“Encore,” Eminem’s first album since his star-making turn in the 2002 hit movie
“8 Mile,” finds him at a crossroads: Will he continue to roll with the bad-boy sarcasm that made him hip-hop’s most notorious voice, or will he try to buff his vulnerable, leading-man Hollywood credentials in a bid for wider mainstream acceptance?
A little bit of both, it turns out. By turns high-minded and juvenile, introspective and crass, “Encore” is the dreaded transitional album in the career of an artist who wants to grow up but still hasn’t figured out how. Just as Britney Spears had her forgettable “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” phase and Michael Jackson struggled to be taken seriously as a solo artist after singing “Ben” and “Rockin’ Robin,” Eminem is trying to figure out what he’ll do for an encore after being rap’s No. 1 controversy magnet for the last five years.
In this context, “growing up” is not necessarily a compliment: Some of the best bits on “Encore” are the most uninhibited and silliest. When Eminem takes his material, and himself, more seriously, he sometimes stumbles. There are a few show-stopping moments but not nearly enough to justify all 77 minutes of his latest Marshall Plan for world conquest.
“Encore” arrives as the year’s most anticipated album, rush-released by Interscope Records on Friday, instead of the scheduled Nov. 16, after it was leaked on the Internet. More than 3 million copies of the album have been shipped, and it’s likely to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with well over 1 million copies sold in its first week alone. Though its commercial success is predestined, its aesthetic impact is more problematic. Like all of Eminem’s albums, its killer songs are imbedded in lard-heavy filler. But its marketing campaign is spinning like a perfectly balanced top.
In an attempt to portray a more mature image, Eminem dresses in a business suit and strikes a thoughtful pose on the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. “Encore” picks up the theme with a few tracks that are among the most introspective of the rapper’s career. On one song, Eminem addresses one of the innumerable controversies that have dogged him in recent years. In January, a homemade tape from Eminem’s teenage years surfaced in which he is heard spouting several racial slurs after breaking up with an African-American girlfriend. “I singled out her whole race, and for that I apologize, I was wrong,” he raps on “Yellow Brick Road.”
The song, which plays out over a tense string arrangement, finds the rapper wrestling yet again with the question of race, and reveals his sincere but misguided attempts to fit in with black culture as a teen growing up in Detroit. He finds that he is not welcome in either world, despised “from the black side to the white side.”
On “Mockingbird,” addressed to his 9-year-old daughter, Hailie, Eminem comes perilously close to delivering a maudlin ballad over moody piano chords. But the rapper’s open-hearted delivery, in which he recounts his failures as a young father, redeems it.
But Eminem is still Eminem. Elsewhere on the album he verbally executes a barrel full of fishes named Michael Jackson, Madonna and Hilary Duff. In tweaking Jackson over his child-molestation case in “Just Lose It,” Eminem instantly retracts himself: “That’s just a metaphor, I’m just psycho.” On “Never Enough,” he justifies his most outrageous rhymes by basically saying, “I can’t help myself,” and blames his “evil deeds” on his dysfunctional upbringing.
At his best, Eminem plays off his personas and perspectives with devilish charm. He shifts voices, perspective and angles of verbal attack from song to song, and sometimes within the same song; his wordplay is so sharp, his personality so potent, that he drives the music into the background, where it lurks almost unnoticed.
At his worst, he succumbs to the vile name-calling and juvenile humor that tainted even his best albums. Once again, he bashes his former wife, Kim, in a foul-mouthed tirade punctuated by the sound of someone violently retching. “Crazy in Love” portrays the couple’s love as a war zone, where fists are exchanged as often as kisses, spousal abuse as a sign of endless commitment. “Never Enough” outlines Eminem’s aspirations: He wants to be remembered as one of the hip-hop greats, as all-encompassing as Jay-Z. But to join the greats he will have to stretch himself more often, instead of using easy targets as punching bags. Eminem is at his finest when he’s picking on foes more his own size: He’s especially brilliant wrestling with himself, and misgivings about his past, his race, his humanity.
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Shady business
Eminem isn’t saying much about how much he’s earned over the years–he plays down the bling in most interviews. But there’s no doubt he’s been able to build up a hefty bank account.
$5.4 million: Amount Em reportedly paid for a house in Hollywood where, a source told Britain’s Daily Record, the rapper could focus on a potential movie career.
$35 million: Earnings shared with Dr. Dre from their 2002 tour, according to forbes.com, which ranked the duo the No. 1 Power Musician for that year.
$117 million: Amount “8 Mile” earned at the box office; the DVD and video release earned another $130 million.
Shady’s cheap side?
$800: Real value of a so-called diamond-studded necklace that Eminem tossed to a fan at a concert in Britain in June 2003 after telling the audience it was worth $450,000.
Love em or Hate em
Eminem’s success has been accompanied by an almost equal amount of controversy. Critics call his lyrics violent and hateful. Who have Em’s targets been?
– Michael Jackson
In the video for “Just Lose It,” the first single from Eminem’s new album, “Encore,” the rapper appears dressed as Jacko, sitting on a bed where children are playing. Jackson cried foul, and BET dropped the video.
– Gays
Eminem slurs gays in his wildly popular first two albums–1999’s “The Slim Shady LP” and 2001’s “The Marshall Mathers LP,” especially the song “Marshall Mathers.” Gay-rights groups protest, and critics label him a homophobe. At the 2001 Grammys, he counters by performing with Elton John.
– Moby
Backstage at the 2001 Grammys, Moby calls Em “a misogynist and homophobe and racist and anti-Semite,” setting off a feud between the two artists. On the rapper’s 2002 album, “The Eminem Show,” Em mocks Moby in “Without Me.” Last month, Moby praised one of Em’s songs off the new album, “Mosh,” and it appears the score may be settled.
– Women
Eminem directs many of his lyrics at his mother and his ex-wife, Kim. In “The Slim Shady LP” and “The Marshall Mathers LP,” he raps about raping, shooting or choking them. Women, including the vice president’s wife, Lynne Cheney, condemn his music. Em answers on stage at a concert by abusing an inflatable doll of Kim.
– African Americans
Eminem won an injunction against The Source magazine last year to prevent them from publishing the transcript of a racist recording the rapper said he made at age 16 and now regrets. Eminem said it was made out of “anger” and “stupidity” after breaking up with a black girlfriend.
–ap, los angeles times, tribune
Quotable
“Teach them right from wrong as best I can, try not to lose my temper, try to set guidelines and rules and boundaries. Never lay a hand on them.”
–Eminem to Rolling Stone on being a parent
“Without [his daughter] Hailie, there is no Eminem. I know that sounds bananas, but the definition of focus is direct attention, and he gives direct attention to Hailie. That’s all that matters.”
–Proof to Vanity Fair
“People can take what they wanna take, decipher it how they wanna decipher it. But it’s not actually Michael Jackson, it’s me playing Michael Jackson. … I don’t have an opinion, really, neither here nor there, against Michael Jackson.”
–Em to Rolling Stone, on his Michael Jackson parody in the “Just Lose It” video
“When Eminem performed with Elton John at the Grammys, that was one of my favorite moments–because it just stopped the controversy and put the emphasis back on the music.”
–Doug Morris, chairman and CEO, Universal Music Group to Vanity Fair
“I was angry at myself. I couldn’t believe that I said it. The tone that I’m using, you can almost tell that I’m joking, but the words are coming out of my mouth.”
–Em to Rolling Stone on his racist recording uncovered by The Source
“The controversy? I love it. This is entertainment. Without that, it would be boring as [bleep].”
–Dr. Dre to Vanity Fair
“It’s part of the whole mystique and the freedom of speech.”
–Em to Rolling Stone on sparking controversy
“Can you imagine that the entire industry honors [Eminem] whose work is so hateful? He is a violent misogynist. He advocates raping and murdering his mother in one of his songs.”
–Lynne Cheney at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on media violence in 2000
“Just to stay grounded. This is all I’ve ever known, all I ever want to know. … I don’t want to go to L.A. and get caught up in the party scene. All I ever wanted to do was to make enough money from my music to be able to support myself and make a living, and have a future for my daughter.”
–Em to Vanity Fair on why he lives 15 minutes from where he grew up in Detroit
“I can’t say that’s my lifestyle. I don’t like all the glitter and gold and the glamor, all the things I could have.”
–Em to Vanity Fair on all the bling-bling in hip-hop today
