I feel like right now is the perfect time for me to tell you all about the love of my life: Marshall Mathers.
Sounds silly really doesn't it? Love of my life - I've never met the bloke. Regardless, he is and always will be.
It seems like everyone knows I love him, and people often say 'do you still love eminem' as if I've all of sudden stopped listening to him. No one knows why though, so I might as well share it with you all.
It's bittersweet for me to watch his performance at V festival, he's certainly not the Slim Shady of old but a new man standing in the place of the peroxide blonde, potty-mouthed maverick from Detroit. The endearing slap-dash, put together at the last minute, fast paced performances are long gone now.
I'm lucky enough to have cool parents who weren't ever afraid to let me make my own choices (except for football teams, I had no choice there.) I chose from an early age what kind of a person I was - I knew I just didn't give a fuck what anyone thought of me, and certainly not in an offensive sense but in the sense that if it made me happy I'm going to pursue it, do it no matter what others think. I suppose, given this outlook I had on life, it was only a matter of time before I would find, let's say, my hero. I listened to his music on my walkman all day long frantically learning his lyrics and looking up words in the dictionary so I could understand. This resulted in me having a very broad, if not vulgar, grasp on the english language from an early age. But,
The Marshall Mathers LP in particular, taught me a lot about life - other people, relationships, sex, drugs, love, hate, you name it, I knew about it all. I didn't want to watch Disney, I wanted to listen to Eminem.
I know it's a cliche, and become fashionable, to describe someone like Eminem as a 'hero' because he built himself up from nothing and came from the wrong side of the tracks and now he's a multi-millionaire, platinum-selling recording artist superstar isn't he? Yes, but that is irrelevant to me. The catch there, of course, is that if he wasn't all of the above I may never have heard of him and therefore would not be sitting here today declaring my undying love for him all over the internet. I don't like his music because it's popular - it hasn't always been, you can't imagine the negative reactions I got when I said he was my favourite.
People ask me all the time, why do you like him so much? Now, you must remember this was long before he became the phenomenon that he is right now - now, it seems everyone loves him, he's everyone's hero.
He practically fell off the face of the earth a few years ago, got fat and became a recluse - it wasn't so cool then to admit he was your hero then.
Back to why. Why I like him
so much:
Firstly, he's clever. He's ferociously intelligent - his grasp of linguistics is unfathomable to most. The way he weaves in between metaphors and euphemisms that go over most people's heads is exciting to me. I enjoy listening to him because he's a fucking genius. He'll teach you so much about the world we live in if you listen to him carefully.
He's philosophical. Most people associate Eminem with profanities and lude and suggestive content but little recognize his deeper side.
'In the land of the killers, a sinner's mind is a sanctum' is one of the greatest and most poignant things I ever heard - it took me ages to get my head around.
He's hilarious. His sense of humour could be deemed controversial and offensive, but he's only fucking with society's stereotypes and throwing them back in your face. See, when he calls a gay man a 'faggot' everyone calls him homophobic, yet the world we live in is filled with homophobia - you only have to read magazines, watch tv or listen to the radio to realise that - he's just proving a point in the only way he knows how. Eminem supports gay marriage - still think he's homophobic? He embodies (or used to embody) everything that society was/is but found offensive. Society is racist, homophobic, sexist, ageist, cruel to animals, rude, stereotypical and xenophobic so he used all of those things in his songs and guess what? People went nuts, they literally protested and abhorred him whilst utterly blind to the fact that they were protesting about themselves. The way he challenges society's perceptions of right and wrong is something that I find fascinating and admirable...
'So what about the make-up you allow your 12-year-old daughter to wear?'
He challenges stereotypes. Stating the obvious here but he is white. He is white in an industry that was dominated, almost totally, by people of black origin - he's just a skinny little white kid with blond hair squaring up to hip-hop masters like it's no big deal, and you know what half of 'em couldn't lace his boots.
He is who he is without any apologies. Sure, he says things that are outrageous, and shocking but he is true to himself. I've made mistakes in my life, plenty in fact, but I take great comfort in the knowledge that at least I was being me. I can forgive myself anything, but I could not forgive myself for changing who I was to please anyone else. This is the single biggest reason why I adore Eminem - The irony of the song 'The way I am' is so fantastic when he declares '
I am whatever you say I am' because he simply is not. He is not what we, the media, the public, the press, his fans, whoever says he is - he is who he says he is, and that is exactly how it fucking should be. If you listen to 'no apologies' it will give you a sense of him, and where he's coming from.
I identify parts of me in people all the time, and in Eminem it's the refusal to succumb to society's demands and expectations - this aspect of his character is so much like Kurt Cobain which makes it seem completely plausible for me feel at home listening to both grunge and hip-hop if these two are in command of the microphone.
I won't pretend it doesn't wind me up a little bit when my facebook homepage is full of girls bragging that Eminem is their favourite thing on earth - but I never heard you mention him before 'love the way you lie'. It only frustrates me because it makes it seem as though I love him because it's what everyone else does - everyone loves Eminem now don't they.
It hurts me to see him change in the way that he has, I honestly never imagined he would have sold out but he has. His first few albums were aggressive, raw, powerful and inspiring - it was like he made music because it was in his blood, pulsing through his veins and he just spilled his guts on the page and spit his emotions through a microphone. Now, it feels like money. The creativity has faded and the lyrics that were once explosive and sporadic are structured and rehearsed.
Since I was 6 I've been fascinated by Eminem - by his public persona and his beautifully intelligent lyrics. I don't care if he's sexy or who he's dating or what car he drives. I don't care if he's, possibly, the biggest 'superstar' in the world today.
Yes, when I have a shit day I listen to his music but it's so much deeper than that, this relationship I have with him, with his music...I only care that he's the reason that I have fire in my belly, and I live my life by my rules and no one elses.
'A Sheep in Wolf's clothing'
