Mosh

“I say to fight you take it as I’m gonna whip someone’s ass.”

There's something similar about this song and the one I posted from Dead Prez yesterday. There's this droning beat that bores into your head. The beat here drones even more than the one Dead Prez used. I think both songs use this to an incredible effect. Here, there's almost a mindless march that you're lulled into, which is commentary in and of itself (Eminem does an incredible job of layering meaning in both his lyrics and the music he uses). This music can lull you into walking like a sheep, yet it succeeds in slowly building a feeling of rage.

(I just noticed how striking it is to watch this video so soon after the Trayvon Martin killing with all of the black hoodies present. In fact, this whole week of music takes on renewed meaning to me given the injustice we still see every day. Do I know what happened with Trayvon? No. But I'm certain if he'd been white and Zimmerman black this would have played out very differently.)

The content of this video adds so much to the music that it’s hard to separate the two. The images are just as powerful as the lyrics. Certainly the King of Controversy doesn’t disappoint here. The most poignant moment in the video is when they show the wife of the re-deployed soldier receiving a notice of eviction and then Bush on television announcing tax cuts. That brings me to the precipice of rage.

In the end the message Eminem is giving us is that sometimes the most powerful, radical, and combative thing we can do is to vote. March through the swamp into Washington, mosh through the marsh with our voices and get represented by our representatives. Certainly there’s more than one meaning of fight.