This Is The New Shit (In A Few Places)

When “The Golden Age Of The Grotesque” came out, seemingly all of the reviews had a portion in them mentioning the infamous The Onion parody-article that came out after “Holy Wood” sold disappointingly in America (worldwide its Marilyn Manson’s best-selling album) claiming Manson had to cancel his world tour to go door to door trying to shock middle-America. That article was believed by many to be the final nail in Marilyn Manson’s career-coffin. He had been surpassed by Eminem as conservative America’s musical public enemy #1, as people stopped being offended by him after Columbine. But I think Manson’s career was hurt before then. The “Long Hard Road Out Of Hell” autobiography demystified Marilyn Manson to show him as Brian Warner. It was like if you were watching one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies and Freddy Kruger ripped off his burn-victim latex mask to remind you he’s really just harmless Robert Englund in reality.

Marilyn Manson worked at its best when there was the menacing mystery behind the band. Looking at those American Family Association started-rumors about Manson giving drugs to children and refusing to perform unless the audience performed animal sacrifice for him by killing (of course) puppies being thrown into the crowd, they sure seem laughable. I don’t know how people were so stupid to believe those tales (and those he sued for slander for involving kidnapping teenage runaways among other things) but because Manson kept his image so controlled they had an air of believability to those so frightened by him. So when he decided to make some money writing a book telling us all about Brian Warner, it was career suicide. Maybe he felt he had to do it because the rumors about him were so out of control he got daily death threats before concerts and people were blaming him for a spike in teenage suicide. But he should have had someone like Frank Zappa intervening against Alice Cooper going to the press to deny that he really killed that chicken on stage. Cooper’s career would have been over before it began if Zappa didn’t stop him.



But Marilyn Manson version 2.0 and 3.0 has been about trying to find ways out of being the expected satanic guy ripping up bibles on stage. With “The Golden Age Of The Grotesque” he went from Satanic metal singer to campy burlesque kingpin on stage. On the 2007 follow-up “Eat Me, Drink Me” every trace of shock was completely erased, and Manson delivered a record that was half confessional pieces about his depression after his divorce and half self-referencing campy songs for the fans who stuck with him. It definitely didn’t win him any new fans, even though Manson has set his sights on the Hot Topic set, which is mostly made up of 13 year old girls there to buy Twilight merchandise. But it was at least an attempt at something new, which was the key reason “Holy Wood” got such a negative reaction from people.

Of course there was a vocal bunch of his fanbase that were chiding them to get back to writing like it was still 1996 and he was still the enemy of the christian state. So early talk about this record had Manson going around comparing it to their most beloved record “Antichrist Superstar” in terms of being a heavy, nihilistic metal record. Well, it’s not. Not even close. “High End Of Low” sounds closer to “Holy Wood” Which isn’t a bad thing, but getting your fans excited for something it clearly isn’t is a terrible idea. Like when Oasis always claim their new record is “the album we should have made to follow (What‘s The Story) Morning Glory” and it always disappoints and they have to say it again for the follow up. Although Manson did give a far-more honest description of the album when he said “It’s about having my soul trampled on by women, but is also something that makes you laugh.” Although that basically describes his last album, minus the laughs.

Devour is the opening track, and it’s one that will automatically kill any “Spooky Kid’s” hopes of having “Antichrist Superstar II”. It is very reminiscent of “Eat Me, Drink Me”, in terms of sound and lyrical content. Although it is a little shocking to hear Manson singing “I’ll love you if you let me.” It’s as close as Marilyn Manson will ever get to creating an eHarmony profile. Hopefully.

Pretty As A Swastika kicks in sounding like the bridge of Billy Idol’s version of “Mony Mony”. And those opening seconds are as interesting as it gets unfortunately.

Leave A Scar is another bad relationship song, which also sounds like a track from “Eat Me, Drink Me”, although much better than anything on that record. Unfortunately for Manson, he’s just never going to be accepted in his maturity as a songwriter. He will always and forever be the guy who wore a thong and torn up panty hose with the scary make-up singing about being an Antichrist. He could write something on the level of “Blood On The Tracks” and it wouldn’t get him the least bit of respect. Of course continuing to wear the make-up isn’t helping. It would be interesting to see what kind of reaction he’d get doing his Kiss “Lick It Up” moment. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a positive one, though, since Manson has (face)painted himself into a corner so much in 15 years.

Four Rusted Horses is Manson’s first attempt at sounding bluesy. Featuring a chorus of “Everyone will come to my funeral to make sure I stay dead.” Manson deserves credit for going outside of his comfort-zone on this one. It’s not great, but at least he’s trying slightly new musical territory instead of rewriting his hits as he’s been guilty of forever. I’ll take this any day over yet another Beautiful People re-write.

Speaking of which. Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin’-Geddon was Manson’s most hyped track, the one he called the heaviest song he’d ever written that was going to have everyone going nuts. But in reality it sounds exactly like a “Disposable Teens” re-write. Which was a “Rock Is Dead” re-write. Which was a “Beautiful People” re-write. Actually, it sounds almost exactly like that “Rock Is Dead” parody-song David Cross performed on Mr. Show when he played “Marilyn Monster” who was parodying Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” days and filming a training guide for employees at the pizza franchise he owned after getting off stage. Talk about false advertising, Mr. Manson.

Blank And White is next and is as much of a “PLEASE PROTEST ME AGAIN!” song as Eminem’s recent “Underground” where he goes back to gay bashing. Everything is thrown out here: Religious controversy, violence controversy. There’s even a bleeped out line where Manson sang “"Let's shoot up the mall, the school, or the President of whatever." Begging for controversy never works. It especially looks cheap when 10 years ago Manson made an entire concept album about the reasons he’s not responsible for youth violence, wrote an essay to Rolling Stone about it, and even gave his side of the Columbine story to Michael Moore. Come on, Manson, you can be more provocative than this if you try.

Running To The Edge Of The World is as close as Manson has ever come to writing something that could have been a 80s hair metal power ballad. It’s a surprisingly good song for what it is., definitely getting the most praise by people of anything on the record. The band has made songs that sounded like this before (“Disassociative”, “A Place In The Dirt”) but this one stands the best chance of being a radio hit.

I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies is another album highlight. A hypnotic 9 minute opus with Manson tossing all kinds of sexy-threats to kill his love of the moment. And with that, the mystery of why Marilyn Manson can’t seem to make a relationship work is answered. The heavy bass featured reminds you that the return of Twiggy Ramirez to the Manson-fold is a welcomed one.

WOW is Manson nearly rapping on the verses. It kind of sounds like Nine Inch Nails’s “Only”, actually. Filler.

Wight Spider is another relationship song. The best thing you can say about these is that they are better thought-out and delivered than the ones on “Eat Me, Drink Me”. This song wouldn’t sound out of place on “Mechanical Animals”.

Unkillable Monster is surprisingly tame for a title like that. And unfortunately it sounds like another “Eat Me, Drink Me” retread.

We’re From America is a pretty bad, repetitive song. It was the first leaked track from the album, and when I heard it I knew his promises of a return to the Antichrist sound were severely exaggerated. It’s just a plodding punk-sounding number with a bunch of repeated slogans that you’d expect him to write. It just makes you remember it has been a hell of a long time since he actually pushed any boundaries. A pure filler track you question why he attempted to draw any attention to.

I Have To Look Up Just To See Hell My, that looks like a Fall Out Boy song title. Manson does seem like he’s been a little affected by the emo revolution, although he accused My Chemical Romance of being copycats of his for some reason I can‘t figure out.

Into The Fire A piano ballad. This kind of sounds like something Pulp would do for “This Is Hardcore”. Manson doesn’t have the voice to do constant ballads. One or two is fine, but this album pushes it. It’s not a bad song, but Manson groaning on yet another song is getting tiresome by this point. He has a great scream, but his voice wasn’t made to do ballads this much.

15 harkens back to the days Manson was big into numerology. 15 was the number of the “Mechanical Animals” era. It started off because his birthday is January 5th, then he changed the “I” and “S” in his logo into a “1” and “5”. There were 15 tracks on that album counting the CD Rom-only song, it debuted at #1, slipped in #5 in its 2nd week and then dropped to #15 in its third. Although this time the 15 seems to only correspond to 1/5 being his birthday mentioned in the lyrics.

Lyrically, Marilyn Manson tried on the emo-suit and seems to have liked it. I guess his idea of “maturity” is talking mostly about relationships, rather than discussing The Worm turning into the Antichrist Superstar or Omega leading a spin-off of Ziggy Stardust. He had to change, obviously, since the shock-rocker career can only take you so far. But while this album isn’t awful, it’s still fairly mediocre. He used to be pretty imaginative (even if he was just morphing someone else’s ideas into his own) so you have to wonder where that imagination has gone. The album will also be hurt by Manson talking it up so much. Once you mention it housing “some of the most violent songs we’ve done” and it doesn’t feature any that fit that bill, you’re going to disappoint your fans. And maybe they would have otherwise enjoyed the record if they hadn’t been mislead, as it should please Marilyn Manson fans for the most part. But it still is far from being their best work.

RATING: 2/5

Cinematic Mayhem

According to Rolling Stone, the long delayed Mayhem bio-pic will finally begin filming this September in Norway. The film had been attempted to be made since 2004, but producers could never get the funding needed to film it until now.

The movie will be based on the 1998 book “The Lords Of Chaos”, which was written by Michael Moynihan an Didrik Soderlind. The book chronicled the rise of the Norwegian Black Metal movement, which unlike most of the Satanism used in American and British heavy metal, took the Satanic aspect seriously, mixed in with some ancient Odinism. For instance, Slayer are actually Atheists who used pentagrams because they looked cool as imagery. But their some of their Norwegian counterparts and their fans took Satanism seriously enough to go on church-burning sprees.

For those that do not know the story of Mayhem, they were a Black Metal band formed in 1984 who, kind of like rappers, gave themselves nicknames and wore “corpsepaint” on stage. Originally with Euronymous on vocals and guitar, Necrobutcher on bass and Manheim on drums. Euronymous eventually decided the band should have another vocalist and went through Maniac and Messiah before settling on Dead in 1988, and replaced drummer Manheim with Hellhammer.

Mayhem’s concerts started gaining the attention of Europe’s metal community. The band would perform with impaled animal heads on stage, singer Dead would routinely perform self-mutilation with knives while performing, and they started building one of the larger fanbases in their music community. Dead would also keep his stage closed buried outside and dig them up right before performing so they’d have the appearance of what a corpse would be wearing. He also carried around a dead bird in a jar, which he opened and inhaled to smell decay to help get him in the mood to perform. Drummer Hellhammer also claimed he once asked him to bury him underground for the total corpse effect.

On April 8th, 1991, after suffering from severe depression since he was a teenager, and reportedly depressed about situations within the band, Dead slit his wrists and then shot himself in the head with a shotgun at the home the band shared. Hours later Euronymous came home and discovered the suicide scene. But instead of immediately calling police, Euronymous went to a local drug store to buy a disposable camera, with which he used to take pictures of the crime scene. He also claimed that before finally calling the police, he collected bits of skull fragment to make into necklaces and scooped up brain matter to mix into a stew he was cooking. One of Euronymous’s photos of Dead was reportedly stolen and circulated around their fanbase until it made its way on the cover of a live bootleg.

After that the Norwegian Black Metal scene got even bigger. A few murders by people associated with the scene mixed in with churches being burned down made it one of the most talked about metal scenes in the world in the early 90s. Even Britain’s Kerrang magazine came in to do a cover story on them, despite most of the bands not even having released proper albums yet (Mayhem’s debut didn’t see the light of day until 1994.)

Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum became the mouthpiece of the scene. He cemented his place at the forefront of Black Metal by announcing to a newspaper reporter the Black Metal community was at war with Christianity, and flirted with Nazi ideas and imagery (including decorating his home with Nazi memorabilia.) He also appeared on the cover of Kerrang magazine holding knives and gloated about the violence and destruction the community was bringing to Norway. His boasts got the attention of police, who arrested he and several other Black Metal band members for suspicion of arson. Vikernes didn’t help his case any by using a picture of a burned down church on the cover of a Burzum album, although he denied taking it himself.

Vikernes was also briefly the bassist of Mayhem, redubbing himself Count Grishnackh. But even though he was only with the band for less than a year, he left a huge impact. He was the bassist when in early 1993 they finally recorded the long-awaited debut album “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”, which is Latin for “The Mysteries Of Satan”, although the band attempted to have it Latin for “Lord Satan‘s Secret Rites” but got a bad translation. But on August 10th, 1993, Euronymous was dead by Count Grishnackh’s hand.

Vikernes’s side of the story is that there was a dispute over money Euronymous owed to him, so he traveled to his apartment to discuss matters with him. He claims that they got into an argument and that Euronymous attacked him, so he murdered him in self-defense. But police believed it was a premeditated murder, since accomplice Snorre Ruch confessed to police that the two drove hours to Oslo, Norway with a knife to murder Euronymous. Also he told police that they had rented a movie and left it running on their VCR so that neighbors would believe they were still in Vikernes’s apartment as an alibi. The other members of Mayhem believed that Euronymous liked to give death threats to people he was angry with, although he wasn’t serious, but that Vikernes did take him serious and murdered him because he believed Euronymous was out to kill him. Vikernes was eventually found guilty of the murder and sentences to the maximum sentence of Norwegian law, which is 21 years.

In May 1994, “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” was finally released and hailed as an instant classic by the metal community. Euronymous’s family asked the remaining Mayhem members singer Attilla Csihar and drummer Hellhammer to remove the bass parts of Vikernes before it was released. Hellhammer claims they told the family they would, but in actuality left them in and just turned them down in the mix, but left in his credit in the album. Music writers were interested that it was the first album where a murderer plays on the album with the person he murdered. This wouldn’t be done again until Zapp drummer Larry Troutman murdered his brother, Zapp singer Roger Troutman, on April 25th, 1999.

Hellhammer re-hired ex-bassist Necro Butcher at Euronymous’s funeral and announced plans that the band would continue with new guitarist Blasphemer and went on tour to support the record. They didn’t release new material until the EP “Wolf’s Lair Abyss” in 1997 and the full length “Grand Declaration Of War” in 2000. They gained headlines again in 2003 when they were charged with assault after a concert in Bergen, Norway when a band member threw a severed sheep’s head into the crowd and it landed on a fan’s head, fracturing his skull.

Now if this doesn’t sound like it would make one hell of an entertaining movie, then I don’t know what does!

Celebrating The Return Of Behind The Music

Behind The Music Is Back!

Unarguably the greatest musical show of the 1990s will return to a station that seems to have forgotten they are a music station. Well, at least they still have music videos on their Top 20 weekend show which is more than you can say about MTV. And their reality programming is vastly more entertaining than stupid shit like The Hills. Of course watching dogshit decay into the grass is more entertaining than The Hills.

They’re going to return with a mix of bands with entertaining interpersonal wars (Van Halen), drugs galore (Stone Temple Pilots) and of course the obligatory “let’s get some uninteresting current artists to pop the ratings” (Lil’ Wayne). Sure, it’s probably going to suck, since the show went downhill towards the end of its original run with some really shitty episodes. But let’s be optimistic for once, shall we?

So to celebrate I would like to look at a list of the top 10 greatest and worst BTM episodes. Starting with The Best. Now granted, if you were like me in the 90s (a stranded-at-home teenager with no social life) you’ve seen these episodes 9 million times and even today you recoil at the thought of viewing them again. I could probably put on a One Man Play for you of some of these episodes, actually. So don’t take into account repeat fatigue, and just remember how awesome they were the first 20 times you watched them.

#10: BLIND MELON (Aired September 9th, 2001)
While Shannon Hoon proved that you don’t necessarily become an immortal rock icon if you die young, Blind Melon still had a very compelling story. The episode centers around Hoon and his widow, with the rest of Blind Melon pretty much being an afterthought. Hoon got his big break when fellow Lafayette, IN singer W. Axl Rose had him sing back up on their huge power ballad “Don’t Cry” and appear in the music video. That lead to the band being the subject of a huge bidding war and they released their first album 2 years later. “No Rain” was a huge hit, but like every band that breaks through with a music video better than the song, they were deemed one hit wonders and their follow up album “Soup”, even though it was vastly superior to the self-titled debut, stiffed. In the meantime, Hoon had a major cocaine addiction that derailed his career due to having to go to rehab numerous times, and an incident where he got fucked up before a show and ended up urinating on the audience. He went back to rehab again, but due to “Soup” being a Billboard bomb felt obligated to leave early to tour to try to salvage sales. Unfortunately this ended up being a horrible idea, because he snuck crack-cocaine into his tour bus bunk bed and overdosed at the age of 28.

One thing that gives this episode more weight is that Hoon left behind a ton of home video footage detailing the entire run of his band. His widow also reads some compelling diary entries detailing his attempts to overcome addiction and cope with fame and his wife’s unexpected pregnancy shortly before he died. One downside was the band comes off looking in a bad light because they don’t get enough time to tell their side of the story, as most of the airtime is for Hoon’s family and archival footage. But still one of the more compelling episodes.

#9: MILLI VANILLI (Aired August 17th, 1997)
The debut episode of Behind The Music was able to do the unthinkable: leave you feeling sympathy for two prettyboy German dancers with no talent who swindled the world claiming they were singing some really godawful pop songs. Until then Milli Vanilli were the scum of the earth, nothing more than an outdated punchline. But after hearing them tell their side of the story. They were just two struggling models who took a quick gig miming the awful Euro-pop of “Girl You Know It’s True” for producer Frank Farian not expecting much to come of it. Except that it became a worldwide smash hit, selling millions and millions and million of albums and somehow earning them a “Best New Artist” award at the 1989 Grammys. For unknown reasons, Farian decided to announce to the world Rob & Fab were just models who can’t sing and the real singers were ugly session singers. After that they became two of the most reviled men on the planet and people won Class Action Lawsuits against them for fraud.

About a year after this episode aired, Rob Pilatus was found dead in a hotel room of a drug overdose. I don’t recall if it was proven to be a suicide or not, but the guy seems completely despondent in this episode, so it wouldn’t be surprising if it was. This is a completely compelling hour of television and even though nobody on the planet has respect for them, you can’t help but feel sorry for them. They clearly weren’t trying to put one over on the public to become superstars, it’s clear they were just as surprised it happened as anybody.

#8: MEGADETH (Aired April 25th, 2001)
There was a demand for Dave Mustaine to tell his side of the story after Metallica retelling the event of coldly waking Mustaine up to fire him for being a destructive drunk and putting him on a Greyhound bus from New York City back to California was one of the highlights (or lowlights, really) of the Metallica episode. Of course being terminated like that (even though he did physically assault Hetfield, Burton and even Lil’ Lars) from what winded up being one of the biggest rock bands in history would be hard for anybody to take, so Mustaine has had an inferiority complex through out all of Megadeth’s career. Even though Megadeth got rave reviews and sold millions of albums around the world, he was never happy because Metallica was always bigger and better. Dave writes “Peace Sells....But Who’s Buying?” and Metallica write “Master Of Puppets”. Megadeth breaks through to the mainstream with “Countdown To Extinction” and Metallica release one of the biggest-selling records of the decade with “The Black Album”. The guy just couldn’t win. He also had a nasty drug addiction to crack-cocaine, heroin and alcohol that kept him from concentrating on his band. It took nearly dying from an overdose to finally get sober.

What makes this episode extra special (beyond the crazy stories) is how well photographed Megadeth was in their crazy drug days. There’s pictures of Metallica goofing around with bottles of booze, but there’s nothing goofy about Megadeth’s archival photographs, which show a band clearly living in the darkside. Rock n Roll!

#7: STALKERS (Aired September 21st, 1997)
This episode isn’t focused solely on music itself, but instead the phenomenon of musicians getting the craziest of all celebrity stalkers. Of course a retelling of the Mark David Chapman story is told, but nothing new is in it so that’s not what makes this compelling. The first highlight comes from the crazy tale of the otherwise boring Sarah McLachlan facing a series of stalkers since her breakthrough in the early 1990s. She received hundreds of disturbed “love” letters from deranged fans, which inspired her to write her hit “Possession”, which was written from the perspective of a stalker telling the object of his “affection” about his sense of entitlement to them. One of McLachlan’s stalkers, a Canadian computer programmer named Uwe Vandrei, sued her for plagiarism, claiming she copied his stalking letters for the songs lyrics. As darkly hilarious as that is (and it is pretty obvious he just sued her to get her attention and hopefully see her in civil court) the claims do have some weight to them when you realize McLachlan never wrote anything nearly as interesting lyrically as “Possession”, so maybe he was telling the truth. The Canadian courts had to figure out a way to keep Sarah McLachlan safe when the two were in the same court room, so they planned on issuing more court room security than for any other civil trial in Canadian history. According to his boss, Vandrei disturbed co-workers and clients by talking non-stop about McLachlan and his lawsuit so he was fired. Just days before the civil trial was to begin he shot himself in the head near the recording studio Sarah recorded at.

The second highlight of the episode is the very disturbing tale of Ricardo Lopez, a 21 year old pest exterminator who developed an obsession with singer Bjork. Lopez discovered Bjork was in a relationship with electronic musician Goldie, who is half-black, and insanely decided she deserved to die because of it. Lopez bought a camcorder and chronicled the last days of his life, where he built an acid bomb to mail to Bjork’s British office disguised as a book. After mailing the package on September 12th, 1996, Lopez filmed himself shaving his head and putting on make up (that oddly enough looks almost exactly like the make up Star Wars villain Darth Maul wore in 1999’s “The Phantom Menace”, which makes you wonder if he was an inspiration for George Lucas’s design.) After applying the make up (including some to his man-boobs for some reason) Lopez places a banner behind him reading “The Best Of Me”, which no one has figured out the intentions for, and plays Bjork’s song “I Miss You” before putting a .38 caliber handgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Fortunately for Bjork, police found the dead body of Ricardo Lopez and his video tapes (including a scene where he films the package clear enough to see the address its being sent to) so were able to alert Scotland Yard before Bjork or her assistant opened it. Lopez’s tapes became media sensations, popping up every now and then on shows like 20/20, Dateline, and a special on FOX. You can view a lot of Ricardo Lopez’s home videos at YouTube. And one interesting tidbit to this incident is that Bjork accompanied Goldie to a Florida night club that was miles away from Ricardo Lopez’s apartment a few days prior to the mailing of the package and his suicide. Fortunately for them, he had no idea about it.

#6: DEF LEPPARD (Aired June 21st, 1998)
What do you get when you take a band of idiots, mix in non-stop boozing with a bajillion records sold worldwide? One entertaining hour of television. Even if you think Def Leppard sucks (they do) and they were an overproduced studio creation, how can you go wrong with drunken debauchery (including apparently having sex with mother and daughter groupie teams), a vicious car wreck that cost their drummer his arm (but the drummer not giving up and still playing drums to this day), their original guitar player battling alcoholism until he drank himself to death, and a pretty likeable bunch of guys (even if you don’t like their Langeified music) living to tell the tale. They were poor working class kids who felt rock n roll was their only way out of getting a dead-end factory job like their fathers all had.

They were in the right place at the right time, as the “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” movement was just starting to take effect. They were by far the poppiest band of the sub-genre, and they decided to take a page out of the British Invasion by playing up being British (including singer Joe Elliott wearing a Union Jack tank top constantly) which appealed to Americans. They became one of the first MTV superstars when the network put “Bringing On The Heartbreak” into heavy rotation. But that was nothing compared to the success of the follow up “Pyromania” album, which was only overshadowed by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 1983. But the band never gained the same success they did in America in their home country of England. While nobody believed they could match the 10 million copies “Pyromania” sold in America, they ended up duplicating its success with “Hysteria”, even though recording was delayed for quite some time until drummer Rick Savage could concoct a strategy to play drums with one-arm (he ended up getting an electronic kit that allowed him to simulate drumming with an extra foot pedal.) But the band never reached such heights again, as a young generation of bands like Guns N Roses surpassed them in sales and their follow up to “Hysteria” was delayed for a while due to guitarist Steve Clark dying from alcohol poisoning during recording “Adrenalize“.

The episode was so successful VH1 decided to give the band their (I believe first) Made For TV Movie. Unfortunately that film was absolutely terrible, painfully low budget and made Lifetime TV movies look like Oscar contenders. So stick with the BTM.

#5: RICK JAMES (Aired March 15th, 1998)
Before Dave Chapelle and Charlie Murphy turned him into a complete cartoon character, this episode of Behind The Music tells the crazy tale of Rick James. This was actually the first time Rick James spoke openly about his drug addiction, since it was filmed about a year after he was released from prison. James was AWOL from military duty after fleeing to Canada when he joined his first professional band, The Mynah Birds, in the mid-60s with fellow future music icon Neil Young. The band signed a record deal, but broke up after authorities were alerted James was a draft dodger and he was deported back to America. Throughout the 1970s James attempted various bands but nothing was ever successful, despite James getting notice for his superb bass playing. But fortunately for Rick James, he signed a deal with Motown to be a solo artist in the late 70s, where he got hits with “Mary Jane” and “You And I”. During the next decade he became an even bigger star, with 1981’s “Street Songs”

Of course the man who brought us the immortal catch phrase “Cocaine is a helluva drug” has just one wild party tale after another. The hits kept coming as his life delved more and more into cocaine addiction in the 1980s, where he estimates he was spending $7,000 a week on crack. This climaxed when he and his wife Tanya Hijazi allegedly held a woman who came to the James residence for a cocaine party against her will, she claimed she was forced into performing sexual acts on the couple, burned with hot crack pipes and tied up for a week. Prior to that James and Hijazi were accused of holding a female music executive coming to their hotel room under the belief ot attending a meeting with James for a day where she claims James assaulted her. In 1993 he was sentenced to 2 years in prison for the case, and had to pay $2 million in a civil trial.

Unfortunately for James, any comeback he could have gotten was cut short when before the episode aired he suffered a stroke on stage at a concert, which slurred his speech and left him unable to sing. After the episode James got a deal for an autobiography, but it was held up for quite some time and not released until nearly 3 years after his death.

#4: METALLICA (Aired November 22nd, 1998)
Love them or hate them, Metallica have lived quite a life. Although this episode has been aired probably 1 billion times and nobody wants to ever see it again, it was riveting television the first 900 times you saw it. This was Metallica when fans hated them for “Load” and “Re-Load”, but before they became complete assholes with Lil’ Lars embarrassing himself in the Napster-debacle and they thought it would be a good idea to put out “Some Kind Of Monster”, a cringe inducing look at their lives as millionaire assholes working on a shitty album called “St. Anger” nobody liked. Who part ways with the only likeable member of the band left (Jason Newsted) to further cement their status as rock’s premiere dickheads.

But they were truly great in their prime. It’s funny to hear them talk about how they were out to kill off the hair metal major labels ate up, when a little more than 15 years later they turned into exactly what they hated. Coldly retelling waking Dave Mustaine up to send him on a bus back to California so they could hire Kirk Hammet is defintely cringe-worthy great television. I’m sure this lead to what Mustaine meant by saying “They fuck with me” in his S.K.O.M. cameo. The detailed story of what happened with the European bus accident that killed Cliff Burton (including Hammet talking about living with the guilt that he usually slept in the bunk Burton was thrown from) is harrowing. But then they liven up the mood by retelling how they hazed the living hell out of Jason Newsted (telling groupies he was gay, charging all kinds of room service to his room, although they don’t touch on the long-standing urban legend that Hetfield demanded practically all traces of his bass playing be removed from the final “And Justice For All” mix.) Then “The Black Album” happened and they sold so many records they were dubbed their generation’s Led Zeppelin. But the love died off 5 years later when they stunned fans by cutting their hair and putting out a really awful record that sounded like a tuneless Stone Temple Pilots album. In between that we get another highlight of the band retelling how James Hetfield was nearly burned to a crisp when he accidentally walked into a firework as it was shooting off. They were co-headlining with Guns N Roses, and unfortunately Axl had a sorethroat and walked off so the fans rioted. As the riot was going on Newsted remembers seeing Rose backstage quietly smoking and drinking, which should have irritated his throat, not really giving a shit.

#3: OZZY OSBOURNE (Aired April 19th, 1998)
This was Ozzy on the road to mainstream acceptance, which of course ended with him making a fool of himself for two seasons of MTV’s “The Osbournes”. He of course comes off as he always does, the light-hearted, self deprecating, charming mumblemouth who seems as bewildered as anyone that he’s still alive. Sharon somehow comes off charming and not that the shrieking shrew we all love to hate. But you do have to feel sympathy for her, as Ozzy’s crazy addictions did put her through hell (including one incident in Russia where he tried to strangle her) before she started taking advantage of him by turning him into a reality show clown.

Ozzy was a dirt-poor loser who was doomed to never amount to anything beyond working in a pig slaughterhouse (which he gleefully talks about enjoying) until he discovered he had something special as a rock frontman. So he joined a bunch of guys who didn’t even really like him and called themselves Black Sabbath and revolutionized music forever. So of course a broke-ass kid suddenly becoming a millionaire is going to go wild, and Ozzy’s hard partying ways became legendary. But eventually he split from Black Sabbath and fell into a deep depression. He was living in a hotel, blowing through all of his money on booze and drugs, when his manager’s daughter took pity on him and tried to rally him back to prominence. They ended up falling in love, even though they were both married to other people at the time, and she managed him to solo stardom. He hit it off with his new musical partner, guitar prodigy Randy Rhodes, but unfortunately that was short lived as one day while Rhodes was riding in a plane, the pilot jokingly buzzed Ozzy’s tour bus, but the plane lost control and crashed. Ozzy again fell into a deep depression that his new best friend was dead.

Ozzy became even crazier on all types of narcotics and booze, but kept his place as one of heavy metal’s biggest stars. He also became one of the most controversial, as it seemed even preacher in the 1980s did at least one sermon denouncing him as being a tool of Satan. One of the episode’s highlights come when one of the religious right members who sued him for one of the “Suicide Solution”-blamed suicides comes off looking like a loon whispering supposed subliminal messages (“Get the gun......get the gun.....shoot, shoot, shoot.”) Although Ozzy explains the supposed “Shoot, shoot, shoot” heard was an echo effect people misheard. Although they don’t spend as much time on this as they did for Judas Priest’s suicide lawsuit on their episode years later.

Ozzy is just one of those guys you can’t help but like. Which even though he was a bumbling, mumbling pilled-out wreck on “The Osbournes” he was still televisions favorite dad briefly. Or maybe the world just felt sorry for him with a domineering wife and fat, spoiled brats for children. Your choice.

#2: BADFINGER (Aired November 5th, 2000)
There’s a lot of rock bands some claim are cursed, but this is the one band you cannot deny was cursed. They were handpicked by The Beatles’s shortlived label Apple Records to be their Welsh heirs, and they even had Paul McCartney write them some songs. So with a Beatles stamp of approval they should have been rock icons, right? No. The Beatles split up, Apple Records was a debt pit, and the band never caught on with the public like originally believed.

In 1968 the band, who much like The Beatles in the early 60s made a name for themselves playing live gigs with mostly 50s rock and Motown covers, were the first signed to Apple Records under their original name of The Iveys before renaming themselves Badfinger in 1969. McCartney asked them to do 3 songs for the soundtrack to “The Magic Christian”, including one of his compositions called “Come And Get It” that became a top 10 hit. Their debut album “No Dice” was a top 40 hit around the world, although the biggest hit from the record was their song “Without You”, but it wasn’t their version that gained success, it was a cover by John Lennon’s good friend Harry Nilsson that went to #1 2 years later and most people believed it was his song instead of Badfinger’s. And they never got much respect from critics, even the positive reviews wrote them off as Beatlemania wannabes. George Harrison was going to produce their sophomore album, but passed at the last minute so the duties went to Todd Rundgren and the record, “Straight Up“ was another top 40 hit. But most notably during that time period, Badfinger appeared as backing musicians or back-up singers on every Beatles solo release from that time period (Lennon’s “Imagine” album, Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” album and even Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” single.)

Their follow-up record, 1973’s “Ass” was held up when Apple went through financial turmoil and head honcho Allen Klein wouldn’t let the band out of their contract. Despite prior success, when “Ass” finally got released it didn’t even make the Billboard Top 100. Unfortunately, during this time their manager started to get shady, having the band on a salary instead of paying them what they were earning. When asked about where the money was being put into, the manager told them about a bank fund and some investments that were going to grow the money significantly. Unfortunately, their manager was ripping them off and refused to give them a dime of his own money. Guitarist Peter Ham fell into a deep depression when he came to the realization that he was flat broke despite his success, and couldn’t take that pressure in addition to having a baby on the way, so he hung himself in 1975. The band split up and took real jobs, until Joey Molland moves to America and starts up a new band called Badfinger, convincing Tom Evans to join him. The remaining members re-start their own Badfinger as well and at one time both Badfingers were touring America at the same time. Of course this lead to lawsuits galore and neither Badfinger amounted to anything. In 1983 Tom Evans followed Peter Ham’s fate and hung himself outside of his house (where unfortunately his 6 year old son found his dead body.)

Today Molland continues performing as “Badfinger”, he feels a little ashamed of doing it, but admits he’s doing it because it’s the only way he can get work. Unlike most BTM’s there’s not really a redemption story in there, since their lives all turned so hellish as soon as Apple Records went under. The closest you do get is learning that “Without You” is one of the most covered songs of all-time, and Mariah Carey introduced it to a new generation in the mid-90s when she covered it. Other than that the two song writers committed suicide, everybody is broke and their relationships fractured, and sometimes they slum it on the nostalgia circuit for money. Make sure you take a double dose of your anti-depressants before watching this.

#1: MOTLEY CRUE (Aired December 13th, 1998)
What is it about a bunch of morons with too much money and even more drugs living to tell about it that makes for such entertaining television? This episode is by far the most re-aired Behind The Music ever, with probably only the Metallica, Ozzy and Madonna episodes following behind. You have it all: craziness, wild success, death, a nasty split up, sex with famous people. You want it, it’s here. Although Motley Crue tell their story in much more entertaining fashion in their joint-autobiography “The Dirt”, due to an extended telling and more importantly a lack of censorship, this was the most re-aired BTM for a reason.

Motley Crue were a bunch of dumbasses who decided to cover up the fact that they weren’t that talented by doing a Kiss-lite stage show with make up, pyro and Satanic imagery. It was a hit, as they were one of the first “hair metal” bands from LA to hit it big in the early 80s with “Shout At The Devil”. They lived every single stereotype you can imagine a rock band doing: constant cocaine, constant groupies, taking so much shit they had near-death experiences, all unwisely marrying strippers and nude models in a haze of substance abuse, somehow being able to finish really mediocre albums that sold solely on name value. This continued until singer Vince Neil had a bright idea to go drive drunk during a wild party to grab more alcohol with Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley in the car with him. Neil lost control of his sports car, and although he came out without a scratch his passenger was killed and both people in the car they hit were left gravely injured. Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter and DUI, but since he was rich and famous only received 1 month in jail, which he only served 15 days of. He gives the best quote of the episode by admitting “I was like the OJ Simpson of the 80s.” ROCK N ROLL!!!

The band slowly began to sober up through out the 80s. Bassist Nikki Sixx overdosed and nearly died on heroin a few times before they all cleaned up and released their biggest album “Dr. Feelgood” in 1989. After that album, Neil claims he was fired from the band, but Sixx insists he voluntarily quit in a scene reminiscent of the back-and-forth between Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth on MTV in 1986. Nevertheless Neil’s solo albums all tanked and Motley Crue decided they needed to get “serious” in the wake of grunge and released a record with new singer John Corabi that nobody liked. So after that Crue and Neil both dropped off of the face of the earth. Drummer Tommy Lee emerged in 1996 after meeting and quickly marrying Baywatch superstar, and future sex-tape co-star, Pamela Anderson and according to the media changed his name to “Rocker Tommy Lee”. In ’97 Crue and Neil reformed and put out “Generation Swine”, that tried to sound pseudo-industrial and nobody liked that record either. Years later they somehow became a really big nostalgia circuit act, which I guess was partially due to their BTM episode being rerun endlessly in addition to “The Dirt”.

But this is the episode all other episodes are judged against. Vince Neil, pre-plastic surgery (also due to VH1) looking like absolute bloated dogshit. Mick Mars looking like a young Crypt Keeper (which is awesome for a heavy metal guitarist, fortunately) and Nikki Sixx, despite being the biggest druggie in the band still looking like he did in his 30s. How the hell is that possible?

BEHIND THE MUSIC....THAT SUCKS
MADONNA
Madonna is one of those people who, due to having every aspect of their life exposed already, do not need a documentary. Do you need to see a documentary on Princess Diana, or Paris Hilton? It also doesn’t help that Madonna is not a good interview subject in the least. Boringness + Fake British Accents = Awful TV.

GUNS N ROSES
I think this episode being so terrible, despite being on an entertaining band, is what drove Behind The Music to go away for a few years. Of course the lack of Axl hurt it, but the man couldn’t even be bothered to do press for “Chinese Democracy” so what do you expect. Really bad editing and a lack of solid sequencing ruined this.

SHANIA TWAIN
This was the first “let’s profile a current star” episode I can remember, and due to it being such a ratings success it brought a bunch of that kind of episode in through out the years. Shania has absolutely nothing interesting to talk about other than her parents died in a car accident and conservative Nashville thought she was too sexy to be a country singer. Don’t you have to have had a raging drug problem to get approved for a BTM episode? If you can stay awake during this episode, give yourself a pat on the back.

BRITNEY SPEARS
If Britney wanted to be completely honest about how her life entered the downward spiral it did in 2006, I’d definitely be down to watch that. But this episode was from 2003, where she was still ‘not a girl, not yet impregnated by K-Fed.’ Or something. This episode made the snoozefest Matchbox Twenty episode look like the Motley Crue one for entertainment.

CREED
While their lives turned into a tailor-made episode of BTM after this aired, the main thing you learn about these dull idiots is that Scott Stapp had overprotective parents and they had to tour a few years before they got famous. So this is as entertaining as watching paint dry. Of course now, with the band splitting up, Stapp putting out a disastrous solo album in between getting arrested and his former bandmates saying they hated being around him in interviews (only to recently reunite) they’d have a good episode. This is exactly why profiling artists at the height of their fame is a terrible idea. No band gets interesting until they crumble.

LENNY KRAVITZ
Is there a more boring person in music then Lenny Kravitz? At least Rob Thomas had a drug problem in between his dullness. The selling point of the show is that Lenny Kravitz had a lull in sales between “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” and when “Fly Away” became a hit. Only his life was completely uninteresting during that time period. Although it was funny that they explicitly detailed how harsh the reviews were that he has gotten his entire recording career. Usually they sugar coat things like that, but you get a full-on picture of the “ENOUGH OF THIS 60s SHIT!” feeling writers felt about him.

THE OSMONDS
Yeah, they had a “here today, gone tomorrow” story to tell. But they’re just such nice, squeaky clean people it isn’t much of a story. Excess for Donny Osmond is having one glass of wine on New Year’s Eve. After their 70s heyday ended they kept their dignity, close family ties and sobriety. So needless to say there’s no tales of killing friends in drunk driving wrecks or contemplating suicide after being dropped from their label. There’s not much of anything, really.

ALANIS MORRISSETTE
Behind The Music was guilty of going with the artists label-written bio regardless of how glaringly obvious it was that it wasn’t true. That made for some really bad episodes. Here they could have grilled Alanis on how a Nickelodeon child actor, turned teen-pop star can possibly be, as they call her in the show’s opening “music's most immaterial girl”. It’s painfully obvious that Alanis-as-Alternative rock chick was a Maverick Records and Glen Ballard creation. They don’t call her on any of this, or even attempt to get her to explain how she has a right to be on the same angst level as Tori Amos when the worst thing to ever happen in Alanis’s life was learning Uncle Joey from Full House was cheating on her. Nope, they just repeat the Alanis Morissette Maverick Records press package word-for-word.

CELINE DION
Yeah she has a semi-interesting rags to riches story. But how disturbing it is that VH1 treats the love story between Celine and husband Rene Angelil as acceptable? When the two met, Rene was nearly 40 and Celine was 12 years old. If that doesn’t make you want to puke then something is wrong with you, Gary Glitter. Exploring that honestly, and looking at how Celine has never really had a life beyond performing, since her parents were trying to get her famous since she was a young singing prodigy, would make for interesting television. The problem is it appears this was written, produced, and edited by Team Celine at Sony Music. Fluff pieces suck.

THOSE YEAR EPISODES
I’ll lump these all in together. One hour is just not long enough to talk about 365 days. It doesn’t help that they can’t decide if they want to focus on the politics or the music or the movies of that year. It just comes off like a total clusterfuck of television. The 1992 episode is the biggest offender “Okay, we’ve got 45 minutes after commercials, guys. Let’s go! Cut to Michael Jackson, cut to Nirvana, cut to Pearl Jam, cut to En Vogue, cut to Cypress Hill, cut to Bill Clinton, cut to Sir Mix-A-Lot, cut to Body Count, cut to U2 prank calling the White House, cut back to Bill Clinton, now back to Pearl Jam, now back to Nirvana, cut to Public Enemy, now show footage of George Bush and Dan Quayle, now back to Clinton, now back to En Vogue, cut to PM Dawn, now show that picture of Kurt Cobain crying so we can mention he killed himself 2 years later....” Sorry, but every band that had a hit that year getting 2 minutes a piece isn’t good TV.

Same Old Shtick

A lot has changed in the world since Eminem dropped 2004’s “Encore”. Barack Obama was a little known Senate hopeful delivering a star-making speech at John Kerry’s Democratic Convention. iTunes had just released a version compatible with PCs, MySpace recently switched from being a filehosting site into a social networking site, YouTube was a year from being launched, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King won Best Picture that year, Scott Peterson‘s murder of his wife Laci was the 2nd biggest news story of the year behind the elections.

And in the world of hip hop, 5 years is even longer than it is in the world as a whole. 5 years is close to being two generations in hip hop. During that time: Crunk hit its peak and then petered out, 50 Cent feuded then reunited several times with The Game in the G Unit soap opera, Diddy launched a few Making Of The Bands and seeks acting gigs now, the Stop Snitchin’ movement got so big it was on a 60 Minutes episode, Young Jeezy’s Snowman logo was banned from schools, Nas declared hip hop dead and then shocked everybody by threatening to name a record called the N-Word, Outkast finally won a Best Album Grammy for hip hop (even though it was for their worst album), Dr. Dre still didn’t release Detox....well, some things never change. But all of those stories feel like ancient history. People thought Dr. Dre having 3 years between his tracks on The Aftermath and Chronic 2001 was a lifetime, but Eminem is adding an extra 2. (Although it could be 10 years between 2001 and Detox the way things look which is like 800 years in hip hop.)

People actually thought Eminem retired after dropping his greatest hits package “Curtain Call”. He never gave an official confirmation one way or the other, but rumors swirled he was either going to be a full-time producer (oh please no!), act full-time, run his label full-time, or sit at home and do nothing since he was filthy rich and didn‘t need to work another day in his life. But then talk got around that Eminem wasn’t done rapping and was slowly but surely working on a new record that was rumored for a while to be entitled “King Mathers” (although he denied it and “King Mathers” is just a mix tape compilation of some of his remix appearances.)

So what was Eminem doing for 5 years? Not slaving away on perfecting his next record. He was actually too fucked up on pills to do much of anything. Eminem had always joked about being addicted to Vicodin and other assorted pills since “The Slim Shady LP” (there’s even a cartoon drawing of a Vicodin pill in the booklet.) But his addiction was no joking matter, he said he spent his days in a druggy daze not even being able to find the ability to get off of his couch to spend time with his daughter. He said one of the breaking points was when she discovered him passed out in his car which embarrassed him into wanting to seek treatment. But that was kept secret from the press, as his people told the world he had a severe case of pneumonia that required a lengthy hospital stay (although since most people who get sick enough with pneumonia to be hospitalized for weeks are either dying of cancer or AIDS, this set off a whole other line of rumors.)

But he’s back from the abyss and wants to tell us all about it. Eminem has been one of the rare emcees who will occasionally drop the bullshit bravado and open up to be a little vulnerable. In other genre’s of music that’s just typical songwriting, but in hip hop there is an unspoken rule that you must give an outward appearance of strength and bravado at all times. So when a rapper does break down and tell us about his weak points, like Eminem has his whole career, or Cage on the dark autobiographical “Hell’s Winter”, or even Bushwick Bill on “Little Big Man”, it‘s shocking.

The problem is, critics (especially the ass-licking review by Rolling Stone, which shockingly wasn’t written by professional celebrity rimjobber David Fricke) are overstating just how much Eminem opens up this time out. If we take reviews like the Rolling Stone piece, which compares “Relapse” to Richard Pryor baring his drug addicted soul for audiences, at face value going in, you’re going to be incredibly disappointed. Maybe 30% of the record takes a harsh look at Eminem’s drug addiction that derailed his life. The other 70% is Eminem by the numbers. Mocking harmless celebrities, murdering dozens, raping women (lots of raping actually), bitching about his mom, gay bashing, telling us fame sucks, et al. He even keeps in the fine tradition of joking about Christopher Reeve....even though Reeve was dead when “Encore” was released.

Now, the album isn’t as awful as “Encore” was. “Encore” was the audio equivalent of watching a once great athlete stay in the game too long and embarrass themselves by putting on a half-assed performance. “Relapse” is like when Michael Jordan came back to the Washington Wizards and showed a few flashes of brilliance in between showing why he’s not the Michael Jordan that he was when he left the Bulls the rest of the game. Fortunately for Eminem, hip hop in general is so abysmal that he ends up sounding better than he really is by default. He’s coming back to an industry where one of its most talented artists wrote it off for dead a few years ago and few disagreed with him. Where its biggest star is about to humiliate himself doing an awful rock album his own label has cold feet on releasing. Where a nerdy Jewish guy who was going to teach Elementary school is now one of the biggest rap stars of the year. Where “The Stanky Leg” is a smash hit. So yeah, basically Eminem just has to show up and he’s a god among men.

But what is so disheartening about the guy is that you know that he could do so much better. He has the potential to be the premiere social commentator of his generation. Yet his idea of social commentary is announcing he wants to suck Jessica Alba’s tits and wants to sodomize Kim Kardashian. You just get so frustrated because it’s so beneath him. It’s like watching a rocket scientist decide to work at Burger King making Whoppers the rest of his life. Eminem seems perfectly happy putting out formalistic records the rest of his life. While he’ll toss a few pieces of brilliance at you like “Mosh” or “Stan” or “Square Dance” or “Deja Vu”, the rest of his albums feel like before turning them in he sat down with a check list going “Let’s see, insulted starlets, check. Calling my mom a drug addict slut, check. Saying I want to murder Kim, check. Rape threats, double check. ‘Faggot’ quota filed, check. Tossing in lines about how much I love my daughter to balance it out, check.” It’s like you’re left being a fan of what he could be instead of what he actually is.

The record opens up with Dr. West an intro where Eminem is about to be released from drug treatment. Only the doctor doesn’t sound like he really cares if Eminem stays clean or not. Eventually he morphs into a demon-doctor offering Eminem some pills until his alarm clock goes off and we realize it was a dream sequence.

Next is the single 3am which finds Eminem discussing blacking out and murdering various people. It’s a standard Eminem murder track, but the lines about masturbating watching Hannah Montana should inflame some people. Okay, maybe just inflame Billy Ray Cyrus. But he’s basically done the same kind of statutory-rap about JoJo, Hilary Duff, The Olsen Twins, and Mandy Moore that it’s still generic Eminem all around.

Cue the obligatory Debbie Mathers song. My Mom finds him, not fantasizing about raping and murdering her, or accusing her of only caring about him when he got rich. But coming to the rehab realization that he turned out exactly like his mother, who he claims was a pill popper, so really he hates her because he hates himself. While that’s a new angle, the Marshall vs. Debbie feud jumped the shark when SHE put out a diss song against him in 2000, and then it jumped over the shark one more time in 2002 when he complained about her some more in “Cleaning Out My Closet” before making her a semi-fictional character in “8 Mile”. It’s just boring now. It has been explored from every angle, so even metaphors about her drugging his food as a child just fall flat as duds.

The most talked about song on the album is Insane, which has Eminem telling a tale of being molested by his step father. While a lot of people seem to believe it’s at least a half-way confessional piece, the “Paul” skit towards the end of the record writes it off as a total tasteless joke, when he says “The whole gay incest step father rape thing? I don’t even have your back on this one.” And the rape tales are done so cartoonishly that you have to wonder how anybody got fooled. If it was indeed a revelation, it would make Axl Rose screaming “MY FATHER USED TO FUCK ME UP THE ASS AT THE AGE OF TWO!” at a Rolling Stone reporter seem dignified. But it’s just Eminem’s new shock tactic trick: him as rape victim instead of rapist. Which since rape is such a popular topic on “Relapse”, I guess is the same trick as bashing gays but throwing Ken Kaniff, his homosexual alter-ego out as a defense.

One update to the Eminem package is Mariah Carey is the new Kim. On Bagpipes From Baghdad he turns his “YOU DUMPED ME WHORE!” wrath on the now Mrs. Cannon. Actually Kim isn’t mentioned once on the entire album, which is shocking since Em isn’t exactly known for abstaining from beating the proverbial dead horse. Eminem claims he dated Carey for 6 months in 2001, but for some reason has waited until 2 albums to make her a focal point. Although he did use her as a punchline on mix tape songs like the 50 Cent duet “Jimmy Crack Corn” where he said she was crazy and liked anal sex. He also takes some shots at her husband comedian Nick Cannon, which has now lead the two into getting into a pissing contest over Twitter and satellite radio for the honor of Mrs. Carey-Cannon. How 21st century.

Next up is Hello where Eminem gives a summary of what happened in his life between “Encore” and “Relapse”: pills, more pills, lots of sex, more pills. This is definitely one of the album’s highlights, as Eminem reminds the planet why he has one of the all-time greatest deliveries in hip hop. He unleashes the masterful flow we all missed, taking us through what a day was like for his pill head years: blowing through $300 worth of painkillers like it was nothing, spending hours on the phone searching for more, having to hide being zonked out on pills from people. Yet he also regrets having to get clean, making it an honest view of drug addiction: you know you have to end your personal hell by all reasoning, but you’ll still miss it. This is definitely Eminem at his finest.

But after that reminder of why he’s great, he then begins to remind us why he’s such a frustrating talent. The Tonya skit begins a long slide into “Eminem By The Numbers”, which I’ll refer to as The Generic Suite. Here Eminem abducts a female stranded motorist to rape and kill her. And the next tracks all follow suit of Eminem giving what people expect out of him instead of pushing boundaries.

Generic Suite #2 is Same Old Song And Dance, which as you can tell from the title is Eminem by the numbers. He’s boringly abducting and murdering fellow celebrity drug addicts Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears on wax to attempt to shock us. Basically all he has now is people like Bill O’Reilly giving an equally generic faux-outrage spiel over crap like this. Most rappers stick to a few plotlines to go over every single song, but it’s especially disheartening when someone you know could do so much better like Eminem wastes his breath rhyming about it.

We’ve all heard We Made You by now. It’s the “My Name Is”, “The Real Slim Shady”, “Without Me”, “Just Lose It” of album. Musically it sounds like an Amy Winehouse tribute, which is incredibly dated since the world is over her neo-60s Soul revival and descent into crack addiction by now. That was SO 2007, Marshall. He gets off a line about wanting to have sex with Sarah Palin. It’s sad that the last time out he put out a political condemnation of the Bush Administration on “Mosh”, and now he’s perfectly happy mining the “Nailin’ Palin” pun Larry Flynt ran into the ground over a year ago. Hell, he even references stealing Jennifer Aniston away from John Mayer, and they’ve been broken up for how long now? How old is this song? Do people even remember who Blake Civil Fielder is anymore? The whole song is one big TMZ time capsule.

Medicine Ball (geddit?!) is another Slim Shady ego-stroking song, bragging about how he’s so crazy the world is probably sorry he’s back. “I guess it’s time for you to hate me again”, goes the chorus. And the song has him raping, performing an abortion with a coat hanger, blowing up a balloon inside of a vagina. He also threatens to rape all of The Pussycat Dolls and urinate on Rhianna (although the reference makes me wonder if his label pulled any Chris Brown jokes. Or is he saving that for the second Relapse?) He tops the verse off with saying he’d like to Krazy-Glue Madonna to a recliner and says she looks so old she “looks like she outlived her life sentence.” Every trick in the offensive book gets thrown out here outside of 9/11 jokes. It ends with the second Christopher Reeve reference of the record, ending with Eminem doing an impression of Reeve threatening him. Yawn.

Stay Wide Awake is a filler track, slow with more tired rape & murder fantasies. He does compare himself to Mozart, though. Sorry, can‘t stay awake, this should have been cut. I’ve got to say it’s surprising that Dr. Dre produced all but one song on here. It’s by far the least imaginative Dre has sounded, most songs sounding like outtakes from Chronic 2001. But I will say throw away Dre tracks are far superior to most of the rest of the world’s beats today.

Old Times Sake has Dr. Dre nearly surprisingly hanging rhyming with Eminem. I never thought I’d ever hear Dr. Dre putting on a performance rapping impressively enough to rival Eminem, but he does here. Remember, this is the same guy who got told by Ice Cube “Hey yo, Dre, stick to producing” and not a single person raised an objection.

Must Be The Ganja ends the Generic Suite, with Dre and Em trading weed references and it’s pretty lackluster hearing somebody you know is sober bragging about getting high. If they wanted to do a weed track, why didn’t they call Snoop Dogg in? He can bust some rhymes for the Pussycat Dolls but he can’t drop a verse for Dre & Em?

With skit Mr. Mathers you are finally yanked out of the plodding Eminem by the numbers with a skit involving what appears to be Eminem half-dead from a drug overdose. With Eminem you can never tell what’s real and what’s just for the album, since he blurs fantasy and reality so strongly. But if he was as much of a drug addict as he says, it is very plausible this is based on a true story.

The strongest song on the record is Deja Vu, which deals with admitting his addiction weaknesses. Fortunately, unlike the lyrics of post-rehab albums like Metallica’s “St. Anger” he doesn’t toss out a bunch of 12 Stepper cliches as lyrics. Eminem tells the truth about how pathetic he was to pill addiction and should be praised for it. It’s nice to hear him cut the “rape ’n’ murder-athon” bullshit and deal with a touchy subject as an adult. He is nearing 40, after all.

After that artistic high point, things could only go down. And boy do they ever. Beautiful is nauseatingly awful. Eminem finds some obscure solo Brian May song and uses it as a sample. Let’s review: Brian May playing guitar = good. Brian May singing = not so good. If Eminem was ever put on trial for being a terrible producer, this song would be Exhibit A. He is a tremendous rapper, but all that time he has spent around Dr. Dre has done absolutely nothing for his production ability. All of his songs sound the same: campy sounding synths with some hokey 80s sample that you just feel embarrassed for him listening to. Obviously nobody held an addiction intervention for him, because a “stop producing” intervention would have come first. Lyrically it is also absolutely horrible. Celebrities pissing and moaning about “You have no idea how hard my life is!” never makes for good music, no matter who does it. Toss that in with Eminem using a “Walk a mile in my shoes” cliche for the chorus and even drops a “tears of a clown” reference and you really want to puke.

Another lackluster track with Crack A Bottle follows. The song just sounds like a half-baked way to get 50 Cent and Dre on a track together. I think this was only included (and released as a single) since it was leaked months before the album came out, with a version so raw it had Eminem rapping Dre and 50’s verses for them before they got to the studio. 50 Cent definitely phones this one in, proving once again that he only rises to the occasion if he’s talking shit about another rapper on a diss track.

Relapse has its own obligatory Steve Berman skit. If you remember in “Encore”’s Berman skit Eminem flipped out and shot him at the end. This time Berman bitches him out about being gone for 5 years and telling him his disappearance helped cripple the music industry.

Underground closes things. This song really feels like “Criminal” in a way. It becomes obvious listening to it Eminem is incredibly nostalgic for 2000 when the world hated him, because he goes out of his way on this one to get Homosexual groups to picket his concerts and record label again. But this time they seem pretty busy with the gay marriage drive and attacking Carrie Prejean, so they might not take the bait this time out. Hopefully they won’t to teach him a lesson that it’s time to grow up and while trying to be offensive and shock the world is cool in your 20s, in your late 30s a little maturity is a good thing. This entire song is Eminem crying out “Please protest me again so I can have to go to the Grammys this year with Elton John singing the hook to ‘Beautiful’ to prove I don’t really hate you people!”

And there you have it. A pretty lackluster record as a whole, but its strong songs are incredible so it’s worth checking out. As with all double albums, this December we’ll probably all be saying Em should have condensed all the good material into one really strong record. But hey, it’s his art, we’re just listening to it.

RATING: 3/5

Fear Of A White Hip Hop Planet

Over the years since hip hop broke through to a white audience, there has been a much feared moment of purists shaking in their sneakers that one day there will be an Elvis style revolution where the music’s core white audience will totally begin ignoring the black culture that spawned the music in the first place.

There was an initial scare in 1991 with Vanilla Ice, whose teeny bopper raps and MC Hammer-l(wh)ite stage show sold him many millions of his "To The Extreme" debut. But that was an isolated incident, as The Ice Man only lasted one album and was quickly wiped off of the face of the earth. Then 8 years later, Eminem came out and shocked the world by actually being a white guy with *gasp* non-embarrassing rapping talent. But he was a one-of-a-kind talent, since the music industry has tried several times to market another white guy as the heir to Eminem's honky MC throne and came up short with the likes of Bubba Sparxxx, Lil Wyte, and Paul Wall among others.

One of the things that saved hip hop from being over-run by white imitators was how ingrained having to have "street cred" is to the music. One of the things that killed off Vanilla Ice's career was that it was discovered he lied about being a hoodlum from the same streets of Miami where 2 Live Crew grew up, he was actually a nice suburban kid from outside of Dallas city limits. Eminem was smart enough not to even pretend he was street credible, he played up being a white trash punk from the trailer parks of Michigan, but he had enough people behind him who did like D12, Royce Da 5'9 and later Dr. Dre and 50 Cent to kill off any request for street credibility.

Eminem had so much cred that black people let him get away with using racial slurs, when his arch rival Ray Benzino, then co-owner of The Source magazine, leaked an early Eminem demo where the then teenager used racial slurs to insult a black woman he had broken up with. It turned out that the hip hop community actually turned on the black guy who leaked the song, as Benzino and his business partner Dave Mays were shunned by nearly the entire hip hop community until being fired from the magazine by their board of directors a few years later.

White people just can't even attempt to match street cred with black and hispanic people. Sure, there's tons of impoverished white folk in the world (like yours truly) but their version of poverty would be a dream come true to the realities of those who become rappers that rose up from big city slums.

Enter Kanye West. No, he isn't a white rapper, obviously. But he did totally change the game on what was acceptable to rap about. Kanye was a superstar producer who eventually followed Dr. Dre and Sean Combs into parlaying that production stardom into a very successful solo rapping career. Not only that, but he broke barriers inadvertently for white rappers. He made it okay to talk about being middle class and college educated in a world where most rappers brag about being broke and dropping out of high school. He made it okay to rap about those college years being the best years of many people's lives, whereas most rappers didn't seem to enjoy life at all until they made their first million rapping. He had a little bit of nerd in him in a genre where that was only okay if you were in N.E.R.D. In short he was a white emcee's savior without knowing it.

Enter Asher Roth. He has as much street cred as Bill Gates, and he's damn proud of it. He's a Jewish college graduate from suburban Pennsylvania. In interviews he has revealed he didn't even like hip hop until the age of 14 when he discovered Jay Z's "Hard Knock Life" on MTV, where he admits it was the Annie sample that drew him in. While attending West Chester University for an education degree, he started posting mp3s of himself rapping over instrumentals on his MySpace page and started Friend Requesting some people in the hip hop game hoping they'd be impressed. Eventually, Scooter Braun, who was the former Vice President of Jermaine Dupri's So So Def record label (who brought the world Kriss Kross and Lil Bow Wow) liked what he heard and started managing Roth. Despite being turned down for a spot at Roc-A-Fella after freestyling for his idol Jay Z, he had enough music industry buzz to eventually get signed by Universal’s off shoot SRC.

To put it bluntly, Asher Roth makes Vanilla Ice look like MC Ehit. The rapper doesn’t even attempt to try to be cool, he instead sets what sounds like a nostalgic LiveJournal entry of a college geek to a hip hop beat. While he does rap quite a bit about smoking pot, that’s the only thing you will find that is a mainstay of hip hop lyrics. Roth drops references to Saved By The Bell, Mario Kart, Full House actor Bob Saget, pro wrestlers Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon, talking teddy bear Teddy Ruxpin, and LL Bean clothing among other things. And in between those dorky references, Roth replaces Cristal popping party tales for nights of downing Miller Lites and going out for cheap pizza after getting the munchies from smoking pot all night in your dorm room. Which gets as monotonous and unimaginative as the mindless party anthems we all bitch about hip hop overdoing. It just feels like one long novelty record. The one joke being “Ha ha, this white guy is taking emo rock lyrics and rapping them, I get it.” While most rappers rap about their poverty and/or criminal lifestyles causing their bad days, on the song “Bad Day” Roth’s personal hell is not being able to poop during a flight and his hotel room not having HBO.

After listening to this album, I‘m pretty sure you‘d find Asher Roth‘s picture in the dictionary under “smarmy.” Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing interesting about being upper middle class that ever needs to be documented in song lyrics. I don’t care who you are. There is a reason the vast majority of noted lyricists came from humble beginnings. Or at the very least find other topics to discuss than what it’s like being from a well-to-do family.

Asher even launches a pre-emptive strike on haters in the song called “As I Em”. Written before anybody even knew who the hell he was, he takes on critics who would eventually compare him to Eminem. Well, this critic thinks that’s being far too kind to Mr. Roth, but I digress. On the song he admits he had his mother purchase “The Slim Shady LP” for him as a teen and it influenced his career choice, but that he can’t handle it when critics say “Asher wants to be Marshall Mathers.” Of course this was written before Roth ever got his first professional review, so most critics believe like I do that he’s giving himself way too much credit. There are a litany of rappers who have copied the style of Eminem since 1999, Roth is just the only one who got mainstream success from it.

After a concert in England last month, one British reviewer wrote “What [boy band] Busted is to punk rock, Asher Roth is to Eminem”. Meaning he’s just taking Eminem’s window dressing and repackaging it into something much more consumer friendly. And bland. And smarmy. He is to Eminem what Pat Boone was to Elvis.

This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for (either in hope or anxiety depending on your viewpoint) a white rapper has erased nearly every characteristic its black creators put into it. Some feel it’s only right that the white fan base get a rapper who reflects their reality instead of vicariously living through urban poverty in rap lyrics. Others fear this is a sign that Nas’s warning of hip hop being dead due to over commercialism is sadly true.

But so far it’s selling fairly well, with the album debuting at #5 on the Billboard chart. Now it remains to be seen if his hit “I Love College” was just a novelty song fluke, or if he has broken down doors for affluent white rappers to make music for the affluent white fanbase that has supported the music for years. Hey, say what you want, but at least the guy “keeps it real” as he knows it.

RATING: 1/5