Eminem is a berserker

and the music curls and drums, races and swells to meet the sharpness of his reportorial eye, the spring of his rhymes. „He has sent a voltage around a generation,“ said Seamus Heaney this past summer, admiring him for his „verbal energy“ and for creating a „sense of what is possible.“

So who’s bringin‘ the guns into this country? (Hmm?)
I couldn’t sneak a plastic pellet gun through customs over in London
And last week, I see a Schwarzenegger movie
Where he’s shootin‘ all sorts of these motherfuckers with an Uzi
I see these three little kids, up in the front row,
Screaming „Go,“ with their seventeen-year-old uncle
I’m like, „Guidance—ain’t they got the same moms and dads
Who got mad when I asked if they liked violence?“
And told me that my tape taught ‚em to swear
What about the make-up you allow your twelve-year-old daughter to wear?
(Hmm:) So tell me that your son doesn’t know any cusswords
When his bus driver’s screamin‘ at him, fuckin‘ him up worse
(„Go sit the fuck down, you little fuckin‘ prick!“)
And fuck was the first word I ever learned
Up in the third grade, flippin‘ the gym teacher the bird (Look!)
So read up about how I used to get beat up
Peed on, be on free lunch, and change school every three months.

Andrew O´Hagan, NRB 6.11.03