Man, the pop landscape was different then! Bubblegum pop and boy bands ruled. The first sparks of the post-grunge wastelands were forming from the abrupt collapse of ska and the second resurgence of pop-punk. And hip-hop was, to be blunt, light and airy and generally stupid as hell.
Enter Marshall Mathers III, otherwise known as Slim Shady, otherwise known as Eminem. After his smash major debut with the demented Slim Shady LP, he was looking to strike a darker tone with his next release, one that both confronted his critics and haters head-on but one that also dove into darker, bleaker, more terrifying neuroses he had kept bottled up for some time. And one of the darkest of those neuroses was his critically damaged relationship with his girlfriend/wife/ex-wife Kim. To say the relationship was ruined completely beyond repair is probably understating it, but Eminem drove the final nails in the coffin with a track that scandalized and shocked a nation of listeners: 'Kim'.
'Kim' is the sixteenth track on The Marshall Mathers LP, and by then you've seen Eminem confront plenty of his personal demons, but when it comes to 'Kim', there's a whole other level of hatred and rage drenching this track. Eminem's voice cracks and breaks as he screams epithets and venom through tears, and at that point you can't help but feel a sick sort of dread as you know that there isn't just hatred here. No, if there's a song that ever encapsulated the concept of the blinding blend of hatred and obsessive love, it's 'Kim'. It's clear in this song that there's absolutely no one in the right, not Kim and certainly not Eminem. It's the domestic dispute from hell, and the most shocking thing about it is the niggling chill that races down your spine as you realize that somewhere, at some point, fragments of that screaming argument and domestic violence may have actually happened.
'Kim' is a really hard listen, but I recommend all music critics looking to test their mettle and stomachs listen to it at least once. It sure as hell was polarizing, raising even more protests as people saw 'Kim' as all the more evidence of Eminem's dangerous misogyny. Things degenerated even further when Eminem performed the song at a concert and then brutally stabbed a blow-up doll likeness of 'Kim' in the song, an act that I've considered one of the worst possible things Eminem ever could have done. While he had threatened violence towards plenty of people on other tracks, 'Kim' was different. That song was personal, and while Eminem has made his career off of airing his dirty laundry in public, 'Kim' was a different extreme. And I'm not the only one who thought so - Kim herself attempted suicide by slitting her wrists at the end of that show.
The point is that, as one of the most terrifying and gut-churning songs that I've ever listened to in my life (and I've listened to a fair amount of horrorcore rap and death metal, just to qualify this), 'Kim' somehow still succeeds as a performance art piece. It's a vile, horrifying piece, let me make that explicitly clear, but it works because there are layers and complexity and Eminem does not hold back, making one of the most open and revealing songs of his career. Do I enjoy it? Fuck no. But I can't hate it because for all of its grotesque, sickening reality, it works.
So when I listen to the two songs on Rihanna's Unapologetic, 'Nobody's Business' and 'Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary', two songs that directly explore her relationship with Chris Brown, why don't I feel that it works nearly as well, and is thus far easier to despise? Why would some people think I'm giving Eminem a free pass (which I'm not, by the way) while dropping the hammer down on both Rihanna and Brown?
