Eminem Returns to the Spotlight at BET Awards
The Rap God makes waves with his return and drags President Trump in with him.
October 12, 2017
Rapper Eminem returned to the spotlight on Tuesday night at the BET Hip-Hop Awards with a political freestyle attack on President Donald Trump.
Warning: the linked content may contain sensitive material.
Focusing solely on politics, the 4 and a half minute rap Shady performed bashed Trump, his policies and the future of America in the hands of the President. This is the second time Eminem has gone after Trump in the last calendar year, the last being almost a full year ago upon the release of “Campaign Speech” on Oct. 19, 2016. Em took to Twitter after the cypher occurred and named the freestyle “The Storm.”
Both “The Storm” and “Campaign Speech” are similar in terms of style and flow. Like “Campaign Speech,” “The Storm” does not feature a beat and Em preformed it a Capella. The first instance of Eminem using the a Capella style to release new content via YouTube, happened back in 2014 when the current Shady Records artists, Eminem, Slaughterhouse and Yelawolf, preformed the Shady CXVPHER to celebrate 15 years of the record label.
Eminem is known to have the ability to rhyme just about anything together. In the new cuts, he sticks to quick rhymes within the same lines. This rapping technique is called “internal rhyming” and it is not new to Eminem’s repertoire. He used it in the 2013 single Rap God when he set the world record for words per seconds at 4.28. Other well known songs that use this technique are: “Twinz (Deep Cover ’98)” by Big Pun, “Me Against The World” by Tupac and “Notorious Thugs” by The Notorious B.I.G.
Using this internal rhyming technique, Eminem goes after the commander-in-chief starting with:
“That’s an awfully hot coffee pot,
should I drop it on Donald Trump? Probably not,
But that’s all I got ’til I come up with a solid plot.”
Shady follows by taking a stand with Colin Kapernick on racial injustice. This is followed by criticisms of the president for not addressing gun control after the Las Vegas terror attack and being slow to respond for the relief effort in Puerto Rico.
This is not the first time Eminem has disagreed with the views of a president. The most notable instance being former president George W. Bush in the songs, “White America” and “Mosh” in 2003 and 2004 respectively from back to back albums. Both songs opposed Bush and the Iraq War.
The full lyrics for “The Storm” can be found here, transcribed by CNN. After the cypher, Eminem announced the signing of Boogie, a rapper from Compton, California. Boogie appeared in the BET cypher alongside Buffalo rappers Westside Gunn and Benny from the label Griselda Records. The headlines have brought back the hype about a potential Eminem album coming in 2017 or early 2018. However, as Eminem fans know well, he tends to keep things silent until he releases an official statement.