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Quelling the rage
[AP photo]
Eminem once rapped about his fantasy of killing his wife while their child watches. On his new album: Hailie’s Song, a tender piano ode to his daughter. |
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 29, 2002
As they get a little older, music's wrathful rappers are softening their voices. Is that niceness we hear in those lyrics?
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After decades of angry young men and women thrashing their way through rock, then punk, then rap, suddenly the angriest of them seem to be getting well, nicer.
It's hard to take the angry poses in rock seriously when Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness himself, is now the lovable buffoon dad with his own reality television sitcom. How scary is Gene Simmons of KISS, when he follows Oprah, Martha and Rosie with his own magazine, Tongue?
Forget Alice Cooper. The man golfs.
How seriously can we take the thugs of the rap world when almost every one of them -- Ice Cube, Ice-T, Puffy, Tupac, Snoop -- and as of September, Eminem -- has a second career in Hollywood?
The Anger Management Tour starring musical malcontents Eminem and Papa Roach arrives in Tampa this weekend. But just how angry are these guys, anyway?
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Hip-hop hits home
The rap world, once pumped up in vitriol and gangsta thuggery, softened up after Sept. 11. |
It has long been a theory that trends in pop music are cyclical. That would explain the early 1990s reign of Nirvana and Pearl Jam grunge and whiny boy rock, then the Lilith Fair ladies such as Sarah McLaughlin and Sheryl Crow dominating for a while. What followed? Limp Bizkit's backward baseball caps and testosterone-y high jinks.
Could niceness be the Next Big Thing?
Eminem, the man who rapped about killing his wife as their child watches, is hands down the rap world's angriest young man. He hasn't exactly cleaned up his vitriolic act on third album The Eminem Show, the year's best-selling disc. But fans and critics alike have begun to question how much of Em's anger is genuine and how much is skillful pose -- and prose.
In Eminem's 2002 interviews, the newly divorced star discusses raising 6-year-old daughter Hailie, featured giggling on one of the new album's cuts. Remember little Hailie? Last time we heard from her, she was Eminem's cohort in crime on the chilling '97 Bonnie & Clyde, the tune that detailed Eminem's fantasy of murdering then-wife Kim.
On the new album, the rapper delivers Hailie's Song, a tender piano ode that finds the star attempting to sing. Eminem says he only allows Hailie to listen to clean versions of his profanity-laced tunes. In concert Eminem has been halting the song Stan, about an obsessed, deranged fan, before the song's narrator kills himself and his girlfriend. This from a man who last year brought a chainsaw onstage as part of his act? In one interview this summer Eminem chats about his "journey" to get "closure" for the issues he has with his ex-wife and mother.
[Publicity photo]
Papa Roach guitarist Jerry Horton, back left, says Eminem’s thuggish persona is all an act. Papa Roach, part of the Anger Management Tour, also includes Jacoby Shaddix, front, Tobin Esperance, center, and Dave Buckner, right.
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Jerry Horton, 27, guitarist for Papa Roach, says Eminem's persona is all an act. Calling from a tour stop in Colorado, Horton says Eminem, who, before this year, had several run-ins with the law for brandishing guns, now, like Papa Roach lead singer Jacoby Shaddix, deals with his rage in his songs and in the songs alone.
"Eminem puts all of his anger and frustration into his music," Horton says. "He gets it out and done with and then he functions like a normal person. He's really down to earth." Horton adds the two acts aren't partying so much this year; they've mellowed.
Papa Roach, too, has changed its tune on this summer's Lovehatetragedy, featuring a less aggressive set of songs, that are stronger on melody. Shaddix, who recently dropped his stage name Coby Dick in favor of his real name, sings more than raps on this album. Shaddix told one magazine he has "a new perspective on life."
"I've been married five years," the 26-year-old says. "We've got a kid. I'm turning into an adult now."
Pundits have been posing post-Sept. 11 theories for the past year. Some speculate the tragedy may have made artists' reassess their own discontent, inspiring them to take a kinder, gentler approach to dealing with the world.
Further, with real war going on in Afghanistan, the posturing of rap thuggery and gangsta bravado rang a little hollow for many.
Horton says Papa Roach didn't grow up because of Sept. 11, although the new album's title track directly deals with the events. Horton says it's simply that the band members are becoming adults. "You write your first record when you're young," Horton says. "When you're teenagers. It's a time of confusion, when you're mad at the world. You can't write about those things forever."
A self-described mellow guy, Horton says the secret to dealing with his aggression is talking it out. Horton says more often than not he talks things over with his fiancee.
"She's my best friend," Horton says.
The members of Papa Roach aren't the only rockers in love. Fellow rap rockers Korn have been mellowed by Cupid. Korn singer Jonathan Davis recently told a British music magazine he's settled down now, dumped his wife and married a porn star. (The singer says he has also been drink- and drug-free for four years.) Although Davis, the former mortuary worker known for writing creepy, violent lyrics, claims he's happier, he promises Korn's material won't become cheery.
Ozzy Osbourne may have made a mint pretending to dabble with the devil, but he announced on national television last week that he prays every day for his wife to beat the cancer for which she's being treated. Osbourne even took time off from his multimillion dollar Ozzfest tour to be with his beloved.
He said he rejoined the tour when wife Sharon got tired of him sobbing all the time and told him to go back to work.
Some rap stars turn to their mothers in times of trouble. Xzibit, the star on the Anger Management Tour whom Eminem likens to a time bomb, has his soft side. He claims in notes for Man Vs. Machine, his latest album, that he is trying to grow up with his audience.
"I can't rap about the same s-- I did when I was 18," he explains. The album has all of the typical Xzibit bluster and rage, and also features Missin' U, a soulful tearjerker about the death of Xzibit's mother when he was young. Thug rhymer Jay-Z, one of rap's most successful artists, was earlier this year shamed by his mother into making an on-air apology to a woman he defamed in song (See related story.)
Papa Roach's Horton says he's glad his band is growing up, He's prouder of the new record than anything his band has done. No one, he says, wants to listen to rage-fueled rock all the time. It just makes you mad, he says.
Even a tough dude like himself needs to mellow out. With what music? "I like Sade a lot," Horton admits. "And Tori Amos is great."
"Most good rock 'n' roll isn't angry," Horton says. "Like Led Zeppelin. A lot of bands out there don't market rage."
-- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. To contact Gina Vivinetto, e-mail gina@sptimes.com.
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