Daily Times

American rapper Eminem said he was uncomfortable with homophobic lyrics he wrote and released on his recent album, ‘Kamikaze’. He faced criticism for his language on album track Fall while speaking about Tyler, The Creator. Eminem says he “felt like this might be too far”, in a new interview to promote the record on his own YouTube channel. “In my quest to hurt him, I realize that I was hurting a lot of other people by saying it,” says Eminem. “It was one of the things that I kept going back to and going ‘I don’t feel right with this’. El Hunt, a writer for NME, says it’s good that Eminem has apologised, but doubts the validity of his explanation. “If he really thought that was going too far, then he probably shouldn’t have released it in the first place,” El tells Newsbeat. She’s a 26-year-old gay woman and has had the same word used against her as abuse in the street. “When you see people like Tyler, The Creator using that word it’s a totally different thing, because it’s about reclaiming the word,” she says. “That’s their prerogative to do so, if they want to describe themselves in that way they can, because they’ve got control over it, it’s not being used as an insult against them.” She also accuses the rapper of being selective with which offensive words he is comfortable using in his lyrics. “If you look at Eminem’s historic use of the N-word – or rather lack of use – he knows not to do that as a white rapper,” she says. “So why he’s decided it’s OK to say the [homophobic] F-word is beyond me. “Anybody using that word would know that it’s bad.” Eminem is credited with writing the track, along with four others, including Justin Vernon of Bon Iver – who has since distanced himself from the song.

Published in Daily Times, September 16^th 2018.