Anyone who has been listening to rap and popular music since the late 90’s knows of the rapper Marshal Mathers, more commonly known as Eminem. If you take a brief look around the internet you can easily find numerous articles criticizing and calling Eminem out for his vulgar and disturbing lyrics.(1) However I want to make a case that the body of work this artist has produced shows a true evolution of a man who had a disastrous home life, the effect that had and how he has managed to grow up despite all of that. I’m going to use his music to back up my claim.
This song is considered one of the more disturbing songs which is basically creating a scene of Eminem taking his on again, off again girlfriend/wife to be buried after she had been killed. Oh did I mention that his young daughter is a part of this entire scene? Yeah this is very graphic and even now listening to it I’m disturbed by this. But consider this a way of dealing with his emotions over all that happened between him and Kim, and his daughter being thrown in the middle of this. He truly loved his daughter more than life itself, as this will become more evident in the tracks to come.
This song I think was created for two purposes: the first being to show that he was very well aware of how his music was being taken both in the positive sense and in the negative. Rather than his lashing out at the media (which was a lot of his two previous albums) he decided to basically make an internal dialogue. This song I think marks a turning point in his music, a lot of his music in later albums takes a much more mature tone and shows a much larger awareness of his audience, without him “going soft” so to speak.
Another song that digs back into his past and family life. In this song you can clearly see that he acknowledged that he had made mistakes. He also talks about the fact that are things he had to do regardless of how much he may or may not like it. This shows a pretty large shift in attitude about his life, and shows the beginning of maturity that we start to see in the previous album. This is a sign of things to come.
So this album is called “Recovery” and rightfully so. This album shows in my opinion Eminem finally making it. This song along with several others not only removes nearly all that sense of “selfishness” that you can see in his earlier work. This album is not only therapeutic for him, but it is for his listeners as well. This song I think is the clearest example of that as shown in his lyrics:
“I’m not afraid
to take a stand
everybody
come take my hand”
Now the next album (and newest) cements my position of showing the full evolution of Eminem as a man.
This song shows Eminem demonstrating forgiveness to his mother for the life that they had, and understanding that the life he had, she had as well. This shows a clarity and maturity that is not in any of his past work and kinda brings the evolution of Eminem full circle.
To listen to his earlier music it would be very difficult to judge Eminem’s music as anything other than a young adult lashing out at the world for the rough hand he was dealt. However listening to the evolution this artist has had now over the past roughly 15 years shows just how powerful using the music medium has been for him. Referring back to Headlights, Eminem has talked about how this song is about “making amends”.(2) Anyone who listens to the body of work that Eminem has can’t help but to root for him and hope to see things get better for him. Anyone who can relate to any of his experiences can take solace in the fact that their is always hope. Seeing that he can power through and get through to the other side despite all that was against him sends a powerful message that we all can relate to and appreciate.
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