Eminem

The Eminem Show (Interscope)

A handful of reviews that greeted the rushed, early release of The Eminem Show compared its creator, MC and provocateur extraordinaire Eminem, to Bob Dylan. It’s an all-too-common conceit, one that rock critics haul out whenever they encounter an artist with a flair for wordplay; it’s also one that the Dylanite in me scoffed at as an example of overreaching at its worst. Yet after further consideration, I have to admit: Despite their considerable differences, Dylan and Eminem are similar in two important respects.

First, each has a truly remarkable gift for language. In fact, I’d argue that Em lives up to the “new Dylan” tag better than, say, Springsteen or Costello. Not only is Eminem, like Dylan, a great storyteller; he’s obsessed with words themselves—everything from how they sound to their multiple meanings. I can’t think of anyone who packs as much verbiage into a sentence as deftly as Dylan or Eminem.

The other thing the two have in common is that they’ve both used their facility with language to become beacons for their respective generations. During the ’60s, Dylan and his idealism roused young people to challenge their country and their parents; today, Em depresses and antagonizes with a nihilism that urges teenagers to disrespect their country and hate their parents. But where Dylan utilized his gifts to explore and, ultimately, change the world, Eminem can’t see past himself.

Consider his model for The Eminem Show—daytime talk TV. The exhibitionism, self-absorption, simplistic morals and lurid family details seen on your Springers, Sally Jessys, even your Oprahs pervade the album. It all makes for a striking contrast to the disc’s predecessor, The Marshall Mathers LP, a record on which Em mined similar territory in a spirit of self-examination and, at times, self-loathing.

Transgressive as they might have been, Eminem’s rants against his wife and mother on The Marshall Mathers LP were born of an inhospitable social stratum; with The Eminem Show, that dysfunction is merely skewed by the insulated perspective of celebrity. Even the content of Eminem’s always agile lyrical flow fails him this time around. In place of the bracing “honesty” he claims is so vital to his art are self-serving “truths” that only alienate; the hyperbole Eminem once used to comic, and often complex, effect has turned egotistical and one-dimensional.

Witness “White America,” in which Em examines his explosion in popularity, expressing surprise that so many of his fans “share [his] exact views and beliefs,” only to equate them with an army marching behind him. He even uses this song-and-dance to feign naïveté about his dramatic rise to the top. We’re just supposed to ignore his relentless self-promotion and overweening ambition?

Later, Eminem suggests that Dr. Dre’s white audience has grown through association with Em and vice versa with respect to Em’s black audience. Never mind that 10 years ago, Dre racked up multiplatinum sales without the benefit of a whiny white protégé. I certainly knew plenty of white Dr. Dre fans during the early ’90s. Not that Eminem can be bothered with details such as this; “White America” is but a marketing ploy designed to sell Eminem and rap as a threat to the minds of suburban white youth. It’s a strategy Ice-T employed a decade ago, and one that later manifested itself in the proliferation of rap-rock bands that preceded Eminem in the late ’90s.

Eminem’s slanted version of recent musical history may be innocuous, but as his new album unfolds, it also begins to call into question his account of the ongoing drama of his personal life. Listening to The Eminem Show, we can’t help wanting to hear his mother Debbie’s and his ex-wife Kim Mathers’ sides of the story. Not only does the soap opera feel tired the third time out; verging on harassment, Eminem’s tirades are so utterly lacking in responsibility or empathy that they’re starting to feel truly sociopathic.

On “Cleaning Out My Closet,” Em says he “made some mistakes, but I’m only human / But I’m man enough to face up to them today.” There isn’t an ounce of contrition anywhere else on the album. In fact, Eminem follows up this statement by concluding that the only wrong he’s done is failing to have his gun loaded the night he pistol-whipped the bodyguard who kissed his wife. Even more galling is how he boasts what a good father he is, all the while shamelessly using his daughter Hailie as a pawn to affirm that he’s really a good guy.

Of course, Eminem would argue that I’m misinterpreting him, since he’s so often being tongue-in-cheek—or just yanking our chains. I should hope that this applies to the Mariah Carey jokes on his new album, especially since, this summer, Em has equaled her greatest sin: signing away the rights to a movie based on his life. The major difference is that Eminem actually wants to be taken seriously as an artist, a desire that the uninspired music on his new album merely serves to undermine.

It’s odd, for example, that Em teases a member of a boy band in his latest single; at least two songs on The Eminem Show (“Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “Hailie’s Song”) have verses or choruses so reminiscent of a boy band ballad we can practically see the choreography playing out in our heads. Otherwise, there’s little more than leftover Dre tracks and dullard bombast. Indeed, the things that come closest to breaking new ground on the record are largely embarrassments.

“Sing for the Moment” uses the Puffy technique to crib Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” right down to a sample of Steven Tyler singing the chorus and Joe Perry rerecording his solo. (Is there anything Aerosmith won’t do to grab a headline at this point?) Worse yet is Em’s attempt at singing and songwriting on “Hailie’s Song,” which, by all means, should have been left in the can, especially since the entire song is about him, not his daughter. Perhaps the only place Eminem shows the breadth of his musical acumen is when he disses Moby by asserting that no one listens to “techno” anymore.

Of all the artists who have suffered Dylan comparisons, Eminem ultimately may be the biggest failure. Unless he learns how to use his sharp tongue to probe situations in the world around him rather than lash out at it aimlessly, he’s likely to end up as little more than a very talented flash in the pan. Em would certainly do well to follow the example of another platinum blonde who preceded him out of Detroit and evolved beyond her flashy start. We can only hope as much. For now, though, The Eminem Show sounds like a hit TV program that’s in its third season and running out of creative juice. If our antihero doesn’t figure out how to infuse new life into his cast of characters by season four, I predict a precipitous ratings drop and imminent cancellation.