Death to Eminem

Showing his best side: Eminem performs at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

"Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me" — Eminem, Business

What was the state of hip hop's nation before Eminem? Scattered to the winds. By 1999, the gangsta era's rival dons, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., had long been shot and buried. A Tribe Called Quest, pride of the underground, was busy breaking up. Master P and P. Diddy (then Puff Daddy, but really Sean Combs) dominated sales racks with shallow, increasingly awful albums — although top talents like Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z and OutKast carried a torch for the faithful. Rap music was entrenched as the soundtrack of suburbia, but white practitioners of the craft remained the punchline to any number of bad jokes. (Ice Ice Baby was most impressive for the length of its shadow.) Hence the surprise when A-list producer Dr. Dre, the puppetmaster of California, stretched his fingers all the way to Michigan to pluck up Marshall Bruce Mathers III, a slight, white MC with a growing reputation for saying vile things into a microphone. Mathers was one man with three faces: himself, Eminem and Slim Shady, in ascending order of lyrical ugliness.

In the six years since Dre guided him into the mainstream, Marshall Mathers has become one of the planet's most accomplished musicians. He is a nine-time Grammy winner who has sold 60 million albums worldwide, and rewritten the rules of the rap game along the way. Earlier white acts like the Beastie Boys and House of Pain wedged their feet inside hip hop's black walls; Eminem kicked open the door, stomped across the carpet and swung his feet onto the sofa. It's a reach to claim he single-handedly integrated rap music. But by proving beyond doubt that pigment does not predict microphone control, Mathers blazed a trail that leads to hip hop's present position — a global, open-armed juggernaut with burgeoning subgenres made for and by people of myriad races and cultures.

Earlier this month, Mathers' hometown paper, the Detroit Free Press, ran a story forecasting the end of his solo career. Details of the speculation, attributed to members of his inner circle, were specific: Eminem the rapper is all but done. His final performance will come in Dublin on September 17, the last stop of his Anger Management 3 tour. Encore, last fall's multi-platinum chart-topper, will stand as his last album. Nothing in the report ruled out an occasional reappearance as a guest vocalist or alongside D-12, his six-MC Detroit posse. But by and large, the story suggested, Eminem's time on the mike has reached an end. Instead, Marshall Mathers will go forward as a music producer and label boss, working in the manner of his mentor, Dr. Dre, to scout, shape and sell new talent.

Last week, Mathers refuted the rumour of Eminem's demise, mocking the Free Press report from a Washington concert stage. He followed by mooning the audience. He spoke again after the show, telling MTV: "When I know my next move, I'll tell everyone my next move. I don't know what I'm doing yet. Nothing is definite... nothing is written in stone." A spokesman from his camp declared Encore "the close of the first chapter of Eminem's career," whatever that means.

"And this is a song about how I lost my shirt": Eminem at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. Photo by Scott Gries/ImageDirect.

But why shouldn't Eminem disappear? He is just a character, a mask created by Mathers when he was a disaffected teenager who liked to rap in basements with his high-school friends. Mathers' life as a young adult, a study in agony, spawned his second alter ego, Slim Shady, the misogynistic, homophobic cretin who exploded onto the music map with The Slim Shady LP, Eminem's Dre-directed mainstream debut. (Mathers releases his music as Eminem; but raps as Eminem and Slim Shady. Same voice, different animals.) The album established Mathers as hip hop's great white hope — but also its darkest evil. Slim Shady's lyrics flowed as a torrent of rage; few of them can be reprinted here. On '97 Bonnie and Clyde, Eminem fantasized about murdering his girlfriend (now ex-wife) Kim and throwing her body into a lake with help from their baby daughter, Hailie Jade: "There goes mama, splashin' in the water / No more fightin' with dad, no more restraining order / No more step-dada, no more new brother / Blow her kisses bye-bye, tell mama you love her."

The current-day Mathers/Eminem is a multi-millionaire and music mogul. He has achieved some kind of détente with Kim; they share custody of Hailie. Every new artistic and financial success lightens the weight of his youthful, impoverished anger. Mathers has carved his own fiefdom, Shady Records, within rap's all-powerful Interscope imprint. He worked with Dr. Dre to package and deliver 50 Cent — the return of gangsta, both black and bulletproof — from the streets of New York to the Wal-Marts of middle America. Mathers' reality is now closer to that of business titan Russell Simmons than Rabbit, the semi-autobiographical, hard-luck hero who Mathers played to great acclaim in 8 Mile. In 2005, Eminem is an anachronism.

Mind you, retirement is an elastic concept at the upper echelons of hip hop. Jay-Z, Eminem's closest peer, spent years threatening to quit on rap. He finally exited with 2003's Black Album, filming his own murder in the video to 99 Problems. After a coffee-cup hiatus, he returned earlier this year as the president of Def Jam Records. Jay-Z is now said to be considering a comeback recording with archrival Nas. In other words, he is bigger than ever.

Made in the shade: Eminem, 50 Cent and Dr. Dre arrive at New York's Roseland Ballroom in October of 2004 to launch Shade 45, a new satellite radio station. Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images.

Which is what Mathers could become by executing Eminem. The man has peeked out from behind the mask on each of his albums, but never for long. Last November's Encore moved 4.7 million units in the U.S. alone — but also revealed a growing credibility gap. Language that used to be incendiary now seemed outmoded. Mathers dusted off Slim Shady for Just Lose It, an attack on Michael Jackson that swung and missed because its target was already down for the count. Other diss tracks felt like the work of a man tilting at windmills: Ass Like That renewed a long-running feud with hand puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, of all things. Mosh, the album's most provocative song, extended the political musings that Mathers introduced on The Eminem Show's stunning White America. The Mosh video, released a week in advance of last fall's U.S. elections, became a call to arms for that country's unregistered voters. An animated Eminem leads an army of youth to the White House lawns. They storm the residence to register for ballots. Anti-Republican imagery roils throughout. In a campaign rife with pop icons turned polemicists (see: Springsteen, Bruce), no celebrity struck a stronger blow.

Mathers is 32 years old now, as much an adult as he'll ever be. He has proven himself a capable, if repetitive producer — but is widely accepted on the short list of hip hop's all-time greatest MCs. Simply put, he is too great a talent to quit the game so soon. Eminem might be running out of things to say, but Mathers is a bottomless well. His culture doesn't respect apologies, but it's not enough for him to let Eminem fade out like Shady. If he instead condemns the missteps of his public persona — like a recanting of Kim, the 2000 song that allegedly contributed to his ex-wife's suicide attempt — and unveils another in its place, Mathers can climb past Jay-Z to reach the heights of his hero, Shakur.

There's a chance this kind of conjecture is already on the rapper's mind. Another rumour making the rounds has him hard at work preparing a double-length solo album for autumn release. Its suspected title? The Funeral. Slim Shady already feels six feet under; only Eminem is left to bury.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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