We’re living in such a dire state of affairs at the moment even once problematic artists like Eminem are suddenly woke.
It started earlier in the year with his blistering freestyle aimed squarely at President Donald Trump, and now with his new album, the First Family are in his crosshairs once again.
On Thursday, the iconic rapper dropped his first album in four years, and while the album has been getting largely negative reviews, one lyric is standing out among all others as being problematic.
Now, Slim Shady’s music has always been draped in questionable lyrics and grim depictions of violence, but this lyric has upset a lot of people.
It appears on the track ‘Framed’, about a minute and a half in:
Donald Duck’s on as the Tonka Truck in the yard
But dog how the f*ck is Ivanka Trump in the trunk of my car
Gotta get to the bottom of it to try to solve it
Must go above and beyond, ’cause it’s incumbent upon
Me, ’cause I feel somewhat responsible for the dumb little blonde girl
Now, hip hop has always been a bastion of moral and political outrage, you only need to look to the likes of Public Enemy to figure that out.
But what Em has done here completely devalues his righteous indignation against Trump, and reduces the conversation we are all having about his music.
We would rather be listening to Shady put Trump on the ropes with his rhymes; instead we are getting this lazy and ‘misogynistic’ writing.
Violence against women is not a matter for trivialisation, especially in the limited context of a rap lyric, where nuance is incredibly difficult to achieve.
The issue here is not his calling out of Trump, that’s something which he is well within his rights doing, and quite a lot of his fans will surely be lapping it up, but violence against women should not be used as a storytelling tool on either side of the political spectrum.
Back in October, Eminem skewered Trump during a freestyle at the BET awards in a much more powerful verse than anything he’s produced on Revival.
Eminem’s verbal sparring went as nuclear as Trump’s little spat with North Korean despot, Kim Jong-un:
The highlights reel includes accusations of racism, with Mathers claiming: ‘Racism’s the only thing he’s fantastic for’.
The rapper added: ‘I’m throwing that piece of sh*t against the wall til it sticks.’
Eminem isn’t the only public figure who has spoken out against some of Trump’s most controversial policies, including the so-called ‘travel ban’, restricting women’s fertility rights, failing to condemn white nationalists, and that blasted wall down on the Mexican border.
No doubt we’ll be hearing the clapback on @realDonaldTrump’s Twitter soon.
