The Abc's Of Eminem

Whether you see Eminem as the Pied Piper of disaffected youth or simply their spokesman, you have to admit that the 29-year-old rapper is a master attention-getter. Weeks before his new album, "The Eminem Show," hit the stores, he'd already pissed off Dick Cheney's Shady-hatin' wife, Lynne, and peeved the normally Zen Moby by dissing them in his new single, "Without Me." All it took to attract national press and evoke the word "controversial" (though it seems absurd that anyone so MTV-friendly could still cause so much of a stir) was an accompanying video in which he dressed as Osama bin Laden and danced around like an idiot for a couple seconds. Brilliant.

"Jeez, how can this s--t be so easy?" Eminem asks on his new album, and you have to wonder the same thing. After all we've been through in the past eight months--terrorist attacks, anthrax letters, the sense of impending doom--Eminem should bounce off our hardened surfaces like a gnat off Plexiglas. But his new album is full of so many fresh taunts and prods (even the president gets burned here), ignoring it seems impossible, even for those of us who weren't name-checked or skewered.

Eminem's standout rapping skills and kinetic wordplay are also hard to resist as he unleashes a dazzling scramble of self-absorption and paranoia, arrogance and extreme humor, vulgarity and vulnerability. He complains about being taken too literally in one spot, yet spills his intimate tale of a dismal childhood (complete with a pill-popping mom and absent father) in another. He raps about ditching fame altogether in "Say Goodbye Hollywood" (though Eminem will say hello when he stars in his first feature film, "8 Mile," in November). Yet in another song he's glad to be back in the spotlight because "hip-hop's in a state of 9-1-1."

The new album is slightly less incendiary than 2000's parent-repelling "The Marshall Mathers LP" (his real name) or his murderous debut. In a skit where a guy (played by Em) stalks his ex with a gun, he ends up revealing it isn't even loaded. In a graphic sex song, he leaves the truly nasty bits up to rapper Obie Trice. But in "White America," Eminem actually tackles a meaningful issue: why a blue-eyed rapper sells more albums--25 million to date--than most of his black peers, and why he's so disproportionately feared. "White America, I could be one of your kids," proclaims suburbia's favorite hip-hop star. "I'm catching the flak from those activists, acting like I'm the first rapper to smack a bitch and say faggot. Let's do the math--if I was black, I would've sold half." (No one's better at summing up Eminem's lure than Em himself.) But social commentary is not Eminem's new thing. His still sticks to juvenile and often hysterical rhymes that flow atop Dr. Dre's ultracrisp production and spare, strategic beats. The synthetic melodies are sickly addictive, be it looping an entire song over Aerosmith's "Dream On" or concocting a warped, ghetto-style "Square Dance." "The Eminem Show" is the best Dre-Em creation yet.

By far the weirdest moment here is "Cleanin' Out My Closet," a ballad about Eminem's most feared adversary--his mom. She sued her son for defamation (and they ultimately settled) after he rapped about her alleged drug use, and dissed him on her own novelty CD. "I'm sorry mama I never meant to hurt you," he half sings. "I never meant to make you cry." Yet the oddly regretful chorus is sandwiched between venomous lines: "Keep telling yourself that you was a mom. You selfish bitch, I hope you f--kin' burn in hell for this s--t." Angry, confused and unusually confessional, it's perhaps one of Eminem's most powerful and telling moments. The sappy ballad for his 6-year-old daughter, "Hailie's Song," doesn't have quite the same impact. Eminem actually sings here (for real), but his voice is all soft and squishy, like an off-key member of 'N Sync: "I watch her grow up with pride. People make jokes, because they don't understand me. They just don't see my real side." For a guy who's made a fortune out of being misunderstood, that's not likely an accident.