(Images by The Drifter)

“But don’t you place the blame on me / As you pour yourself another drink, yeah.”

– Eminem

I heart Ems because he talks about, explores, and explains what it’s like to be from Michigan, which means, of course, what it’s like to be from the American Midwest: “flyover country.”

It’s kind of like America’s greatest rock critic (by far), Lester Bangs, who always loved to wear his “Detroit Sucks” T-shirt while living in, and loving living in, the Detroit area, which is known as both Motown and Rock City among other monikers. I can’t believe he was only three miles down the road co-creating Creem Magazine while I was living there as a rebellious little kid. And yet, such is (weirdly for me as a person) true.

There is a simple four-part formula for understanding the essence of Eminem as an American artist, I say!

I speak here of his best, most mature, and most fully developed work, not every single thing he’s ever done. He is a very profuse, honest, sometimes dark, and prolific artist, and if I wanted to slam him, I could choose lots of things to slam. He’s also a very self-aware and self-critical artist – anything anyone can say about him, he’s already said about himself a million times before (much like the poet Charles Bukowski).

The four-part formula goes like this.

One: What it’s like to be from the state of Michigan.

Two: What it’s like to be from the American Midwest (“flyover country”).

Three: What it’s like to be an OUTSIDER.

Four: How the figure of The Outsider, in his work, becomes a symbol of the modern Human in general, plain and simple, and also not simple at all.

Someone once asked him if he believes in God; he said, “I don’t go to church, but I do pray.”

Such an answer shows how he is a kind of modern-day Everyman who modern-day Everywomen can also relate to.

Every place in America, and I mean every place in America, has great heroes and heroines who lived there in the past or are living there right now. By “heroine” and “hero,” I simply mean someone who can be looked up to in some kind of way; someone who proves that humans are, somehow, worth it; and can act as a representative figure somehow (which is also much more of a burden than it might sound like at first blush).

Because if we don’t question the fact of human nobility sometimes, we are blind and mad. And if we don’t ultimately believe that humans have that noble strain within them, we become someone like the current president of the USA, who believes that everything, and that means everything, comes down to nothing more than a monetary transaction, one way or another. Think well of other people – without being blind – and eventually you start to think well of yourself, too.

Eminem’s gated KMart mansion is fifteen miles away from where I lived for the first ten years of my life.

My parents were young and our neighborhood was modest and I often find myself back there in my dreams or in the smell of rain or snow or grass or in the warmth of the sunshine, all of which I learned there first.

We lived in the area where Eminem’s film 8 Mile is set.

Five of Eminem’s greatest songs are from his 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP 2.

When this album came out, I was separated from my wife and broken up with my truly-beloved, soul-mate girlfriend (who I took up with only after my wife kicked me out and I also kicked myself out even more, which she tended to forget (about the girlfriend) a little too often, since we never lost regular contact while taking care of the kids, in front of whom we always retained a friendly family demeanor in between the poison barbs we regularly aimed at each other; see the quote from Eminem himself at the top of this essay for an example). Two people I deeply love were battling cancer (they got over it, but I didn’t know if they would, at the time; and one of them was her). And my mother had recently passed on. And I was losing my job, a process that took, on and off, two years. Unlike the cancer/s, I knew how this one would pan out from the start, but I never stopped fighting (even though lost in a fog-of-war confusion most of the time, at the time) until it was over (when I immediately plunged into a periodic three-year depression that almost killed me lots of different and exciting ways).

The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and especially the five songs I’m about to list, provided me with great, deep consolation, comfort, and inspiration at the time. For some reason, the album cover has one of my favorite numbers hidden in plain sight upon it: 946.

My two kids, who are forty years younger than me almost to the day, also love/d these songs, then and now, as do most of their friends.

This album was/is one of the rare times when great art and the American mainstream actually come together these days. Lana Del Rey, at her best, is another example of this; as is Taylor Swift (at her best); as is Lady Gaga – at her best.

“The Monster” (co-vocals by Rihanna). ALSO SEE THE MUSIC VIDEO WHERE RIHANNA WEARS BLACK LIPSTICK AND EXTRA-LONG FINGERNAILS!

“Legacy” (co-vocals by Polina).

“Headlights” (co-vocals by Nate Ruess).

“Stronger Than I Was.”

“Bad Guy” (the sequel to Ems’ great song “Stan”).

Remember the spirit of the 1960s (even if you weren’t alive at the time) and play it loud!

These songs are not really rap or hip hop per se; they are more like rap rock, like when he sampled Black Sabbath or Nick Cave on earlier songs; and even more like something one-of-a-kind in a genre of their own, a genre of Eminem’s own invention. Like all great art (including all great essays), these songs don’t really fit into any pre-conceived categories: at all.

But these five songs are so great, they can, very rightly, be compared to the best of The Beatles; Bob Dylan; Nina Simone; The Clash (London Calling); Nirvana. Yes, it’s true: Eminem, at his best, is that good.

Another thing many folks don’t know about Eminem: he took better care of his little brother than their parents did; and he took better care of his three daughters than their mother/s did (two are adopted, from his ex-wife with another man and from his ex-sister-in-law).

Unlike everyone else, he stuck around.

Exciting End Note/s:

I can also recommend Eminem’s powerful 2010 album RECOVERY.

Especially these songs: “Cold Wind Blows,” “Love the Way You Lie,” “Not Afraid,” “Going Through Changes” (one of the songs where he samples Black Sabbath, brilliantly), “Space Bound.”

This essay was written in a single burst while sitting in the car outside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois, USA, on May 12, 2026, which is right around the corner from Ernest Hemingway’s boyhood home. I do not use, and have never used, and will never use either grammar or spell check, believing my brain should be the one to do the work instead of any sort of a computer for a multitude of reasons some of which I can’t even explain. I believe that any typos or mistakes (if there are any) are deliberately made by something else. Therefore I let them stand if I catch them after a certain point (after my brain says “Finished”).

SEE THE QUILLEMENDER OF MY CO-EDITOR LEILA ALLISON!

(Borges rightly says that the real writer is never afraid to write a bad page.)

I saw seven GIGANTIC wild rabbits in Wright’s yard while writing this!

They were running around chasing each other because they know that it’s SPRING.