The Dark Story of Eminem by Nick Hasted

Author:Nick Hasted [Hasted, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-005-2
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Published: 2003-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

9

STAN

“PARENTS BEWARE! The world’s most dangerous rapper is coming to Britain. Eminem will perform his controversial songs about murder, drugs and violence to women in February.”

The Sun’s shamelessly simplified warning, as Eminem dates for 2001 were scheduled in Manchester and London, was followed by a strengthening salvo of “shocked” tabloid broadsides, as his arrival neared: “THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REAL SLIM SHADY: The Astonishing Story Of The Bullied Trailer Trash Nerd;” “BULLY’S BRUTAL BEATING LEFT HIM FOR DEAD;” “RAPPER WAS SHY LONER;” “EMINEM LOVED DOLLIES;” “TOUR SHOCK FOR GAY HATE RAPPER;” “PUBLIC EMINEM”.

“The show is the most outrageous ever,” The Sun’s Dominic Mohan brazenly reported from the start of Eminem’s European tour, in Hamburg on January 30. “I predict there will be a storm of controversy here … Take cover, Britain. Eminem’s show should have a health warning.”

But, rabid as the British tabloid press could be, no one’s heart seemed to be in efforts to make him the nation’s newest folk devil. Comparisons with the last rapper to achieve such notoriety in this country are instructive, and do no-one credit. Snoop Doggy Dogg had arrived in March 1994 to a Daily Star front page screaming, “KICK THIS EVIL BASTARD OUT!” Though the case of Philip Woldemariam’s shooting was still awaiting trial (and Snoop would eventually be found innocent), and though the degree of violence and misogyny on his album Doggystyle which the tabloids (no strangers to sexism) condemned these days sounds mild, the media fury was unrelenting. No detail was sought about Snoop’s life in the mainstream British press, as they did with Eminem, and nothing was asked about his music. Instead, the Star’s headline was accompanied by a mug-shot of Snoop looking brutal and unrepentant, redolent with echoes of the last black man to be so spotlighted on British front pages: Winston Silcott, who had been accused, and later acquitted, of the murder of PC Keith Blakelock. The stench of unapologetic racism then was powerful.

Eminem had certainly done nothing to soften impressions before his February arrival. On top of his own pending court cases and lyrical savagery, he had opened a new front of verbal warfare in November, after fellow white rapper Everlast, ex-House of Pain, sneered of him, while guesting on Dilated People’s ‘Ear Drums Pop’, “lift up your panties and show your skirt for the world to see.” Eminem immediately responded on ‘I Remember’, recorded as a B-side for D12’s forthcoming début single ‘I Shit On You’: “I just wish the cardiac would have murdered you” (a typically tasteful reference to Everlast’s near-fatal 1998 heart attack). With his usual city-flattening overreaction, he followed up with D12’s ‘Quitter’ (eventually left off the group’s Devil’s Night LP). Here he told fans to “hit” Everlast “with sticks, bricks, rocks, throw shit at him, trip him, spit on him, treat him like a ho, bitch slap him … Fuck you, fat boy, drop the mic, let’s fight.” “I’m not gonna let someone else diss me on a record and not say something back,” he redundantly explained.

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