Eminem Returns With “Houdini”: 5 Standout Bars

After nearly 4 years, Eminem has finally returned with the promise of a new solo album titled The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). The rapper confirmed that it will drop this summer. It has been marketed with several viral promotional videos and photos in the style of a crime documentary. Eminem’s lead single for the album, “Houdini” was released over the weekend, along with an off-the-wall music video that saw the rapper revisiting his roots. As always, Eminem’s new single has a ton of strange, bizarre, and patently out-of-pocket bars for us to examine. Without any further preamble, let’s dive into Eminem’s bars on “Houdini” and examine their structure and meaning.

Throughout Eminem’s entire career, the Detroit native has been known to call out his peers and contemporaries with humorous jabs. In “Houdini,” it seems clear that Eminem holds fellow rap megastar Megan Thee Stallion in high regard, as he wonders aloud whether the Houston hottie would be willing to appear on a track with him. Towards the beginning of the song, Eminem raps “If I was to ask for Megan Thee Stallion if she would collab with me/ Would I really have a shot at a feat?”

This bar clearly references the incident where Meg was shot in the foot by her former partner Tory Lanez, which some fans on the internet have interpreted as a diss. Fortunately, it’s obvious that Eminem holds no genuine bad blood for Meg, as his diss bars tend to be significantly more scathing. You’d never catch the 51-year-old pondering the likelihood of a Benzino feature, that’s for sure.

Later in “Houdini,” Eminem places a mirror on the world around him, by questioning “Sometimes I wonder what the old me would say/ If he could see the way sh** is today/ He’d probably say that everything is gay/ (Like happy) What’s my name, what’s my name?” Indeed, the old Marshall Mathers LP era Eminem would surely use the word “gay,” or a few other choice homophobic slurs to describe the state of modern media and pop culture.

LGBTQ activist groups frequently boycotted Eminem during the early years of his career, as many viewed his rampant use of homophobic slurs as highly offensive. Today, Eminem has stopped using slurs in his music, and has become a true ally to the LGBTQ cause, especially considering one of his own children identifies as non-binary.

Eminem tends to utilize a lot of puns and silly wordplay in his rhymes, and “Houdini” is no exception. In the song, he makes reference to R. Kelly‘s 2002 child pornography trial, which infamously saw the R&B legend filming himself while urinating on a 14-year-old girl. Eminem raps “In the coupe leaning back my seat/ Bumpin’ R. Kelly’s favorite group – the black guy pee’s.” Here, Eminem uses the phrase “black guy pees” as a humorous homonym for the band Black Eyed Peas. The bar isn’t much of a thinker, but it has made a splash with fans for its funny absurdity, proving that the “Lose Yourself” rapper has not lost his sense of humor.

As previously stated, Eminem has a spotty relationship with the LGBTQ community, exemplified by many problematic lyrics spoken over the course of his career. In “Houdini,” Eminem makes a bizarre reference to trans identities with the bar “My transgender cat’s Siamese/ Identifies as black, but acts Chinese.” Users on social media have whipped themselves into a fervor trying to determine the meaning of this bar, and, perhaps more importantly, trying to decipher if it is transphobic. While the simplest explanation is that Siamese cats hail from Asia and often have black faces, some fans have taken to performing mental gymnastics to explain the lyric. For now, there’s no real way to be certain about the line’s true meaning.

Toward the very end of “Houdini,” Eminem launches into a tirade of insults, maligning his friends and collaborators. In fact, Eminem’s own kids catch a stray. Closing out the final verse, Em spits “I’ll probably get sh** for that/ But you can all suck my d***, in fact/ F*** them, f*** Dre, f*** Jimmy, f*** me, f*** you/ F*** my own kids, they’re brats!” In the music video, this bar is accompanied by a shot of Eminem giving the middle finger to his children via FaceTime.

While “Houdini” showcases Eminem’s wacky early 2000s style, the video offers a wide array of insight into the concept of the Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) album. If the tone and narrative of the video is anything to go off of, this project may just pan out to be one of Eminem’s funniest and most fascinating works of the last two decades.