Eminem just dropped a surprise album, and if you’ve followed the rapper’s career over the past couple of years, its contents won’t surprise you. He’s sold out.
In Darkness, Eminem raps an anthem to gun control. Despite having been arrested thrice on gun-related charges, he promotes stricter gun laws by rapping from the perspective of the Las Vegas shooter, who killed 58 people and injured 515 others.
“Here I am, alone again/ Can’t get out of this hole I’m in/ It’s like the walls are closin’ in/ You can’t help me, no one can,” he raps.
The music video shows a man shooting at people from his hotel room, interspersed with clips of Eminem performing and concludes with sound bites from cable television.
Eminem at least appears to make a powerful statement about the role of media in perpetuating violence when a host’s voice says, “This is what he looks like,” and instead of showing a picture of the shooter, the camera lingers on Eminem’s back as he walks away.
At the end of the video, the screen reads: “When will this end? When enough people care. Register to vote at vote.gov. Make your voice heard and help change gun laws in America.”
Eminem’s focus on gun violence in America is timely, but it seems a bit out of place coming from him. Eminem has been arrested three times, with each arrest involving guns. To be fair, the first arrest was for being in the car with a friend who shot a police car with a paintball. But his experience with gun control laws is actually the norm. They tend to result in trivial arrests — often racially motivated, although not in his case. Gun control laws do not often prevent determined would-be mass shooters from getting weapons.
On another track from the album, Music To Be Murdered By, Eminem appears to make light of violence by rapping, “But I’m contemplating yelling ‘Bombs away’ on the game/ Like I’m outside of an Ariana Grande concert waiting.” That lyric references a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017 that killed 19 people.
Another lyric references a church shooting: “Bitch, shut the f–k up ‘fore I shoot you too/ Ain’t shit I won’t do just to get a few YouTube views/ Run up in a church like pew, pew, pew/ ‘Cause that’s what I do, do, do.”
And as that line hints, there’s plenty of Eminem’s trademark sexism. In Unaccommodating, Eminem raps, “That bimbo Kim put her lips all the way around this bone and then blow.”
Eminem has been pandering to the political Left for years, most notably with his cringeworthy anti-Trump freestyle rap at the BET Hip Hop Awards. He even got investigated by the Secret Service for a lyric about Ivanka Trump.
But, he’s not exactly the voice liberals should listen to on gun control. Remember, this guy also rapped a lyric making light of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
Eminem can’t have it both ways. Is he a gun control advocate, or is he a rapper who proudly glorifies violence?
