The Three Faces Of Eminem

By Josh Tyrangiel

When Eminem learned that the release of his third album, The Eminem Show, had to be moved up a week to combat a nationwide bootlegging epidemic, he said, "Whoever put my s___ on the Internet, I want to meet that motherf_____ and beat the s___ out of him."

This may be the first of Eminem's famously foul-mouthed tirades that gets a chuckle from his critics. While The Eminem Show (out May 28) is being pirated on modems and street corners across the country, those who believe that the rapper's coarseness has inspired a generation of delinquents can treasure the irony: those supposed hooligans are now picking his pocket. Eminem could lose millions of dollars to bootleggers, but his rant obscures the fact that as a performer, he's actually maturing. The Eminem Show has offensive and profane lyrics, but it's also a significant work of pop culture. If it comes up a bit short of being a great rap album, it leaves no doubt that Eminem is a great rapper.

Most of the controversy surrounding Eminem's two previous records--The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP--stemmed from his now infamous lyrics threatening to kill his wife and his mother and expressing his rampant homophobia. Charged with being a bad human and a toxic influence, Eminem pleaded not guilty by reason of artistic integrity. He was a guy named Marshall Mathers with a rap alter ego named Eminem, and that alter ego happened to have a lunatic doppelganger of its own named Slim Shady. He was merely playing a role (or three).

As a rapper, Eminem has always shown a talent for wordplay, but on his previous work, the lines between his characters--and those characters' broader meanings--were pretty fuzzy. On The Eminem Show, however, the three personalities fit together like a set of Russian nesting dolls. Slim Shady is the raging fantasy id, a nightmare projection of overprotective parents and the devil on the shoulder of teenage rebels. Eminem, meanwhile, functions as the voice of present-tense reality. He's the rapper who has run-ins with the law, an unraveling marriage and a nose for politics. At the wounded core is Marshall Mathers, a drippy kid plagued by insecurities.

The Eminem Show's first single, Without Me, is a Slim song that starts, "I've created a monster/ 'Cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more/ They want Shady/ I'm chopped liver." Once summoned, Shady delivers the funniest diatribe in recent rap history. Over an upbeat snare reminiscent of Billie Jean and a woolly sax torn from the Coasters' playbook, Shady sums up his appeal: "Little hellions/ Kids feeling rebellious/ Embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis/ They start feeling like prisoners, helpless." He says this at top speed with the clarity of Henry Higgins, over music that makes you want to get up and dance. In the Without Me video, he does a jig dressed as Osama bin Laden. Slim's art is offensive, but offensiveness is his art. If you don't think there's value in that, then this is not your album.

The Eminem voice gets the majority of play on The Eminem Show, and he's sharpest on White America. Eminem is disingenuous when he says he can't understand why people are always talking about him, but he doesn't mind using the culture's fascination with him to point out its own bankruptcy. "White America/ I could be one of your kids/ Little Eric looks just like this/ Erica loves my s___/ I go to TRL; look how many hugs I get."

Eminem's great shtick is to be simultaneously inside and outside himself. Several tracks re-enact his 2000 arrest for assaulting a man he saw kissing his now ex-wife. He describes his uncontrollable feelings on Say Goodbye Hollywood while bringing in expert witnesses to comment on his stupidity. A voice-mail message from his manager becomes a spoken interlude in which Eminem is scolded like an impulsive child: "I told you not to f_____ bring your gun around like an idiot outside of your home."

In the persona of Marshall Mathers, Eminem's gift for self-scrutiny turns insufferably narcissistic. Marshall is deeply wounded, hates his parents but loves his daughter. About his dad, who left him when he was a baby, Marshall says, "I wonder if he even kissed me goodbye/ No I don't; on second thought, I just f_____ wish he would die." On Hailie's Song, he sings in a surprising falsetto, "My baby girl keeps getting older, I watch her grow up with pride/ People make jokes, 'cause they don't understand me/ They just don't see my real side." Mathers has a weakness for sentimentality.

The Eminem Show doesn't have many Marshall songs, but it still sags after the halfway point before rallying to regain some of its bluster. There are two horrible songs: Drips, a duet with D12's Obie Trice, is the dumbest sex romp since the Luther Campbell era; Sing for the Moment, a licensed rip-off of Aerosmith's Dream On, substitutes a musty hit for any new emotion.

But the interplay among the three Eminems works. Call it a metaphor for the fragmented consciousness of the modern American white guy or call it a gimmick--it's well constructed and seriously considered. The characters occasionally blend, but if The Eminem Show were seamless, it would be high art, not pop. Terrific production, mostly by Eminem, helps add cohesion.

Those who actually listen to rap know that it's rarely as nihilistic as the moral gatekeepers claim. On The Eminem Show, there's less offensive material than on his previous two albums, but Eminem still disrespects men by calling them "fags," and women are unfailingly "bitches." Of course, Eminem would argue that these are the thoughts of his characters and that he's entitled to his artistic point of view. The Eminem Show makes it a lot easier to believe he has one.