Late Friday night Eminem dropped the latest in his recent string of surprise releases, this one a fiery 11-minute freestyle that covers a multitude of topics including the 2017 terrorist bombing after Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester, England, Muslim extremism along with his usual brilliantly juvenile wordplay, insults and celebrity mentions, including Justin Bieber and Reese Witherspoon.
It’s a lot to absorb, and the folks at Genius have already been hard at work on decoding some of Em’s references, but as is often the case with him, his meaning is at times indirect and slippery, probably intentionally so.
The clip was shot at Detroit’s St. Andrews Hall, the site of many of his early battles, and even opens with a warning/disclaimer about what is to follow:
“I’ve always looked at battle rap as competition or war, and the main objective is to destroy, completely fucking obliterate your opponent by saying anything and everything, whatever the f— you can, to get a reaction from the crowd. So nothing’s off limits…”
From there, he’s off to the races. Soon after, he spits:
Positive clean thoughts intervene
But they’re all either altered and mean
Assault and demean, tossed and they’re being lost in the scheme
Squashed in-between a brainwashing machine
Like an Islamic regime, a jihadist extreme radical
Suicide bomber that’s seeing
Ariana Grande sing her last song of the evening
And as the audience from the damn concert is leaving
Detonates the device strapped to his abdominal region
I’m not gonna finish that, for obvious reasons
In the past year and change, Eminem has dropped two albums — “Revival” and a surprise release over Labor Day weekend, “Kamikaze” — engaged in a back and forth of diss tracks with Machine Gun Kelly, and more.