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Eminem, ‘Darkness’

From the beginning, “Darkness” feels like a familiar kind of Eminem song — the mood is morbid and the rapping is anxious, seemingly about an upcoming concert. But soon it becomes clear he’s stringing together a series of double entendres. Then the song’s video turns shattering: He’s not rapping as himself, sweating before a big show. He’s rapping from the perspective of someone on the verge of slaughtering people at a music festival, in the vein of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, where 58 concertgoers were killed in 2017.

The video is gruesome, disorienting and ethically defective. It stomps on the empathy you’d been encouraged to extend to Eminem, who’s long rapped potently about battling his personal demons, making it unclear if you’ve been commiserating with a sociopath the whole time. (After the main part of the song concludes, the video clumsily pivots to a PSA about gun violence.)