The New York Times

January 29, 2001

IN AMERICA

A Musical Betrayal

By BOB HERBERT

The rapster Eminem, on his latest CD, says — more crudely than I could ever repeat on the pages of The New York Times — that even if the singer Jennifer Lopez were his own mother, he'd still have to have sex with her without a condom.

That way, he says, he could "have a son and a new brother at the same time and just say that it ain't mine."

Poetry.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, is a major force in the music industry. He's a white rapper who has successfully burrowed his way to the nauseating depths of degradation and self-loathing pioneered by gangsta-rapping blacks. No image is too vile. In Eminem's world all women are "whores" and he is eager to rape and murder them. He dares us to question whether he would choke a woman "til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more."

Not even mom is immune. On the song "Kill You," the singer's mother, as debased as any other woman, is ordered to prepare herself for sex with her son.

After listening to the CD, titled "The Marshall Mathers LP," I wondered how it happened that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences had managed to nominate it for a Grammy award — in its top category, no less. Album of the year.

This is not about censorship. Eminem is making millions exercising his unassailable right to artistic freedom. But there is a legitimate question here about sanity. "I'm a kill you!" he says of one woman. "Like a murder weapon, I'm a conceal you in a closet with mildew, sheets, pillows and film you."

What is the artistic value here? Trust me, it's not the music. And the lyrics, as you can see, are both inane and obscene.

Album of the year? Only a lunatic could think this was the finest album of the year.

Also nominated, it so happens, is Paul Simon, for his album "You're the One." It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast to Eminem. For starters, Mr. Simon is an accomplished composer and lyricist whose music has been an emotional touchstone for listeners as varied as the long-haired, miniskirted generation of the 60's and this year's techno-hip, post-millennial crowd.

Mr. Simon has received album-of- the-year Grammy nominations in five successive decades, and has won three times. While Eminem rants about raping his mother, Mr. Simon makes a serious attempt in "You're the One" to explore artistically the possibility of achieving, in an absurd, crazy world, a modicum of grace and healing and mutual tolerance and mature love.

Maybe that's too cornball for words. Or at least for Grammy awards in the 21st century. But I hope not.

Obviously there can be artistic merit in works about rape and murder and the humiliation of homosexuals, which are some of Eminem's favorite subjects. But that pre- supposes some minimal level of insight and meaning. There has to be more to a work of art — to an album worthy of a major award — than the simple spouting of dirty words and filthy phrases.

My problem with rap, especially in its most grotesque forms, is that it has so thoroughly broken faith with the surpassingly great, centuries- long tradition of black music in America. With rap, both the music and the poetry have vanished. In their place, we get, for the most part, infantile rhymes, and sometimes not even rhymes — just gibberish.

Eminem has latched onto this betrayal and is running with it. He tells us in detail how he'll slap one woman and rape another, and humiliate some gay guy at knifepoint. This stuff is readily available to 10-year- olds, which should make any serious person both angry and sad. A steady diet of this ugliness is poisonous, the equivalent of developing one's self- image by looking in a toilet.

Paul Simon may or may not win album of the year. Also nominated are Beck, for the album "Midnite Venture"; Radiohead for "Kid A"; and Steely Dan for "Two Against Nature."

But no matter who wins, the juxtaposition of Mr. Simon and Eminem in a single category tells us something about the cultural forces currently in play. Mr. Simon worries about "the price that we pay when evil walks the planet and love is crushed like clay."

Eminem rhapsodizes about putting duct tape over the mouths of his victims.