You can't run from me, KimIt's just us, nobody else
You're only making it harder on yourself
Here, I'll yell too, "AHH! Somebody Help!"
Don't you get it, love, noone can hear you
Now shut the fuck up and get what's coming to you
You were supposed to love me
Now, bleed, bitch, bleed
Bleed
She was low down and triflin
And she was cold and mean
The kind of evil makes me want to grab my submachine
First time I shot her
I shot her in the side
It was hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot, she died
Delia's gone
One more round, Delia's gone
1 comment:
I've made this comparison myself, but while the lyrical similarity holds, the relationship between the artists and their cultural contexts are entirely different. J.C. was writing - nay - performing in the "murder ballad" tradition, which is several hundred years old. Its primary characteristic: the dispassionate rendering of a narrative understood by the audience to be fictional AND separate from the singer. Eminem is writing in the confessional singer-songwriter tradition. Its primary characteristic: the emotional baring of the soul understood by the audience to be a reflection (if not downright transcription) of the singer's feelings. There indeed exists a double standard regarding the cultural viability of these art forms. Why is a tradition given precedence over an innovation? I don't know. But I do think the key to how people view them is the degree to which they achieve "ironic distance." J.C. handled it with ease. If Eminem handles it, he does so with a "persona," which, is lost on most people. Slim Shady? Eminem? Marshall Mathers? Those are distinctions with differences.
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