EminemSlams White Privilege in Ferocious New Song Untouchable

August 2024 · 5 minute read

Anyone who thinks Eminem has gone pop based on the presence of collaborators like Ed Sheeran, Pink and Alicia Keys on his forthcoming album “Revival” gets a vicious contradiction with his just-released song “Untouchable.” The driving, rock-tinged song (which is built from the riff and samples from Cheech and Chong’s 1974 song “Earache My Eye”) finds the rapper speaking just as bluntly as he did in his anti-Trump freestyle “The Storm.”

“Feels like we’re stuck in a time warp to me/ As I kick these facts and get these mixed reactions/ As this beat backspins/ It like we’re drifting back into the ‘60s/ Having black skin is risky ’cause this keeps happening,” he raps. “Throughout history, African Americans have been treated like sh–/ And I admit, there have been times where it’s been embarrassing to be a white boy.”

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Throughout the song his perspective flips between black and white:

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“As Dallas overshadows the battle for Black Lives Matter/ We fight back with violence but acts like that are/ Black eyes on the movement/ Which makes black lives madder/ At cops and cops madder/ That’s why it’s at a stalemate/ Can’t arrive at a compromise so it’s Black Ops/

I wonder if we hire more black cops, the crap stops/ The block is our backyards, officers, not the crack spot/ Call the attack dogs off of us, man/ You always act all pissed off at us at a traffic stop/ And bad cops fuck it up for the good cops, and man, stop/ Sendin’ white cops in the black neighborhoods/ Who ain’t acclimated to ’em, like that’s the way to do it/ Who seen some fuckin’ videos of rappers waving guns

And know nobody black so they act afraid of us/ And that’s racism, the fear that a black face gives ’em/ A subconscious racist.”

After several verses dealing with Colin Kaepernick, the six-minute song ends suddenly with the lines:

“In a country that claims that its foundation was based on United States ideals/ That had its natives killed/ Got you singin’ this star-spangled spiel/ To a piece of cloth that represents the “Land of the Free” that made people slaves to build.”

The album, which the rapper has teased for several months, is his first since 2013’s “Marshall Mathers LP 2.” He dropped “Walk on Water”  on Nov. 10 and performed the song, along with a medley of older hits, with co-writer Skylar Grey on “Saturday Night Live” Nov. 18, and on the MTV Europe Music Awards on Nov. 12.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0u32FNNV6Y

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