Shady side of rap

Hi kids, do you like violence? Wanna' see me stick nine-inch nails through each one of my eyelids?' Those words welcome you into the world of Slim Shady - the alter ego of rapper Eminem.

'God sent me to piss the world off,' he avers.

Indeed. And in the meantime he has created the biggest schism in the hip-hop world since the early days of US east and west coast rivalry.

Eminem, born Marshall Mathers, has been declared rap's 'great white hope'. Some pundits have hailed him as the one who would raise the profile of the white rapper. Others are less impressed: Hip-hop magazine XXL called him a 'culture stealer' - to which he responded by urging his concert attendees to chant 'f*** XXL !' 'I've heard it from black people: 'Why don't you be white. Why don't you do rock and roll?' and I've heard it from white people: 'Oh, you're trying to be black.' I get offended every time,' he said in an interview with Lyricist magazine.

Eminem's Slim Shady LP peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 album charts, has been there for 16 weeks, and has sold more than two million copies in the United States. That success has only exacerbated the race debate. His first single, My Name Is, received much airplay on MTV - the video sees him impersonating Marilyn Manson and Bill Clinton - and on alternative radio stations, turning him into a superstar before the album was released. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, he has become a pin-up idol of boy-band proportions.

Was race a factor? His critics say absolutely, his fans, largely teenage suburbanites, say colour doesn't matter. Eminem likes to say the same thing, but there's a chance he does have a racial chip on his shoulder. Don't play the race card, he says, while lambasting white rappers Everlast and Vanilla Ice in Don't Give A F***.

'[People would say] 'You're dope for a white boy,' and I'd take it as a compliment. Then, as I got older, I started to think, 'What does that mean?' Nobody has a choice of what colour they'll be,' he told Spin magazine.