White Negro, please!

Progressive, The, Jan, 2003 by William Jelani Cobb

In the pantheon of disposable American heroes, Marshall Mathers is the man of the moment. Having turned a media double-play on the big screen and the airwaves with the high-grossing biopic 8 Mile and its ubiquitous soundtrack, M.M. (or Eminem) is poised to parlay his anointed fifteen minutes into an epic run of at least an hour or two.

Already canonized in the pages of The New York Times and virtually ordained by the glossies, Eminem has become the current hipness litmus. Frank Rich, in the midst of a pathos festival in the pages of the Times, praised Em's lyrical flow and originality. En route to proclaiming Eminem as fun for all ages, he offered this observation: "In a country in which broken homes, absentee parents, and latchkey kids are endemic to every social class, he can touch some of the hottest emotional buttons. He can be puerile too, but what else is new in pop music?"

No less an authority on hip hop than Andrew Sullivan observed on Salon.com that Eminem's music is some of the most challenging, inventive, and lyrically brilliant in recent times. His movie was an excellently written and directed product, Sullivan said, and there's no mystery why it did so well. With the minor concerns of his anti-gay and violently misogynistic lyrics airbrushed into obscurity courtesy of endorsements by critics (and Elton John--dude, what gives?), Ems slouchy way and disaffected scowl are set to become our modern equivalent of Elvis's hip tic.

With a 252-word lead-in out of the way, conventional journalism about Eminem holds that this paragraph is where I'm supposed to start talking about his disturbing significance to our particular cultural moment and detail the important questions his ascent raises. Long pause. Truth told, the response from the hip hop cognoscenti and more than a few quarters of black America has been an audible yawn. The rapper's cultural cache has earned him placement on the covers of underground hip hop publications, but their treatment of him has had way fewer hosannas than the mainstream media that have branded him as the second coming of Elvis Marciano.

In the race to imbue Eminem with some enduring significance--beyond the receipts he adds to the national cash register--the fact that he is not all that significant to hip hop has gone almost completely unnoticed. He is not a stylistic innovator a la Busta Rhymes or Snoop Dogg or a master narrator like Slick Rick. His subject matter is daring, but benchmark acts like Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim, Queen Latifah, and A Tribe Called Quest were responsible for dilating hip hop's understanding of what could be rapped about. Mainstream American pop has been dipping into black culture for reinvigoration since the days of burnt cork; that a white rapper has made millions is nothing new.

Eminem's market dominance has occurred for the same reasons that Jayson "White Chocolate" Williams of the Sacramento Kings has the best selling jersey in the NBA, and I'm awaiting the day that music critics start praising Eminem for having "sound fundamentals" when it comes to rapping. Both Em and Williams are the beneficiaries of a type of cultural affirmative action for white men, which is to say that neither of them is unqualified, but both are object lessons in the benefits of diversity. (Toddlers too small now to grip a microphone or hold a basketball will in future days remember the first time they heard Eminem flow or saw one of Williams's pyrotechnic, no-look passes and realized that they, too, could succeed in a black-dominated world.)

Eminem is neither the first commercially successful white rapperw--the Beastie Boys lay claim to that distinction--nor the first charged with the Elvising of hip hop (that would be Vanilla Ice). He fits into a pantheon of white artists that includes moderate successes like Third Base (a riff on the "Who's on First?" routine) and the Irish American trio House of Pain.

But the question remains: Who is on first? Eminem is in scoring position because he is, for what it matters, probably the most talented white rapper to yet emerge. But comparing Eminem to the lineage of white wordsmiths is approximately as patronizing as calling Miles Davis a fine Negro musician or referring to Denzel Washington as that black guy with the Oscar. Eminem is undoubtedly clever, but cleverness is as common to rappers as lying is to politicians. His cadence (or flow) is infectious, but, not in the same league as vocal masters like Rakim or Notorious B.I.G. Em has a lyrical gift, but leave him in the same room with the West Coast's Ras Kass or the Brooklyn freestyle master Supernatural and you'd have a repeat of the Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney fight back in '82. Nor does Eminem himself have any illusions about his standing in the pantheon of rap, having stated in interviews that he doesn't consider himself to be in the top tier of rappers in terms of skill.

What Em is selling--and what has resonated with his legions of fans, salivating critics, and assorted media apostles--is a narrative of worthless childhood in the post-industrial wasteland of the former Motor City. With his brooding, swaggering persona, replete with prereq tattoos, oversized gear, and bleached out follicles, Eminem has been appointed the voice of Anglo angst a la Kurt Cobain. Call it Columbine chic.