The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

I’m sorry that Bobby won’t be with me to usher in the new Eminem CD next Tuesday. We had so much fun cranking King Mathers’ tongue-twisting lexicon while vacuuming or making pancakes (among other things.)

I hadn’t really given Marshall a fair chance until then- I was just never dude enough to swallow the pejorative bitter brew. But then fate brought me an even hotter mess than me, with biceps and abs I’ll never ever forget, and suddenly the white hip hop look was fever pitch in my mind, as  Bobby bopped through the house drumming Em’s beat with two wooden spoons against his knees.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I saw what I’d been missing, and dissing. Eminem made my manic periods look like Snow White’s long slumber- and he was comedic, pure genius. The stories were intricate, detailed, fuelled by the most satisfying and sometimes shocking rhymes, clicking into place like puzzle pieces, a Rubik’s cube. He rhymes sounds and syllables and similars and words he makes up as he goes along. He’s quick on his feet, that’s for sure. The man has a way with words.

This was circa Curtain Call, and I refused to believe the curtain had been called. I didn’t think he would stay behind the scenes, though he said he was through. As much painful energy as centre stage might take, I knew he’d heal from grief, madness, rehab, whatever and the rhymes would start spinning right round baby. As an artist, one of the world’s most brilliant, he’d be driven to work again, and not just in production. The scars of stardom, childhood, poverty, riches, white trashiness, divorcing Kim twice- shit, it’s a lot… the kid worked his ass off through it all. Then it was white heat rocket into superstardom. The greatest rapper in the world, period. That’s what everyone was saying. How do climb out of that? Where do you go from there?

Even while tragedy is tearing apart the average family with none of the pressures of Detroit and superstardom, people are whispering about Eminem’s recent opening up about his drug addictions. Okay, let me get this straight- people are SURPRISED?  You didn’t figure this out for yourself before? There’s no way a man could talk that fast unless his mind raced a thousand times faster than yours or mine. And that would drive you crazy. And crazy people take drugs. And so do normal people. And people who lose their closest beloveds to suicides and murders and drugs take drugs.  And crazy people who also happen to be rock star and genius and white trash and rapper, a rapper who sings about drugs on a regular basis- what, none of this gave it away?

“I was born with a tick in my brain, yeah fucked in the head- is he nuts? No, he’s insane.” It won’t get any more clear than this- but I’m afraid Em’s audience is even dumber than he already thinks.

Well, Bobby didn’t make it, and that is a hole in my heart that will never heal over. But Eminem did make it, and I’ve got my tacky-ass faux-diamond big backward E around my neck, in case anybody was unsure I’m a fan, but also just to decorate a memory of a tragic but stunning love. Not everyone can make it through this life alive, but Bobby got me hooked on Eminem and I’m ready to shake my booty in his memory to the badass beats as soon as they hit the airwaves.

Now everyone knows Eminem couldn’t get famous until he spewed out on purpose the shadiest shit he could think of, which says way more about his audience than it did about him. He called that alter ego Slim Shady, the persona of an insane white man who was bad, mad and dangerous to know, to quote Lord Byron’s lover.

So what’s with Nick Cannon getting his panties in a bunch because Marshall raps about Mariah? I know, I know, it’s not all that nice to call someone a whore, it isn’t. But in rap’s theatre of the absurd, is Eminem supposed to be the only player who doesn’t use foul language about bitches and hos? Every celeb who has ever made the tabloids is fair game in these rap attacks. Now, if Nick had just said “Yo, pipe down on my woman,” fine.

But he wrote this:

“A mediocre (at best) Eminem record that sounds like it was written in 2001,” Cannon blogged. “At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude ‘fantasized’ about having a pretend fling with Mariah. … But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, ‘This is his new shit? Wow, that’s too bad.’

Okay, thing is Nick, I didn’t even know you were a rapper until this hit my Perez-radar. So thanks to Em for putting you on the map for me.  I thought you were Mariah’s boy toy, and wondered why a rich babe like her couldn’t choose someone hotter.

Then I looked you up on Wikipedia and found out you had a #46 hit. And you sang something about being a new cat on the block, being bigger then Elvis. I listened to two numbers on iTunes and thought it must be 1982- no, I’m serious…and what’s this Nickleodeon business? The Pops don’t like me number was kind of cute, I confess, but nowhere near the mastery of tongue twisting rhyme, or the depth and breadth of mister white bread emmie.

It’s fine to stand up for your wife- but it’s just not entirely wise for a not so big shot producer to talk down about the work of a serious big shot rapper/singer/songwriter/producer. You know, the cunning linguist who has won more than 100 prestigious awards for his music, including an Oscar.

Anyhow, while I was on Limewire I thought I’d see if I could get lucky and find the verboten Mariah number. It was just my luck that the net was leaky at that moment and soon I was blasting one of Eminem’s nastiest and best vernacular jungle gyms. On top of the witty explosion of rhymes matched perfectly to the beat, the backdrop to this mad rap is bagpipes, and some kind of Mirwais-y production noise that moves your feet against your will.  This number’s a mind-bending bundle of tumbling rhyme, maybe one of his best…sorry, “illest.”

I don’t know about the rest of the album, but Bagpipes is a long way from Nick L. Odeon’s kiddie-cinema-popcorn heap.

“Locked in Mariah’s wine cellar… all I had for lunch… was red wine more red wine and Captain Crunch… red wine for breakfast and for brunch… ms. hello kitty satin bedspread with satin funk… You can be a permanent fixture …in my lyrical mixture…I’m the miracle-whipped trickster…”

Oh, dear, and then darling Nikki  started babbling on about how dissing the Butterfly Effect was racist, ‘cause Mariah is the same racial mixture as our President Barack Obama, you see.  It’s just…arrogant….to pull the racism card for the little skinny white boy from Detroit who braved the mean streets with nothing but his quicksilver wit and then won the respect of the biggest and best black men in rap and hip hop music because, in their words, not mine, he is the best there.

Sexist, no doubt about it, but not racist. Shit, how about: what a clever, awesome song, but my wife’s not a whore. Even Elton John is man enough to take a diss but not me, so can you rewrite that totally-ill-Grammy-written –all-over-it number without my wife’s number?

I had wondered if the climate toward the new album would mix near-religious devotion with snide and fickle snickering about the washed up addict man, with no regard for the man behind the mask’s private pain and right to recluse. Because people are quick to fickleness, screaming sell-out even if their shopping bags are stuffed with chart toppers.

But now I predict something different entirely: what will happen next is Bagpipes from Baghdad will go onto  become one of Eminem’s most massive hits, pervading the airwaves until kingdom come,  in no small part to Mariah’s jealous two-“hit” wonder.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.