The night of The BET Hip-Hop Awards BET announces via their social media outlets that Eminem would be taking part in one of their Cyphers. Of course this is just in time to promote Eminem’s upcoming album that will be released towards the end of next month. What better way for Hip-Hop’s “Great White Hope On The Mic” to make a huge splash than to get on Black Entertainment Television and take on the most racially devices figure currently in American Culture President Trump? This made great television and encompassed all of the elements for Eminem to win. Honestly it’s Interscope marketing genius at its finest. I’m sure some fans are reading this thinking “Why are you hatin? How do you know this wasn’t genuine?”.
There’s no way for me to know what is genuinely in Eminem’s heart but the fact that he choose to make this splash on national television when he has an album coming out in a few weeks gives me cause to pause. Remember David Banner coming on the BET Hip-Hop Awards’ Cypher with a political message with no album in sight? Speaking of David Banner he is consistently vocal about his social views and doesn’t wait until times that it will benefit him economically to speak social. Not to mention he has no problem taking on an unpopular view. With that being said where was Eminem during last year’s Presidential Campaign when much of the Hip-Hop community was extremely vocal about the election season? Do we even know what candidate Eminem was in support of? How do we not know that Eminem wasn’t a Donald Trump voter himself? It’s easy to be vocal about President Trump now because it’s popular not to like him, it’s like the in thing to do. Just ask the NFL owners who supported him through it all until he called for a boycott of their league and they jumped off his bandwagon for a week but now they’re right back on it. It’s nothing personal it’s business. These are actions of people that are thinking about business and not people that are thinking about other people and injustices that happen to a certain demo.
Ask yourself when Eminem was on top of the Pop world in the early 2000’s how many BET Award Shows did you see him attend? But he was at the MTV VMAs with bells on ready to pick another beef with the next upcoming Pop Princess. I get the excitement, the Black Community wants to think that White America cares about us as much as we care about us (just like Black America wanted to believe the NFL owners) but the truth is only our business is cared about and our emotions are being toyed with. Eminem has successfully toyed with Black America’s emotions by saying everything you want to hear a White person say about President Trump so that you can support the album he has coming next month. Predictable stunt from both parties involved. BET has yet to give Colin Kaepernick a stage to speak nor voices in Hip-Hop like Immortal Technique the stage to spit some highly political bars with no music blocking the message. This manufactured revolution has been televised and by the excitement that I am seeing on social media from it tons of people have been sucked in and fool.
Last night’s Cypher stunt goes directly in line with all the other marketing stunts Eminem has been a part of throughout his career. He finds the most popular person in Pop Culture that has a face that many people wouldn’t mind punching and goes in on them to get you to like him. This is nothing new, ask NSYNC, Britany Spears, Christina Aguilera, The Backstreet Boys, Benzino, Jermaine Dupri, etc. Well planned and well played by the marketing team over there at Interscope Records, but there have been real lives that have been lost to injustices and Marshall hasn’t seemed to lend his voice until it benefitted him.
So you might want to hold back you Eminem invite to the cookout until we see some level of consistency in these “woke efforts” when he doesn’t have an album that’s about to drop. Can we get a Tweet or post about any of the countless hashtags of unarmed people of color that have been slaughtered by law enforcement when it actually happens Marshall? Yeah, yeah I know many of you all will invite him to the cookout anyway because you WANT to believe that his intentions are pure without even looking into it. I guess we’ll just have to see how this plays out.
