Far be it from me to heap praise onto a mediocre white man, but it has to be said: Eminem is doing the right thing.
After the rapper requested that BMI terminate their agreement to license his music due to a viral Vivek Ramaswamy clip, people are realizing something shocking: Eminem isn’t on the side of evil after all.
But let’s not give him too much credit: standing up to an anti-trans politician should really be the bare minimum of political engagement. And it’s not like Eminem has had a spotless track record: sure, he appears to be Democrat-leaning in his allegiances, but he’s also (famously) been called out several times for using homophobic slurs in his songs, along with anti-Black language and general sexism. In general, it’s a bit hard to parse what Eminem believes: he came under fire years ago for lyrics that seemed to support alleged abuser Chris Brown. That said, that was years ago, and just last year he took a knee at the Super Bowl in apparent support of Colin Kaepernick. So you know, he’s done sh*tty things, and he’s done decent things.
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But one thing he’s not about to do is let Republicans use his music. As shady as Eminem’s political history is, it’s good to see an artist with a huge name stand against someone like Ramaswamy. For this one time, and possibly this one time only, we’ll give to Marshall: he did right.
The best part of all this? The Republican response, naturally.
