Is Eminem getting gay in his old age?

I get that Eminem isn't sweating what the hip-hop community thinks. He's looking past us. There's no way he could have sold 600,000 albums in a week, in 2009, trying to appeal to the kind of people who know who Drake is. And beefing with the real Asher Roth wouldn't have served any purpose other than to upset the TIs, at a time when he's trying to get his career back on track.

I was at the grocery store last night stocking up on medicine (I'm a sick boy - perhaps you've noticed), and I finally got a chance to see that so-called real rap issue of Vibe. I picked it up, found the part where I'm mentioned, didn't see anything else that struck me as at all interesting, and put it back down. One of these days, I'm gonna have to do a post on how Vibe shot itself in the foot trying to appeal to people who actually like rap music. But I'm gonna have to tread lightly. You guys know there's a lengthy and growing list of people I'm not allowed to mention by name.

It's not because the people who run this site don't respect you. It's just because... well, I'm sure there's some valid reason.

Eminem is also on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly, and probably any number of other magazines on newsstands right now. I didn't bother to conduct a comprehensive study or anything. If you notice, in these various magazine covers and what have you, Eminem is looking more like a fruit than ever. He got rid of the blonde dye in his hair, which, in retrospect, gave him a bit of an edge. He's obviously taking shots of Botox in the face, so he looks less like someones grandpa, or perhaps to cover up the effects of steroid use. Speaking of which, in many cases he's got his shirt off, or he's wearing a tank top or some shit, obviously for no other reason that to show off his bod. How gay.

As a fan of the music first and foremost, I could give a rat's ass if that's the level he's gotta sink to to get paid, as if he needs the money. If the album sucked balls, he'd probably never hear the end of it, except for the fact that he doesn't read blogs. But the album is nails, and that's what really counts. I'd like to think that I've got enough pride in myself that I would never submit to letting a team of fags give me a makeover just so I could make a few extra million. But the truth of the matter is that a) there's probably not a whole lot that could be done for me anyway; and b) we won't know just what I will or won't be willing to do for a million dollars until someone offers me a million dollars. And what's the likelihood of someone offering me a living wage, let alone that much money?

Still, there's gotta be a point where we draw the line. If he wants to look more and more like Cage in his old age, then so be it. But at a certain point, it gets that much harder for me to take his music seriously. And that point may have been when he agreed to let Sacha Baron Cohen rub his nuts in his face, to help promote his new movie Bruno. Who ever heard of a rapper letting another guy sexually assault him in public and not turn it into the scene of a hate crime? What's next, is he gonna go on Bromance and make out with Brody Jenner? At least when Chingy was grinding up against that tranny at the AVN Awards a few years ago, he could pretend he didn't know it was really another guy.

As is the case with him wearing all of that makeup, and allowing Asher Roth to turn white rap into such a mockery, I could almost see agreeing to participating in this stunt. That picture of Em staring directly into Sacha Baron Cohen's hairy man ass was all over the Internets yesterday. Who knows how much money that will end up making both of them once it's all said and done with. It could fuck around and help keep Relapse's numbers strong, going into its third week. But the only way I would have agreed to it was if Sacha Baron Cohen allowed me to kick the living shit out of him. Or at least made it look like I kicked the living shit out of him. Eminem just kinda sat there with a face full of ass, until his security got Cohen off of him.

The thing is, MTV probably wouldn't have allowed that to happen. Because that would have looked too much like a hate crime, and it would have raised a number of issues about whether or not you should be allowed to kick the living shit out of teh ghey guys, if they sexually assault you. It may have caused people to wonder whether or not those guys who killed Matthew Shepard purposely set out to kill a teh ghey guy, or if he attacked them and they ended up killing him in a fit of teh ghey panic. I'll admit, I struggle with these issues myself. You guys know I'm no homophobe - that's for religious people and other assorted imbeciles. But if a teh ghey guy sexually assaulted me, I might have to go into attack mode. Whereas, if a girl sexually assaulted me, I'd actually feel kinda flattered. Even if she was an absolute beast of a woman, the most I might do is stiff arm her - you know, give her the Heisman.