The lil’ stinker of the rap world, Eminem, done done it again this week, releasing a new lyric video in which a version of himself who looks tailor-made for some sort of Eminem mobile game—and Jesus, why do we give this shit a chance to manifest in our heads?—wanders around various night clubs and semi-abusive relationships with women, reminding everyone he encounters that they better not try to cancel him, because, gosh dang it, he’s Eminem!
Said video comes attached to “Tone Deaf,” a track off last year’s Music To Be Murdered To – Side B, which falls pretty clearly into the modern Marshall Mathers style, i.e., unobtrusive production designed to give maximum space for Eminem’s rhymes, which range from actually pretty clever, to too clever for their own good, to rhyming “Kris Kristofferson” with “Pissed Pissed-offerson,” which is as close as we’ve gotten lately to a pure headache rendered in lyric form.
But while there’s the standard blend of misogyny, self-deprecation, braggadocio, genuine wit, and references to the pop-culture of several years ago—including a fun few couplets name-checking both Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein—the video more-or-less makes its point perfectly, i.e., who would bother trying to “cancel” Eminem? To the extent that he’s ever been slapped with consequences for his actions, it was back when those actions were actually relevant, not when he was releasing novelty records about how he wants to be friends with Venom or explicitly patterned on old Alfred Hitchcock albums.