Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [50]
No more fightin’ with Dad: Kimberly Anne Scott outside the 37th District Court in Warren, Michigan, after her hearing on charges of disturbing the peace, October 2, 2001.
In his defense of free speech in music, Greene didn’t mention anything about the album that would win the Grammy for Best Album of the Year, Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature. “Cousin Dupree,” the Steely Dan song that would take Best Pop Performance of the year, is about an aimless lech coming on to his younger cousin. Another song on the same album, “Janie Runaway,” is about an older man finding a muse in his teenage runaway lover and enticing her into a ménage a trois with one of her friends in return for a birthday trip to Spain. Though Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are both in their fifties, no one treated their album as a mission statement or suggested their homes be searched for child pornography. It was considered a work of venerable song-craft by veteran musicians. Steely Dan wasn’t protested by children’s rights groups, nor was any suggestion made that the Grammy accolades toward such songs would incite Steely Dan’s demographic—middle-aged Baby Boomers—or their children into sexual indentured servitude. Not to make light of hate crimes or domestic violence, but to think that a record alone will tip the scales in the mind of the monsters who commit such acts is to dangerously simplify both reality and the pathology of these criminals. Whatever music they might choose as a backdrop to their alienation doesn’t create their sickness. If anything, visual arts are a stronger catalyst, film a more powerful influence over our culture. 8 Mile proved this when it redefined Eminem, snuggle-sizing him to fit into the nation’s outstretched arms. The film won over the Baby Boomers in particular, who took Eminem as their entrée into hip-hop, the first youth movement with as large a cultural impact as the hippies. At the 2000 Grammys, however, the academy, whose core voters are predominately Boomers, voted for subtlety over hyperbole, Steely Dan’s stylized taboo over Eminem’s screamed “fuck you.”
Eminem did take home three Grammys that year, one for Best Rap Solo Performance (“The Real Slim Shady”), one for Best Rap Duo (“Forgot About Dre”), and one for Best Rap Album (The Marshall Mathers LP), to place in his living-room trophy case alongside the two he won in 1999 for Best Rap Solo Performance (“My Name Is”) and, again, Best Rap Album (The Slim Shady LP). Eminem’s duet with Elton John at the ceremony was calculated to soften his tag as a homophobe. But Eminem couldn’t resist stirring the waters again shortly after the event, claiming in an interview that he wasn’t aware that Elton John was gay. The truth of the matter was seen backstage at the Brit Awards, the U.K. equivalent of the Grammy Awards, later in the year, when a writer from London’s Daily Express observed Eminem, standing in the backstage bar, having a drink with his crew and being watched but left alone by the cream of the Brit pop-music scene, when he was greeted by John with a huge bear hug and a “Come here, darlin’!” If anyone still wondered about his views at that point, Eminem the homophobe didn’t flinch or shy away from John, he just grinned.
“It amazes me that people can’t see that what he is doing is a performance,” John told the reporter that night. “He plays a part onstage and he pushes buttons. I think he’s incredible as a performer and a person. The music industry needs people who can be subversive. As a nonsubversive songwriter, I particularly appreciate and admire his lyrics. I spent three days with him in America and I can tell you, he’s very calm, very modest, very sweet, and very shy.”
When Eminem returned with The Eminem Show, an album released early to discourage rampant Internet piracy, it