Rebels with causes that have expired

REBELLION ends at the moment of embrace. There’s only so long you can convincingly rage against the machine when your rage is what fuels it. This moment is where we find Eminem and M.I.A., each with a new album – his The Marshall Mathers LP 2, hers Matangi – and engaged in alternate versions of “This Is 40”.

The barbarians have become brands capable of altering corporate bottom lines. An Oscar gleams on the 41-year old Eminem’s mantle in his K-mart mansion in suburban Detroit. Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, 38, has similarly turned cultural sedition into immense success. The daughter of a revolutionary displaced by the Sri Lankan civil war has her own Versace line. Her young son is a scion to the Seagram’s liquor fortune.

The first Marshall Mathers LP became a touchstone because Eminem spoke for the millions who dressed, walked and talked like him. Matangi implicitly reproaches that same fairhaired, light-eyed majority – or anyone reaping the dividends of economic inequality. While their creative differences might be stark, both spend much of their latest records exploring what’s left to rebel against.

M.I.A.’s fourth album is a dialectic disguised as a dance party. Still, there’s plenty of vitriol aimed at multinational oligarchs, government surveillance and those “whose guns point the wrong way”. But Matangi also doubles as an exploration of metaphysical and carnal concerns. Its title comes from the Hindu tantric goddess of speech, music and knowledge.

Matangi is a pan-global, post-internet tantrum of bhangra beats, hip hop, Bollywood music, dancehall, EDM and the occasional jazz harp. While it can get tedious, it finds M.I.A. refining her sound and self-identity. What’s left to rebel against is converted into a multimedia art experiment.

Eminem’s aims are comparatively vague. “I’m all out of Backstreet Boys to attack,” he laments on Evil Twin, a rare highlight from MMLP2.

It’s an honest admission that the war is over. On the first Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem used his whiteness to incisively examine deeper racial hypocrisies. Its successor finds him adrift in a world where the other most popular white rapper advocates for same-sex marriage and grandpa sweaters.

Albert Camus described a rebel as a “man who says no”. MMLP2 is the sound of Eminem saying yes. In 2000, he was the monster. In 2013, he’s “friends with the monsters under his bed”. – Washington Post

SAYING YES: Eminem, successful outlaw.