Greg Tate weighs in on Eminem and "white freedom."

There's no denying that with his broken home, Eight Mile

origins, druggy mama, and babymama drama, Mr. Em does the sound of white male

angst as well as Iggy Pop, Woody Allen, and Bill Clinton combined, and that

given how you never see another white man within 10 feet of Mr. Em if he and

D-12 can help it, you figure he feels he has adopted himself into the Black

Guerrilla Family. You could also argue that anything that foments unity in

struggle between the youth of America across color lines and late-stage

capitalist hiphop is hardly an awful thing. Especially given that being poor and

white in this country is considered such a sin against god it'll make you vote

for his only begotten Bush, there's little reason to doubt Mr. Em when he shares

his passionate love affair with hiphop or tells how during PE and X-Clan's

heyday that love drove him to wear an African medallion and Flavor Flav clock

knowing brothers liked to snatch it from his neck. Such love of hiphop and to

such a degree that Mr. Em feels the need to share how genuinely hurt he is that

a nonentity like Benzino has made him persona non grata at The Source, a

magazine he grew up on. And to such a degree that those who found Mr. Em far

funnier and more irreverent when he used his ghetto pass to hang himself, call

his mama a cunt, and stab his babymama problem to death may well be

disappointed, all the bzangin Dre-like beats here notwithstanding, with how much

quality rhymetime he gives over to apologia to the community negro, to

assaulting safe and easy negro targets like MJ on "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like

That," to the 24-hour motorbootyfest known as KneeGrow Uddertainment Television.

And can't nobody be mad at him for trying to rally his flock against the

President's War on Iraq in "Mosh."



Yet and still, the fact that Mr. Em could get that

sentiment out on music television when Dead Prez, hiphop's most

been-trigger-ready presidential assassins, never-ever will is less a testament

to Mr. Em's white male freedom than it may first appear. More a testament,

indeed, to the fact that the powers that be are more skeered of the Black

Guerrilla Family's militant wing speaking to family about revolution through

this cable-televised hiphop medium than the angriest wigga alive. See, end of

the day, Howdy Doody just don't cut it when your tired poor sleeping masses need

to hear it from Malcolm X. Or god forbid from Fitty Lloyd Banks Jay-Z Lil Jon

Nelly Chingy Fabolous pass the smelling salts what kinda agitprop ra ra hiphop

planet you think this is we living on?