Eminem has compared himself to Salman Ramadan Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people at Manchester Arena following an Ariana Grande concert in 2017.
In his track Unaccommodating, taken from surprise new album Music to Be Murdered By, he raps: “But I’m contemplating yelling ‘bombs away’ on the game/ Like I’m outside of an Ariana Grande concert waiting.”
The mother of 15-year-old Charlotte Hodgson, who died in the attack, called the track “disgusting” and “disrespectful”. Dan Hett, whose brother Martyn was killed in the suicide bombing, said that the lyric was “lazy” and designed to help him sell his music.
It’s your funeral...#MusicToBeMurderedBy Out Now - https://t.co/q4TAFJUVGV pic.twitter.com/6PqnTjCKgu
— Marshall Mathers (@Eminem) January 17, 2020
Eminem was also criticised for the lyric on social media. One Twitter user said that “if Eminem had any amount of decency he would remove the song from all platforms”. “It’s completely unnecessary and damaging.”
Along with his new album, Eminem also shared the music video for his track Darkness, which appears to have been inspired by the October 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that claimed the lives of 58 people. The footage shows a middle-aged white man firing an automatic weapon at concert-goers from a hotel room window. The message, “When will this end? When enough people care” appears on screen at the end of the video and viewers are also urged to register to vote to change gun laws in the US.
Also in Unaccommodating, he compares himself to Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, and references the September 11 attacks in the line: "And you backpedal that as a cowardly act/ Like a Saudi attack when the towers collapse." He also compares the antagonism of his critics to the killing of six-year-old child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsay: "Look at how I'm behaving me, they want me gone away/ They wanna JonBenet me, I'm unaccommodating."
Elsewhere on Music to be Murdered By, Eminem compares himself to serial murderers Richard Ramirez (known as the Night Stalker), Albert DeSalvo (known as the Boston Strangler), and Charles Manson.
The cover art for the album features a photo of the rapper, who is also known as Marshall Mathers, holding both a gun and an axe to his own head and was tweeted by him alongside the caption: “It’s your funeral...”
The album is his 11th full length release, and his third album in three years. It features guest stars including Ed Sheeran, Q-Tip, and late rapper Juice WRLD, who died aged 21 in December. – Guardian/PA
