One of hip-hop's starting points was what was called "playing the dozens": a popular custom in African-American culture in which two rivals would compete in swearing, each taking his turn to creatively roast his opponent, until one is left with no response. When hip-hop was born in the seventies on the streets of New York, this tradition was incorporated into it, as two rappers would compete and do the dozens to the beat. When hip-hop started being recorded and marketed commercially in the eighties, this custom still survived, and a spar between two rappers, taking turns in releasing a record that disses the other, became one of the characteristics of the genre. And when Eminem turned hip-hop into the main language of pop culture, he used this weapon to lampoon all his opponents, within hip-hop and out of it. Actually, not Eminem, but Slim Shady, his uninhibited alter-ego, was the one doing the damage, and he always did it zestfully. Many public figures came out against Eminem and his "corrupting" influence on youth, and here Slim Shady retorts in his own creative and hilarious manner.
But the record contains a lot more. Slim Shady, from his anti-social stance, never hesitated to take a jibe at Eminem as well. Here he exposes the hypocrisy and fraud behind the "battle" between Eminem and the dominant culture, and shows that everyone gains from it and is secretly hoping it will continue, and the "rebellious" Eminem is pretty much only doing what is expected of him. Through this prism, he also provides an ironic view of the relationship between pop culture and the dominant culture, and shows that there's actually nothing new under the Sun. The virtuosity by which he manages to cram all that into a five minutes pop record is utterly breathtaking.
The video, a brilliant piece of pop-art, is also very revealing. The superhero that Eminem is portraying is not based on Batman, but rather on Robin, his clownish sidekick. That is the nature of Eminem's art: he is a descendant of a long line of clowns, who simultaneously entertain the public and perturb it, placing a mirror in front of it to expose all that is ridiculous about contemporary human existence. Unlike artists who express a clear political stance, enabling the public to categorize them in preexisting draws, the slippery nature of this art is much more dangerous and seditious. Eminem's rap, slithering like a ring snake in several directions at once, is hard to get a hold of, and even harder to categorize.
Who is Batman here? Batman is Dr. Dre, the black producer behind the music, and he is indeed the one conducting the real battle. Pop culture is the clown, entertaining the public and seemingly taking no political stance. But through pop, many elements that have no outlets in the dominant culture get the chance to invade the public domain, thus changing society. While Eminem mocks and dismantles dominant culture, Dre infuses it with black aesthetics, and shifts the balance towards the black side. Shady can ridicule Eminem for being just another link in a long chain of white artists who exploited black music, but the mirror that Eminem puts in front of us raises the question: who used who?
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