RAMBLE ON: "The Monster" by Eminem ft. Rihanna

A fact I read that blew my mind is that Eminem is the top selling rapper of the 2010s. Not the 2000s (though he was the top selling rapper of that decade too, and in fact top selling artist of any genre); the 2010s? Really? Surely it must be someone more relevant, Kanye, Kendrick, Nicki, somebody. I double-checked and different sites count it differently; in this one, Em falls well behind Drake, which makes way more sense, but even in that list he’s still in the top ten artists of the decade.

This is only confusing in hindsight, after history has judged his late catalog to be screamingly inessential. Hip-hop has been around long enough to undergo a full classic-rock-ifation, with its idols like Biggie and Pac and Wu-Tang over-mythologized and preserved in amber; it’s only fitting that Eminem, the “Elvis of rap,” should be a main beneficiary, racking up hits long after his sell-by date like the Stones in the ‘80s. But that’s the hindsight speaking again. At the start of the decade, with Recovery and The Marshall Mathers LP 2, it seemed that Eminem had finally come back after years in the wilderness. I was skeptical on Recovery but I had fully bought into MMLP2, which seemed to me like a legitimate return to form.

I’m not sure I would say it holds up anymore. It has its highlights but the hallmarks of Late Shady still plague them; “Rhyme or Reason” still strikes me as one of his best of his later career but also has that cringy Yoda impression; “Berzerk” I loved as a throwback, and still feel the urge to listen to at times, but I have to forgive some really painful shit like “Been public enemy since you thought PE was gym, bitch.” Meanwhile, I never liked its best-remembered song “Rap God,” I thought it empty flash with a lot of terrible lines (“who thinks their arms are long enough to slap box, slap box”?)/

And then… then there’s “The Monster.”

“The Monster” was the biggest hit by far from that album, and yet one that I don’t remember anyone talking about. I think the impression was that this was “the single,” just there to get radio play, with the big dumb hook from Rihanna during her six-year period of total omnipresence. It’s certainly a very catchy hook, and makes for a very listenable experience but I think most people thought of it as slight and unmemorable. It both astonishes me and doesn’t at all surprise me to learn that it was originally a song by Bebe Rexha, who I’ve always thought of as one of the least talented or interesting of her generation of pop stars. During a low point in her career, she came up with the song as a way to make sense of her depression; perennially almost-famous Jon Bellion wrote the hook.

Rexha’s version is kind of a mess, skittering and stuttering everywhere, but there’s life to it. In another’s hands (particularly Skylar Gray, consistently one of Em’s worst collaborators), this could have been bad, overwrought emo poetry. In the hands of producer Frequency, it becomes energetic and vibrant. If the song has any true claim to greatness, it’s in the beat, the drums, the guitar; it gives the song more propulsion than it maybe deserves.

Or maybe you can make a case that the song is great as a whole. That isn’t an idea I would have given any consideration to at the time; I don’t know that I gave this song a second thought in 2013 no matter the hundreds of times I heard it. The original song is vague about what the monster is; it’s free to be whatever you want it to be, and Eminem decided the monster was fame. Much like B.o.B.’s “Airplanes” and Jay-Z’s “Holy Grail,” this to me seemed like a rapper presented with a hook too heavy to find a proper topic for, and having to default to the pressures of stardom, a navel-gazing proposition for sure. I couldn’t think of something I wanted Eminem to rap about less than fame, a topic he’d already drilled to death on The Marshall Mathers LP 1.I brushed it off without a thought.

But in the years since I’ve thought about this song a lot. I’m embarrassed to say that Em’s thoughts mirror my own feelings about life as a minor Internet quasi-celebrity, even though I’m exponentially below the level of fame Marshall is singing about (below the level of even other e-celebrities, for that matter). “The Monster” is a self-indulgent song (Eminem spends the music video recreating past glories like “Lose Yourself” and “The Way I Am”), and me saying I relate to it is one of the most self-indulgent things I’ve ever written. To be sure, there’s a lot in there I don’t relate to, like the stuff about the pressure of greatness; Marshall is rapping about a drive for success and respect that I’ve never even aspired to, let alone attained. But the ambivalence, man, I get it. The desire to have your cake and eat it too, the mixed emotions about whether it was worth it, most especially the unsure response to gratitude from fans (“I ain’t here to save the fuckin’ children,” he raps, sounding almost bewildered).

But I’ll spare you. The reason that fame sucks is also the reason that songs about fame tend to suck: Almost nobody could relate or care. Em seems to realize this and pivots away to end on a triumphant note. In between, “The Monster” goes some wacky places: A yodeling break; a simultaneously rapped-and-sung opening to the second verse; an odd reference to Intervention host Jeff VanVonderen, a person I’ve never heard of except for in this song. (Because of this song, I have never heard Russell Wilson’s name without wanting to shout “Russell Wilson in a haystack!!” even though that’s not even how the lyrics go.) When he gets to the end, he tries to conclude that while he’s here on Earth, he’s going to continue being the greatest rapper alive. (Tragically, this did not happen.) When he gets to the line about not trying to save the children, he also adds “But if one kid in a hundred million who are going through a struggle feels it and relates, that's great.” And also “maybe I’m nuts for real, but I’m okay with that.”

I’m not sure I buy it. There’s an awkward pause in the way he says “That’s… great,” and an ugly snarl in the way he says “I’m okay with that.” It’s a weak and unconvincing conclusion for a guy who, in hindsight, still hadn’t really regained his confidence, and I think that more than anything is why “The Monster” is not remembered as a great song. Still, there’s something about it that hits a nerve for me, something far more than “Holy Grail” or “Airplanes,” two songs by rappers who did not at all seem weighed down by anxiety. Other monsters (corniness, age) took him down, but “The Monster,” though not necessarily a triumph, may well be the last honest or interesting song he ever made.