"Mosh," Eminem's acerbic, anti-Bush screed, has lit up electronic bulletin boards, earned him a brief investigation by the Secret Service and generated tons of what-if hindsighting about the song's effect on the presidential election had it come out sooner. The modus operandi is classic Eminem: create controversy before dropping a new album. The twist here is that "Just Lose It," which lampoons everyone from MC Hammer (horrible fashion sense) to Michael Jackson (burning hair and pedophilia allegations) is the feather-ruffling precursor for Encore. "Mosh" is the monkey wrench.
Building on the angst of "White America," (The Eminem Show), he creates the best 9/11-related activist rhyme since Sage Francis' "Makeshift Patriot." Canonization may be a pipe dream, but becoming the Bono of hip-hop isn't. P.Diddy, with his energetic, anarchic "Vote or Die" campaign hasn't generated "Mosh"-type heat. It's unlikely that Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z or even rap-outside-the-box acts like Outkast could create a song with "Mosh"'s resonance. Jadakiss' assertion on "Why" of Bush's collusion in 9/11 barely caused a media ripple.
Not so with "Mosh." Played as a cartoon, the video nearly out-Fahrenheits Fahrenheit 9/11: scenes of planes flying over schools and exploding while Bush reads an upside-down elementary school book, Osama bin Laden as a yes-man for puppeteers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, a soldier saying "F--k Bush" after being reassigned to Iraq, play to powder-keg verses.
In these lyrics, I don't hear lefty rage or Democratic realpolitik. Instead, I hear the most influential MC of his time making a call to action reminiscent of Public Enemy's indictment of American hypocrisy in 1988's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Eminem is Chuck D when he raps, "No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil / No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal."
Eminem is Chuck D when he rhymes, "The stars and stripes, they've been swiped / Washed out and wiped / And replaced with his own face, mosh now or die / If I get sniped tonight you know why, 'cause I told you to fight." On "Fight the Power" Chuck raps: "Our freedom of speech is freedom or death / We gotta fight the powers that be."
"Mosh" keeps the spirit of rap activism, Eminem's global popularity allowing him to reach more people than Chuck D ever could, and his don't-give-a-f--k attitude lets him push the envelope further than Chuck ever did with all his Black Panther-tinged elocution. As daring as Chuck D was/is, I wonder if even he would have the guts to say, "Maybe we can reach Al Qaeda through my speech / Let the president answer a higher anarchy / Strap him with an AK-47, let him go, fight his own war / Let him impress daddy that way."