As we noted in our Bonnaroo preview coverage, Eminem’s last headlining performance at the fest back in 2011 was — though full of hits — considerably darker and more mellow-harshing than the average ’Roo headliner set, replete with middle fingers and aggression. You know, Eminem stuff. But we wondered as we approached What Stage on Saturday night, would we be seeing a chilled-out, dare-we-say woke version of the Detroit MC this time around?
Short answer? No. While the 45-year-old rapper didn’t tell us to turn to our dates and shout “fuck you,” like he did last time, he did still cart out a handful of those old homophobic slurs and a payload of aggro vibes. The bit that the most ado has been made of, however, is the blasts of pyro that sounded like gunshots and rang out throughout Eminem’s set. A lot of people seemed to find the effect insensitive, even frightening, especially considering the recent spate — or should we say, never-ending deluge — of gun violence. (It is perhaps worth noting that Eminem himself has lost at least one close friend, fellow rapper Proof, to gun violence.) Anyway, if we’re talking about sensitivity, when was Marshall Mathers ever sensitive? Book an Eminem show, get an Eminem show, we suppose.
Just after 10:45 p.m., shots of a Godzilla-size Eminem stomping through a cityscape played on the What Stage video screens. Then the curtain dropped, revealing the rapper — backed by a full band and a string section featuring familiar Nashville player Larissa Maestro, among others — center stage as he spit his way through “Won’t Back Down.” The Marshall Mathers LP cut “Kill You” — which landed about four or five songs in — isn’t exactly the on-brand dose of Bonnaroo positivity that we got with, say, U2 dropping “Beautiful Day” into their encore at last year’s fest. But people were singing along to the lyrics “Shady will fucking kill you!” just as heartily as they had been to anything Bono was hollering last year, and “White America” kinda functions as a festival-ready protest anthem, in its way.
Em can indeed still spit his trademark rapid-fire runs with stamina, though we have to hand the MVP trophy to his hype man, fellow D12 founder Mr. Porter, who did a lot of the heavy-lifting and crowd-hyping throughout the set. Frequent collaborator Skylar Grey joined Eminem for a midset trio of songs — “Walk on Water,” a crowd-pleasing “Stan” and the painfully dark “Love the Way You Lie.” Mathers also brought out his Bad Meets Evil partner Royce da 5’9” for their song “Fast Lane,” but by that point, a long run of unfamiliar tunes and the aforementioned slurs (the ones in “Criminal”) had us feeling a little exhausted, even if we were eventually rewarded with "My Name Is" and "The Real Slim Shady."
We drifted to the back of the crowd to watch the set-closing "Lose Yourself," which was peppered with bursts of fireworks. It's a song that has reached that level — the echelon of songs that frat boys, hippies, dads and hip teens all seem to know the words to. Eminem certainly isn’t tailor-made for Bonnaroo, and some of his shock-value lyrical tactics are, more than outmoded, just plain shitty. But he's got the hits, and for better or worse, hits bring people together.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
