Slim Shady or Marshall Mathers (best known as Eminem) was Not Afraid to stir up some trouble in a brand new track entitled Kick Off.
Following the release of his rap-battle drama, Bodied, he felt inspired enough to drop the malicious new single on Friday evening. The 11-minute freestyle was recorded live off the floor at the St. Andrew’s Shelter in Detroit — the place Shady calls his “stomping grounds.”
The Rap God mentioned a number of high-profile celebrities and musicians, including Reese Witherspoon, Justin Bieber, Christina Aguilera and surprisingly enough, Ariana Grande because of the tragedy that ensued after her sold-out gig at Manchester Arena in May of 2017.
WATCH BELOW: Kick Off, Shady’s epic freestyle rap pulls absolutely no punches
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The video portrays the 46-year-old in a dim-lit room, surrounded by metal rails, kegs and pipes. He paces around the room with an agitated energy which shines through in his lyrics as he looks dead centre into the camera.
He calls out the assailant of the Manchester bombing, Salman Ramadan Abedi, claiming he was “lost” and “brainwashed” to commit the horrific crime.
He speaks further on his opinions of the Middle East, but fortunately stopped himself “for obvious reasons.”
“Seeing Ariana Grande sing her last song of the evening / And as the audience from the damn concert is leaving / Detonates the device strapped to his abdominal region / I’m not gonna finish that for obvious reasons.”
The shock value in his bluntness attributes a lot of power to the song — especially due to the lack of a backing track.
Eminem brings up a number of dark subjects relating to violence, including domestic abuse, rape and terrorism which makes for an extremely unsettling listening experience.
Mathers refers back to his iconic 2000 single, The Real Slim Shady, addressing Aguilera once more in a ridiculously crude manner after she spoke out against him in an interview earlier this year. It’s highly inappropriate.
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Shady obviously isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
He claimed that he just likes to compete and start beef with his “tongue-in cheek” rapping, but some aren’t too convinced after hearing this track, speculating his lyrics speak true to his “highly misogynistic” personality.
One user tweeted, “Eminem being a disrespectful misogynist d**k to Christina Aguilera again, almost 20 years later, when she’s a mother of two now is too low. Even for him.”
Diehard Shady fans have been jumping in to protect the rapper, reminding others that he donated more than US$2 million to the victims of the Manchester Bombing and that his lyrics are a “political protest” that neither mock Grande nor the victims of the terror attack.
“Y’all focus on fictional raps over his actual real life actions,” she added. “But turn a f**king blind eye to real life rapists, like bye [sic].”
Although controversial, Eminem has had his most successful year in a while now after dropping the explosive new album, Kamikaze (2018).
He also dished a plethora of diss tracks along with it — namely Killshot, the one that sparked a seemingly endless feud with fellow American rapper, Machine Gun Kelly.
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Kamikaze sold more than 430,000 units in its first week, which blew the previous Rap God album, Revival (2017), out of the water. The highly criticized album sold more than 267,000 by Jan. 3, 2018. It was his 9th No. 1 album on the Billboard charts.
Kamikaze is available to listen to on all streaming platforms. You can also purchase it from the official Eminem website.
adam.wallis@globalnews.ca