BKBA - Eminem: Mosh with Marshall McLuhan Mathers

(Throwback blog...)

October 29, 2004

Eminem: Mosh with Marshall McLuhan Mathers

I can quote the late Marshall McLuhan about as well as the average person: “The medium is the message.” I can’t do any better than that, but I don’t think I have to.

I think I get it.

I also think I get Eminem, who is the “enfant terrible” of the music world not just because of what he says – many artists have said worse, but because of how many people listen, especially impressionable young people. The dangers of his music were in the passion and clarity that define his angry messages, allegedly inciting homophobia, sexism, and violence, while expanding the boundaries of free speech. But with his latest video “Mosh”, the new danger? Inciting “votred”. He clearly hates President Bush, he wants you to feel the same, and he wants you to vote with that hatred.

Why?

As hip hop’s ambassador to the world – and record sales don’t lie, he is the biggest medium to promote music originally used to give voice to black ghetto youth. It’s generally agreed that he is among the best rappers in history, and like Tiger Woods in golf, he’s helped raise the profile and earning power of the entire hip hop culture. After three multi-platinum albums, a hit movie, clothing-line, and record label, he’s also giving back in a way he never has before: he’s getting young people to act. Is he biased? Yes. Is he wrong?

Sue him. He’s used to it.

His new song covers a variety of conscious hip hop responsibilities, in attacking government lies, the suppression of black voters, and sending youth to fight a war in Iraq the U.N. calls “illegal”. In saying “Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness…”, he’s leading a young cynical America by using their language, and he’s probably one of the few people over age 30 to still “mosh”, or dance in wild abandon bouncing off others in a “mosh pit”. And make no mistake, he is leading as the only character in the animated video who appears as himself, with a beautifully rendered army of racially diverse youth marching to the polls in the visual solidarity of hooded black sweatshirts.

Eminem has thrown down the gauntlet, and is using himself as the vehicle for his political message. His credibility is based in part on his ability to make good music, and for better or worse, that can also be used as a judge of intelligence. In a “bling bling” age of often soulless commercial hip hop, the soul of his music has always been a potent cocktail of anger and frustration, with ultimately hopes of a cathartic redemption. He’s always been emotionally naked, but never so nakedly political, and instead of kids choking on Chomsky and other intellectuals celebrated in tiny academic circles, he’s making it simple: I’ve never been madder, I’ve never challenged a bigger authority, and I’ve never asked for your help, until now. In saying “Let me simplify the rhyme just to amplify the noise”, he’s doing what many great thinkers in history have done: make the complex simple.

There is no better means to move the masses, and for his audience, there is no better medium for the message than Eminem.