"That's why we sing for these kids, who don't have a thing except for a dream, and a f----n' rap magazine who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long, idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs. Or for anyone who's ever been through s--t in their lives, till they sit and they cry at night wishin' they'd die Till they throw on a rap record and they sit, and they vibe. We're nothin' to you but we're the f----n' s--t in they eyes. . ."

Eminem -- Sing For the Moment

Love him or hate him he is tapped directly into youth culture. Scratch that he is culture. So his message is that there is no message from me or anyone, just music. I don't know if he would say it like this but this is like a textbook argument for existential transcendence through art. So he can reach kids not just because of simplistic vulgarity or because of violence, as so many moralists would like to think, but because he speaks to the reality of something people experience. So what can an artist take from this who has a different view of reality than that of the hip hop superstar? Maybe just that kids want authenticity. They know life isn't peach and cookies and cream and cakies, its poverty, its suicidal thoughts, and its broken homes, its pain. Christ can't be real to anyone when he's identified with "not Eminem", or with empty morals and false ideals. Don't boycott. Let's worship Christ with our art by passionately seeking to be more real than anyone else out there.

Yesterday when I was taking the train back to my apartment there was an absolutely classic moment. Imagine with me a L-train car with their strange seventies decorum and hard carpet covered seats. Sitting in the seat directly caddie-corner across the doorway is a pair of black Velcro shoes. Follow now with me up the legs of a ridiculously pale and hairy white man. His shorts were plaid of the golf short variety and he wore a dingy T-Shirt with a band that I had never heard of plastered across the front of it. His balding bald head was covered slightly by a pair of enormous head phones. The kind that block all sound but your own pathetic music choice. His eyes are closed and the only sound on the train is this strange rocker half whisper-screaming to his Discman which is pumping white trash rock into his balding bald head. I specifically heard three words: rock, Hate, and Jews. Did I have myself a Nazi-punk on my hands or what? Man was he weird looking. He didn't fit any stereotype except his own creepy style that is hard to pin down. And so he sang all the way into the city. Absolutely freaking hilarious. He at one point opened a map of Chicago and continued his balding bald head banging and soft-scream rocking. Did I mention that he had a slight lisp that was quiet apparent when he screamed so softly. Was he a tourist with his map? A lonely, ugly, Nazi tourist? Boy am I going to do some impressions of this guy.