{"id":194536,"date":"2024-10-04T08:23:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T12:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=194536"},"modified":"2025-01-12T12:06:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:06:03","slug":"temporary-but-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=194536","title":{"rendered":"Temporary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZaK9Wi5ho0o?si=UprOCfJTEl8cOpwy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nThere&#8217;s been a lot happening with Eminem lately, and with him &#8220;a lot&#8221; is relative, because he is basically Citizen Kane in terms of public appearances (well, Citizen Kane at the end of the movie), and you never hear a peep from him &#8211; not a picture, not a video, not even some rando&#8217;s cell phone footage &#8211; unless he has something he wants to share with the world. He is amazingly private. So when he DOES do something, it makes headlines. He came out with an album this year, <i>The Death of Slim Shady<\/i>, which I am still absorbing. Some of it he sounds like a cranky old guy &#8211; which is pretty funny, because it&#8217;s true &#8211; and listen, we&#8217;re both Gen X, so I get it &#8211; but at the same time, he&#8217;s so in touch with what is happening right-now-last-second &#8211; like who&#8217;s in, who&#8217;s out, what&#8217;s going on on Tik Tok &#8211; like, he&#8217;s aware of all of it. The album has that cranky &#8220;what are all these annoying kids even DOING&#8221; vibe, but then it has that shocking blasted-open vulnerability, which has always been a part of what he does. If you&#8217;re not aware of that, then all you need to do is listen to every single one of his albums back to the first. You can&#8217;t get more blasted-open than &#8220;Rock Bottom&#8221;. Or, dare I say (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=35013\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">yes I dare say<\/a>) &#8220;Kim&#8221;. Once he got sober, the vulnerability took a different tone. He was now more able to look at himself, and what he had been doing &#8211; not only to himself, but to his daughters (primarily) &#8211; by being such a mess, for overdosing, everything he put them through. He had distance. He could discuss it. The same with Proof (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=161310\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">speaking of which<\/a> &#8230;) Proof is still a part of his music, and &#8211; as anyone who has lost a loved one knows &#8211; the grief never ends, missing them never ends, but it changes, it takes different shapes as time passes. So those of us who love Eminem, who have been there with him from day one, have watched this transformation. This is one of the reasons why his fans are so loyal. (Some of his fans are &#8230; well, they&#8217;re Stans. They can be extremely obnoxious. I suppose that&#8217;s true of all fandoms but Eminem&#8217;s fan base is extreme.) But besides the stans, there&#8217;s a kind of emotional identification that comes when you have been a fan for 25 years. It&#8217;s like Joni Mitchell, or Bob Dylan &#8230; even better examples, because they&#8217;ve been around for half a century (longer). These artists are just a part of people&#8217;s lives. I&#8217;m a fan of people who are dead, and I am a fan of people who &#8220;hit&#8221; last year, or people I&#8217;ve just discovered (I just discovered Sierra Ferrell and am so INTO it and everything she&#8217;s about) &#8230; but when you&#8217;re a fan of someone who&#8217;s been around the entire time you&#8217;re an adult, it&#8217;s a different kind of thing. I feel that way about Robbie Williams. About Liz Phair. I feel like I freakin&#8217; KNOW them. We all grew up together. We&#8217;re peers. There&#8217;s a commonality of reference points and experiences, even though they&#8217;re famous. <\/p>\n<p>Eminem&#8217;s daughter Hailie was a baby when we first heard of her dad, and now she&#8217;s in her late 20s, and she got married this summer to her college sweetheart. (Eminem has three daughters. If you&#8217;re unaware: Hailie is the daughter he had with his two-time-ex-wife Kim. Hailie was born into poverty, which Eminem rapped a lot about in the beginning. &#8220;Because man these goddamn food stamps don&#8217;t buy diapers.&#8221; His second daughter Alaina is actually his niece &#8211; by marriage &#8211; Alaina&#8217;s mom was Kim&#8217;s twin sister, and they adopted Alaina when her mother overdosed. She and Hailie grew up together. He has a third daughter, originally named Whitney, but who renamed themselves Stevie when they &#8220;came out&#8221; as nonbinary\/gender fluid. During one of the times Eminem and Kim split up, Kim got pregnant by another man, who dipped, leaving Kim and Stevie in the lurch. The guy eventually overdosed in 2019. Eminem adopted them too. Which is pretty wild, if you think about it. What man would adopt the child had by his ex-wife with another man during a break-up with him? You got all that?) Stevie is pretty private, although they do have an Instagram account. All three of his kids are in long-lasting relationships. Two of them are married. So despite all the craziness of their upbringing, Eminem did a good job. They seem to be stable. They&#8217;re close to each other. They aren&#8217;t out here getting DUIs or trying to be famous themselves. I have no idea how Eminem and Kim managed that. Kim has had her problems, a lifetime of addiction, and she recently tried to commit suicide (not the first time). I suspect Eminem has been financially supporting her this whole time. They got together when they were like 14 and 15. It&#8217;s unique. He also raised his younger half-brother who had been put into foster care when they were kids. As soon as Eminem had the &#8220;means&#8221;, he scooped up Nate, and brought him home. Nate himself came out great. Got married. Is a good uncle. You know. They&#8217;re all rich, obviously, but the overall impression is it&#8217;s very regular. A close family who came up through some SHIT and are grateful for each other and everything they have. Just think about how rare that is, especially for someone AS famous as Eminem. For a long time &#8211; early 2000s until the recluse era of the mid-2000s, Eminem was hugely public, having public flame outs, an arrest, controversial &#8220;relationships&#8221;, touring constantly &#8230; he DID the whole fame thing, living out there in public. Interesting to consider that his privacy coincided with 1. his sobriety and 2. the rise of social media. He rapped about this once, sounding harassed within an inch of his life: &#8220;It&#8217;s like these KIDS with their CELL PHONES, I CAN&#8217;T GO ANYWHERE.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>On <i>The Death of Slim Shady<\/i> is a song called &#8220;Temporary&#8221;, and it&#8217;s for Hailie. &#8220;Temporary&#8221; tells her everything he wants her to know for when he&#8217;s gone. A song for her to understand what she means to him. The song is peppered with actual audio clips of Hailie as a child, playing around with her dad. It&#8217;s extremely emotional. Like I said, Hailie got married this past summer, and &#8211; true to form &#8211; there were only one or two official pictures released. I am imagining that every guest had to surrender their phone before attending, lol. <\/p>\n<p>Skylar Grey is a favorite Eminem collaborator. They&#8217;ve worked together so many times. She&#8217;s toured with him. She&#8217;s a phenomenal songwriter (and her voice is angelic): she has been partially responsible for some of his most memorable (and emotional) tracks. So here she is again, her beautiful voice, floating around and through his own lyrics, which have that stop-start jagged almost anti-rhythm thing he&#8217;s been experimenting with in the past ten years. They make such a beautiful combo, and of course he would tap Skylar to participate on this one, this one for Hailie. Important to note, too, that Eminem has had Skylar produce one of his songs, start to finish, making her one of the only female producers in hip hop, and certainly one of the only female producers producing such a massive male star. <\/p>\n<p>The video for &#8220;Temporary&#8221; was released yesterday. It&#8217;s rather extraordinary. He&#8217;s actually giving us a glimpse into his precious very very private world, all the shit going on we never see. There&#8217;s a video clip, for example, of Eminem, circa 2004 or 5 maybe? reading to a class of grade schoolers, presumably Hailie&#8217;s class. But there&#8217;s also footage of Hailie&#8217;s wedding, Eminem crying as he hugs her, walking her down the aisle (thinking of &#8220;the aisle I&#8217;ll never walk you down&#8221; &#8230; from &#8220;Arose&#8221;, the song about his overdose experience), and then &#8230; there&#8217;s the moment where Hailie lets him know she&#8217;s pregnant, giving him a shirt with the word GRANDPA on it, and a sonogram picture. She basically announced her pregnancy via her dad&#8217;s music video. <\/p>\n<p>In the era of the Kardashians, this all might seem a little TOO public. But because it&#8217;s Eminem it hits different. He never ever lets you see into his world. He doesn&#8217;t share family pics. He doesn&#8217;t post private stuff on his socials. He&#8217;s barely on social media. The only time he shares his world is in his music: he&#8217;s rare that way). We suspect things going on behind the scenes. We&#8217;re used to having no information, to not even SEEING him &#8211; not one casual glimpse &#8211; for months at a time, sometimes a year &#8230; and then suddenly he does an info-dump, with an album, a video, an interview. <\/p>\n<p>I watched &#8220;Temporary&#8221; and got this wild feeling of the accordion of time, the tesseract of it all. It&#8217;s not just about him. It&#8217;s about me. About where I was back then, about where I am now. The bonds of family, being kids together, now being adults together. Making it through tremendous challenges. And &#8230; if you&#8217;re self-destructive &#8230; as he was, as I was &#8230; then feeling gratitude that you actually MADE it. You&#8217;re HERE. You can actually LIVE in a state of gratitude. You MADE it. What a miracle. <\/p>\n<p>I actually cried watching that video. Then I watched it again. And I cried again. They were <i>Happy tears of gratitude<\/i>. For my own life. Or, for his, but mostly for mine. I can&#8217;t think of many artists who provide me THAT. <\/p>\n<p>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<small><em>Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here&#8217;s a link to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.venmo.com\/u\/Sheila-OMalley-3\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">my Venmo account<\/a>. And I&#8217;ve launched a Substack, <a href=\"https:\/\/sheilaomalley.substack.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you&#8217;d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/sheilaomalley.substack.com\/embed\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" style=\"border:1px solid #EEE; background:white;\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a lot happening with Eminem lately, and with him &#8220;a lot&#8221; is relative, because he is basically Citizen Kane in terms of public appearances (well, Citizen Kane at the end of the movie), and you never hear a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=194536\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[1555],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194536"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196544,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194536\/revisions\/196544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}