Seven Oaks Magazine.

This week Marshall Mathers – a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady, a.k.a. The Great White Hope – squashed rumors that he was retiring from the rap game in order to move in to a more traditionally Caucasoid line of work: finagling production credits on the work of black musicians. Apparently, Eminem – who has been named “Most Likely to Inspire Insipid Postmodern Cultural Studies Theses About the Fluidity of Race, Class and Gender” for several years consecutively in the running contest in my head – has told reporters that “ I don't know what I'm doing yet. Nothing is definite; you know what I'm saying? Nothing is written in stone.” Word, Marshall. Word.

Eminem first came to my attention at about the same time as he came to the attention of the offspring of suburban soccer moms across the continent – ‘dues-paying’ time in the underground notwithstanding. Confused, as I was, by the slightly familiar quality of his falsely-halting, rythmically-displaced and casually-toned cadence, my dear friend and walking hip hop encyclopedia, Jacob, wondered aloud about the more-than-passing similarities between Eminem’s style and that of Wordsworth, an African American emcee whose work we had heard on the sublime Lyricist Lounge recordings as well as in guest spots on A Tribe Called Quest’s otherwise-dismal The Love Movement. Unsurprisingly, it proved far harder for Wordsworth to stand out from the crowd than it was for the shiny, lily-white Mr. Mathers.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Eminem’s doo-rags to riches story is that it is nearly always dealt with in hushed, reverential tones which emphasize how different Slim Shady’s rise to the top was from that of his racial antecedents. His Euro-extracted enthusiasts often giddily contradistinguished his realness with the now-eclipsed, now-absolved saga of Vanilla Ice. But what’s really remarkable about Eminem, though, is how closely his story has stuck to the precedents.

Like the Beastie Boys and their opening salvo, License To Ill, exagerrated and wildly offensive misogyny and homophobia are the language employed to create the veneer of toughness necessary to mask the insecurity borne out by the imposing and exotic black masculinity of the white imagination, and to therefore allow for the expression of hip hop bravado. To their credit, the Beasties, at least, later issued a public apology for their sophmoric and obnoxious sexism and gay-hatred; snipes against women and homosexuals that now, admittedly, seem tame compared to the homicidal and sociopathic musings of Eminem.

Next, like countless talented white musicians before him – Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Elvis Presley, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones – Eminem worked his undeniable musical gifts and charisma into a laudatory and ecstatic reception totally incommensurate to the relatively minor role he played in setting the aesthetic foundations of his chosen medium. That’s the great myth about appropriation: That it’s offensive because white artists, to use rapper Mos Def’s words, “Ain’t got no soul”; it’s wrong because the white pirates stealing black riffs are talentless. But this is a liberal, individualistic argument, not to mention one that doesn’t hold water. The truly dangerous and offensive white privilege at play is much bigger than Mick Jagger or Clapton as individual plagiarists; it’s the massive social and institutional racism that demands a white face on artistic excellence, and leaves pioneers like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard as middling financial successes.

Emimen has always striven to make clear that he understands and abhors this dynamic; the irony and aloofness which he employs to express his critique, however, is cloudy. In reference to the relative anonymity of his black bandmates in D12 when contrasted against his own notereity, Eminem sings “These chicks don’t even know the name of my band.” And what does the video offer up? Nearly uninterrupted focus on Eminem, as his anonymous black collaborators stay anonymous.

Perhaps when, in his latest exercise in puerile sexist drivel, “Ass Like That”, Mr. Mathers objectifies and diminishes pop diva Gwen Stefani – a “singer” who is now constantly surrounded by her own exotic posse, this time one of Japanese style-kids called the Harajuku Girls – he does so less out of misogyny and more out defensive panic borne out by self-recognition: In both cases, porcelain skin and platinum blonde hair are surrounded by dancing ‘others’ packing serious authenticity.