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August 4, 2002
BY JIM DEROGATIS POP
MUSIC CRITIC
Following a week after the Smokin’ Grooves tour,
Anger Management, the second major multi-act hip-hop showcase of the summer,
provided a jarring contrast when it pulled into a sold-out Allstate Arena on
Thursday night.
With artists such as Outkast, Jurassic Five, the
Roots, and Lauryn Hill, Smokin’ Grooves vividly illustrated the artistic
boundaries that remain for hip-hop to challenge and expand in the new
millennium. Anger Management, meanwhile, proved simply that mainstream
hip-hop artists such as Ludacris and headliner Eminem know no limits in
stooping to pander to the lowest common denominator.
A nimble-tongued comedian on his own releases
for Def Jam South, as well as on guest appearances on hits by other artists
such as Missy Elliott and Jermaine Dupri, the Atlanta M.C. Ludacris suffered
in part from a typically miserable Allstate Arena sound mix (it was all
bass, making his lyrics nearly unintelligible) and partly from his own
reluctance to simply let the music speak for itself.
Joined by members of his crew, Disturbing the
Peace, and performing on a stage flanked by two giant bobbing head statues
(one a pit bull, the other an image of Ludacris himself), the rapper
interspersed his own jams with the standard, miserably cliched hip-hop
routines of “wave your hands in the air” and the “left side/right side”
battle. Combined with his frequent use of “bitches” and “hoes,” it all made
him seem dumber and much less talented than he actually is, unless his
recordings have been a fluke.
Eminem’s recordings are no fluke: They are
brilliantly crafted mainstream pop, designed to seduce MTV and radio,
despite his whining that “radio won’t even play my jams.” They succeed
brilliantly—not on the artistic level, but at the primary goal of helping
young Marshall Mathers move millions of units and make boatloads of money
for his corporate sponsors, Interscope Records, while continuing to maintain
the transparent pose of being an unjustly vilified, wrongly set-upon
outsider/rebel.
The most amusing segment of Eminem’s skimpy,
70-minute set was the opening montage of C-Span clips of him being savaged
by critics such as Lynne Cheney and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The hyperbole of
their attacks was indeed laughable—Eminem is a lot of things, but he isn’t a
significant threat to the moral fabric of American society—but the intro
grew even funnier if you stopped to think about what it did not include: any
hint of the more warranted criticism that the guy simply makes shallow
music.
The rapper’s legions of young defenders have a
point about his winning delivery and powerful flow—he somehow manages to
sound both laconic and frenzied at the same time—but they refuse to grant
that when you remove the superficial trappings of his shock-rock lyrics
(“I’m gonna kill you!”) and bad-boy pose, his massive, sing-songy jams are
at their core nothing more than bubblegum pop.
In fact, with its elaborate videos and circus
theme (complete with Ferris wheel, fireworks, and tuxedoed midget), Eminem’s
stage show resembled nothing so much as the likeminded, glossy,
short-attention-span productions of Britney Spears and N’ Sync.
The music was clearly secondary to the
spectacle. The artist truncated many of his hits, performing only a verse
and a chorus or two of tunes such as “Stan” and “Way I Am” before moving on
to the next snippet. And once again, he devoted a significant four-song
chunk of the set to showcasing his unremarkable Detroit buddies in D12.
This was perhaps understandable during his last
performance at the Allstate Arena in 2000; he had only two albums at the
time, plus an earlier indie release with material he no longer performs. But
now he’s had three multi-platinum releases, including the recent smash, “The
Eminem Show.” So why is he wasting so much time in an already short
performance?
The reliance on gimmickry at the expense of
music is starting to seem very tired indeed, as when he urged the crowd to
join in cursing out his mother (Hey, Marshall: We’ve got it already, your
childhood sucked. Get over it!) and when he tortured Moby in effigy. (The
techno star is one of the few fellow pop stars with the cojones to publicly
decry Eminem’s misogyny and homophobia.) Neither target seemed worthy of
such bile, and to believe that any of this anger was real and not just part
of the show is to think that pro-wrestling isn’t carefully staged, either.
A wrestling crowd was what the Anger Management
fans evoked during the interminable waits between set changes. (These were
made all the more aggravating because the excellent turntablist crew the X-ecutioners
were only allowed to perform for a portion of the time.) Fans tirelessly
indulged in tedious rounds of “Show us your tits!,” with many young women
gleefully complying.
Sad as this was, it was more entertaining than
the middle act on the bill, the thoroughly generic Northern California
rap-rock/nu-metal quartet Papa Roach. The band’s rhythms are stunted, its
melodies are non-existent, and its lyrics are wrought with ridiculous,
angst-ridden cliches.
Still, the musicians sweat a lot, and lead
singer Coby Dick runs through the crowd and smashes himself in the head with
his microphone. Somehow, these goobers use these displays to con an
indiscriminating audience into thinking they’re getting real rock ’n’ roll
excitement and energy.
As P.T. Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every
minute—and that really should have been the Anger Management Tour T-shirt.
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