I know some of y'all think Eminem's new single "Not Afraid" is pretty cheesy, and I do get that, the distrust of the Kumbyaism, but I still think the execution's strong, and the emotional maturity's welcome. Plus, it helps that the video is pretty great:
In a weird way, I think this is what I'd hoped Hancock would end up like, without the (SPOILER) warm and fuzzy sacrificing-a-great-love-for-the-greater-good ending (SPOILERS DONE). For a song about connecting, it's a profoundly alienating video, and convincing in its understated. Eminem's looked somewhat frozen, whether by tension or misery, for a long time now, and the video's narrative puts that sense of shock to good use. The details are good: the distortions in the mirrors aren't overdone in their grostesquerie, and they're just there for a moment, but they're profoundly disturbing. The sheared-off, edge-of-the-world New York is lovely, down to the subway cars we see embedded in the earth. It's a great construction, and not overplayed.
The Em-learns-how-to-fly thing struck me as a bit sentimental, but it struck me that there's something of the ambiguous leap off of Wudang Mountain at the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in it. Eminem might be free of suicidal terror, but he's no more capable of connecting with the dude sitting there with his Beats By Dre branded laptop who he blasts past than he was prior to his revelation. This isn't a clear redemption. It could have been, but it wouldn't have been as plausible as this is.