyn Manson isn’t Bill Cosby. He built his whole career and image around being a sick freak and a total creep, but there just isn’t tolerance for real life antiheroes anymore, at least not when they’re white and male.I find it difficult to believe, in all his life, with all the anger and drug use and such, that Eminem wasn’t a dick to some people. He’s about due for a news cycle with women from his past talking about how he hurt them, with all the clips from his songs about killing his ex, that song from the Slim Shady LP where he’s encouraging a 20 year old guy to roofie a 15 year old girl’s drink, and all the other stuff that had social conservatives in a tizzy back in the 90s.
Just came here as the “stan” and lifelong hiphop head to say he is one of the greatest wordsmiths to ever live, you’re supposed to be offended if you’re listening to Eminem(where have you been for the last 25 years?), and you all sound like a bunch of scarf wearing hipsters discussing him while waiting for your drinks at starbucks. These tiktok kids tried to cancel him for line from a Rihanna song, they deserve a history lesson and a tongue lashing and I’m glad he’s still immature enough at 50 to flip them off and fart in their faces. And yours.
LOL no one is offended by Eminem anymore. It’s more like a sad bemusement.
I thought it was a fun song. I like Eminem.
“Pissed Pissed-offerson.” I thought of that one too. When I was 14.
Have there really been cases of rappers, even white ones, being cancelled in the sense that their content is so offensive that their careers are hurt or destroyed? I can’t think of any offhand. Rap may be a cancel-proof genre.
Rappers seem to only get canceled for things they do outside of music, like Daniel “SixNine” Hernandez.
🎶 Time Warner kicked Ice-T off the label for dissing the cops, they say it just ain’t rightBut when a Caucasian man records a cop-killer song, they don’t have a problem. Must be an oversight! 🎶
Like maybe Iggy Azalia? Like, yeah calling her a rapper is pushing it, but I do remember there was an effort by the music industry to make her a big thing, and there was a backlash largely because she was a white Australian chick putting on verbal blackface to sound ghetto.
Not just rappers. Anyone. No one’s career has been destroyed over this imaginary “cancel culture” that everyone is so het up about. People’s careers have been temporarily harmed as a consequence of their actions, but that’s always been a thing that happened when a celebrity did something unspinnable (remember Mel Gibson?).
There have been a decent number of actors at least whose careers have been at least severely damaged. Look at their filmographies and see how many recent high-profile jobs people like Kevin Spacey, James Franco, Johnny Depp, and Louie C.K. are getting. Musicians are tougher to cancel because it is easier to release music than it is to get a film or TV project made.
Temporarily. Johnny Depp has been working consistently, and had a “high-profile” job just in 2018. Louis CK has been touring steadily and is taking time off for COVID. Kevin Spacey raped a kid, so his career might take a bit longer to recover, but I have no doubt it will. None of this amounts to being “cancelled.” It’s not new for performers to experience a small dip in their popularity upon it coming out that they did something horrible, but these people are doing fine. The only one I would call “severely damaged” is Kevin Spacey–and again, he raped a kid–and his will come back in due time. Cancel culture doesn’t exist.
He doesn’t need to be cancelled, he’s reached peak irrelevancy!
Not an eminem fan. But cmon, “pissed-pissed-offerson” IS kinda funny. Just a little.
No.
Writing a piece dedicated to whining about the relavancy of a song about cancel culture titled “Tone Deaf” JUST might be the most ironic thing I’ve read in weeks. lol. bravo.
Glad the AV Club admits they’re write articles about non-relevant people. I’m sure that won’t come up again.
You don’t know me. Yer too old. Let go. It’s over.
When eminem gives a shit, he can make some bangers. And I thought Kamikaze was the closest we’ll likely get to a return to form. But man, Music to be murdered to suuuucks. Just Eminem’s worst impulses in a stupid fucking long album.
And the problem is, an old white guy riffing on pop culture isn’t what it is in 2021. Like Battle Rap should have edge and at the very least make you go “the hell did he say?” But man, Eminem isn’t offensive—just lazy.
god you are a pissy little pedant
This is usual clout chasing from Eminem.
Other than using “cancel” as a zeitgeisty catch phrase, this video has absolutely zero to say about “cancel culture” pro or con. Which leads one to believe the participants in the ensuing free-for-all here have not actually watched the video. That is exactly why both sides of this argument are problematic.