The Real Slim Shady goes softer
Rapper sheds much of bad-boy style in Eminem Show album
By Vit Wagner, Pop Music Critic, (Source: http://www.thestar.com)

Just when we thought there wasn't anything more Eminem could do to shock us, the notoriously vitriolic, invective-hurling rapper violates the one taboo no one ever imagined him breaking. He gets cute. Two years after the release of The Marshall Mathers LP, which sold nearly 9 million copies around the world, rap's bête blanche returns with The Eminem Show (Aftermath/Interscope). The album arrives in stores tomorrow, a week ahead of its original release date, to head off expected Internet piracy. The parental advisory on the front of CD, which shows Eminem sitting in solitary contemplation behind the partially opened curtain of a stage that contains a lone microphone, comes as no surprise. What is rather more startling is the parental content inside.

We're accustomed to hearing Eminem (né Marshall Mathers) rail against the neglectful upbringing he received at the hands of his trashy, drug-addled mom. And there's plenty more of that this time around as well, with a few swift and sharp boots in the direction of absent, no-good pops along the way. But, much to the everlasting horror of PTAs across Middle America, Eminem is a father, too. And darned if he doesn't bring 6-year-old daughter Hailie Jade to the show. Hailie Jade joins a guest list that features return appearances by Eminem mentor Dr. Dre and Interscope exec Steve Berman, who this time gets blown away by a gun-toting Eminem at the end of one of the five short skits that dot the disc. Mini Mathers makes her giggly debut on the album's 19th and penultimate track, during which she comically punctuates her father's profanity-strewn verses with the line, "My dad's gone crazy." It all ends with her chortling, "You're funny, Daddy." A little less crazy and a lot less funny, mind you, than on The Marshall Mathers LP and 1999's The Slim Shady LP. Chastened, perhaps, by the persistent charges of misogyny and homophobia levelled against his last album — or still smarting from the reprimand he received from Mayor Mel before his last visit to Toronto (just kidding) — Eminem, who turns 30 in October, has toned things down significantly.

Sure, he tells U.S. second lady Lynne Cheney and her equally censorious predecessor, Tipper Gore, to eff off, while sprinkling his rhymes with references to Chandra Levy, Osama bin Laden, anthrax and so on. Most of what he says remains unprintable in these pages and, no doubt, is graphic enough to shock many listeners. But there is nothing as transgressive as insulting Christopher Reeves, or as bold as vowing to bed J.Lo under Puffy's nose. Moby gets dissed for being too old, but that's hardly going to make any headlines. Even Moby is more bemused than insulted by the mention.

If anything, the political continent strays vaguely to the left side of the spectrum. On "White America," the album's most pointed track, Eminem points out that as a white rapper his content is more carefully scrutinized by the Establishment which, in turn, enables him to sell twice as many CDs as an equivalently talented black artist might. "Square Dance" finds him refusing to salute America's post-9/11 drift toward militarism. That said, The Eminem Show doesn't have anything to match the musical verve and cross-over potential of "Stan," "The Way I Am" or "The Real Slim Shady," although a sanitized version of "My Dad's Gone Crazy" might have what it takes to charm radio programmers, old softies that they are. At the same time, the disc lacks the kind of incendiary content likely to spark another round of hand-wringing controversy. When it comes to getting in our faces, Slim Shady is sitting this one out.