I feel like I’m experiencing deja vu. But I suppose that is the point of Eminem’s recent single “Houdini,” which finds the 51-year-old reaching into his 2002 bag in search of a song that amassed nearly seven million views on YouTube in its 13 hours of live broadcast. Eminem is back.

With frequent collaborator Dr. Dre, Eminem doing what he all the time did, releasing a recent single with the only purpose of causing controversy; he photographs pop stars (more on that later), talks about how people cannot stand him, and often tries to point out how inappropriate he might be while commenting on his social place in the world.

This was all cool in 2002, when Eminem had a goal on his back. Back then, Eminem was often used for example of how music could lead on people, especially “youth”, astray. This is why his highly uneven 2000 album The Marshall Mathers LP is commonly considered a classic album – the nice songs really make clear society’s absurd tendency accountable art for parental and personal shortcomings.

It’s not the 12 months 2000. Eminem should command attention and he’s still a very talented wordsmith and he will move individuals, but Eminem is not any longer a boogeyman; Eminem was all the time at his best when his back was against the wall. Eminem and Ice Cube had the identical thing – the more people hated them, the higher their art was.

Eminem’s work stopped being widely noteworthy a few years ago (at some point, even his fiercest critics stopped listening to him and moved on), but that nearly doesn’t matter. Eminem has such a huge fan base that even Eminem’s bad releases top the pop charts after their release. Eminem is a notorious studio rat and has released at least 10 commercially successful studio albums. Haters don’t matter financially, but apparently Eminem was listening and, well, Slim Shady – his most outrageous and disgusting alter ego – is in for the last time.

Entertainment

Maybe that is how we ended up with a song like “Houdini,” which does not sound very similar to Eminem’s recent projects, but more just like the opening salvo to one in all those monster albums from the early days of his profession. It’s stuffed with mawkishness, accompanied by a completely bizarre, cartoonish music video made for MTV’s TRL… show, which ended in 2008. It has been featured in songs corresponding to “Houdini”, which samples The Steve Miller Band’s 1982 hit “Abracadabra,” where Eminem had some inappropriate fun photographing pop favorites. Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey (who he either dated or not) and Britney Spears everyone caught Eminem’s stray shots. Ironic because Eminem appeared to often mock their massive success, though he was literally of the identical ilk. To be clear, a few of these shots were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, however the avalanche of arguments directed at early 2000s pop stars was serious.

It’s just that these people don’t exist anymore. Boy bands and machine-driven pop stars are a thing of the past. Sure, there are great artists, but are they the identical artists that audiences will immediately recognize? Maybe, possibly not. Eminem decided to hedge that bet with a wildly unnecessary tact about shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot. He raps, “If I asked Megan Thee Stallion to work with me, would I really have a chance to accomplish this feat?” Of course, feat is a homonym for foot. Calling it lazy and below Eminem’s level can be an understatement. Eminem is a rapper who had bars that were value studying. It was a low-hanging fruit bar for his big single, which got here back as an instance that he’ll say whatever he wants. And it falls flat. It’s just silly.

Besides, there was a time when things like this were just plain annoying, but everyone had to maneuver on. It’s 2024 and Twitter fingers are a thing. And a white boy who has been given a pass by the culture due to his trademarks and talent probably won’t get the identical bullshit response he once did. Especially considering that Megan Thee Stallion really went through an ordeal where she was shot. Why Eminem would waste a beat of punctuation on that is as nonsensical as Drake doing it. I bet the bar won’t hurt Meg’s feelings or change her life, but when I were her, I’d think, “Just…why?”

Perhaps Eminem is in search of an enemy in black women to offer him something to rap about again. He would not be the primary white man to disrespect black women simply because he could. It’s just a weird selection; but nonetheless, I do not expect legions of black rappers to query Eminem for her to simply accept it and move on. Even LeBron James spoke up and shouted out Eminem for the song; sigh.

Let’s hope Eminem delivers higher work than this soon to be released album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)” even though it probably won’t matter. I only listened to “Houdini” due to the mention of Meg. I’m not even his audience anymore. After all, the 12 months is 2024.