New year, same Eminem. The rapper released a surprise album called Music to Be Murdered By, a followup to the 2018 album Kamikaze. Most of the songs on the new album are, as the title suggests, extremely dark, but one song in particular is raising outrage for being particularly crass and inappropriate.
On the second track of the project, “Unaccommodating,” the rapper boasts about his untouchable status in the music industry. The song starts off with a standard feature from “OOOUUU” artist Young MA but quickly gets dark when Eminem hops on the track with his signature off-colour lyrics. “But I'm contemplating yelling ‘Bombs away' on the game,” he raps over the beat. “Like I'm outside of an Ariana Grande concert waiting."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Eminem has made a career of being the troll of the rap world, and many of his songs are violent and explicit in nature. But in 2020, "Unaccommodating" goes beyond pushing the envelope — it's just really terrible. The lyric is an insensitive callback to the 2017 Manchester Arena bomb attack, where more than 20 people were killed while attending an Ariana Grande concert.
The internet quickly reacted, with many expressing frustration and disgust with the rapper for using the tragedy as a punchline. Most notably outraged by the lyrics was Figen Murray, whose son Martyn Hett was killed in the attack at Manchester Arena.
Ok, I just watched the 11 min clip. Feels like he is piggybacking on the fame of Ariana grande and Justin bieber and says distasteful things about other celebrities. Not clever. Totally pointless. And before all Eminem fans pounce on me, I am not interested and will not engage. https://t.co/fE9MbepeqN
— Figen Murray (@FigenMurray) January 17, 2020
"Feels like he is piggybacking on the fame of Ariana grande and Justin bieber and says distasteful things about other celebrities," Murray wrote on Twitter. "Not clever. Totally pointless."
Eminem stans rushed to Murray's mentions to defend their fave despite the evidence stacked against him, pointing out that the rapper has always discussed sensitive topics with irreverence in his music. Some of his most ardent defenders even tried to counteract the rage by providing evidence that Eminem was part of the Red Cross efforts that raised around $2 million to support the victims of the attack.
To all the Ariana Grande fans who are mad about Eminem mentioning Ariana and the bombing pic.twitter.com/vAJPl9BjPA
— EMINEM (@Eminem_Posts__) January 17, 2020
One would think that after all this time in the industry, the 47-year-old would have switched gears by now and started making music that wasn't incredibly offensive and hurtful to so many people. But no. It looks like Eminem is doubling down on being loud and wrong.