A comedian I loved when I was growing up was Chris Rock. It felt almost serendipitous that as I was grappling with ideas about race and belonging, here was Rock saying things that resonated with how I was feeling at the time.

Like many other teenagers I had ‘The Slim Shady LP’ on repeat. People say all kinds of madness in their music now, but at the time, we’d never heard anything so depraved. Slim Shady – Eminem’s alter ego was diabolical – and in that teenage ‘I hate everything and everyone’ way, I loved it!

One of my favourite comedians right now is Ali Siddiq. If you haven’t heard of him, you should check him out. Like most comedians he’s an excellent storyteller and uses his brilliant storytelling skills to talk about his childhood, his life as a drug dealer and his eventual incarceration.

Why am I telling you this?

Far from just being entertaining and talented, which they all are, Siddiq, Rock and Eminem are, in my opinion, examples of the great things that can happen when we let go of shame and confront our emotions.

I know this is a wild declaration – especially if you’re familiar with Slim Shady – but hear me out, I promise it’ll be worth it.

Some Background

Chris Rock was bussed to school as a child. This was a system implemented in the US where, in an effort to desegregate the school system, black children were literally bussed to all white neighbourhoods to attend all white schools, and some white children were bussed to black neighbourhoods to attend predominantly black schools. The black children were exposed to openly hostile environments where most students, parents and teachers alike made their objections to integration very clear, usually in the form of violence and discrimination. Chris talks about it in this interview

Ali Siddiq spent his teenage years as a ‘Street Pharmaceutical rep’  (😊) which landed him in prison for 6 years. He talks about this in detail in his ‘Domino Effect’ series of stand-up specials.

Marshall Mathers AKA Eminem experienced some awful, and some might say traumatic, experiences when he was growing up. Poverty, bullying, an absent father, alleged physical and psychological abuse from his mother, a tumultuous relationship with his wife, the passing of key people in his life and addiction. You can read about it here

Between a Rock and a hard place

In 2018 Netflix released a Chris Rock  standup special called ‘Tambourine’. It had been a while since I’d seen standup from him and I thought I’d love it.  

I didn’t love it, but I did respect it. Here stood a grown man speaking about his grown man experiences. He spoke about the ending of his marriage, he reflected on the role he played in its end, and he talked about what he has learned about relationships, about growing older as a single man and about the emotional and financial repercussions of divorce. It wasn’t hilarious but it was reflective and it was interesting and refreshing giving the epidemic of arrested development amongst adults these days, to see how much he had grown.

Early on in his career Rock talked a lot about race and racism and if you were paying attention, you could see that this was a painful subject for him despite the jokes. He talked about being bullied and being bused and you could sometimes see both pain and anger when he did so. Although funny, I sometimes found his experiences hard to hear.

He was also brutal in his takedown of both audience members and celebrities alike, often making jokes at their expense that made you both laugh and fold in on yourself with second-hand embarrassment.

I remember that he used to approach the stage as though he were preparing for a fight. The serious look on his face just before stepping out seemed to embody both determination and an ‘I’m here to win’ attitude before he’d launch into his set, every word hitting it’s intended target with the precision of a laser. It was amazing to watch and often I got the feeling that it was his anger at past injustices that motivated him.

Today his comedy is less acidic and more – forgive me because I hate this term – ‘boomer’ coded. Lots of ranting and repetition about things he thinks are wrong with society today. It’s not really my kind of comedy and while I agree with some of what he says, some of his takes are a bit… ‘yikes!’. As if to further cement the change in not only his comedy but possibly in himself, an incident occurred that I only found out about literally years after it happened and which apparently turned a lot of people off the comedian to such an extent that many believed him being slapped by Will Smith was karmic retribution.

In 2011 Rock, in conversation with fellow comedians, Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK, defended Louis CK’s use of the N word, laughing along like some kind of deranged lunatic suffering from Stockholm syndrome.  Amidst the hysterics of Gervais, Rock and CK, Jerry Seinfeld was the only one to object stating: “I haven’t found the humour in it, nor do I seek it” when asked if he uses the N word in his standup. If you can stand to see Chris Rock co-signing this nonsense and you’re okay with hearing the two white guys using the N word freely you can watch the video here

I’m not really the fan I once was. That said, I hate what Will Smith did and I still respect Tambourine and his other more recent specials because regardless of how I feel about his current views, I still respect the fact that he used – and still uses comedy (see ‘Selective Outrage’ the highly anticipated special everyone was waiting for after the infamous ‘slap’) to confront the terrible things he has experienced in his life. Despite the pain and/or humiliation he doesn’t shy away but instead uses these emotions it to propel his talent and create a successful career.

In recent years he’s been open about being in therapy and learning as an adult that he has a Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NVLD) which can make it difficult for him to understand and interpret non-verbal cues. This may be the answer to the question: ‘why didn’t he move when he saw Will Smith approaching the stage?’

In ‘Selective Outrage’, his most recent Netflix special he talked, amongst other things about the fact that when his mother and black people of her age were younger, if there were no black dentists available, they would have to visit a vet – yes, you read that correctly, a VET to sort out their dental problems, and now, years later his daughter is in culinary school in France.

Though perhaps not as prominent and at times somewhat misguided, race and racism is still on his mind (how could it not be?) and he’s still using comedy as a vehicle to grapple with it.

A Shady genius

Although I liked the Slim Shady LP when I was a teenager, I can’t say I really liked Slim Shady/Eminem. What I mean is if at that time someone offered me the opportunity to meet the man I wouldn’t have taken it because he terrified me. Yes, his music was, to my 15-year-old ears, entertaining and the rage that he was channelling felt somewhat familiar, but a person who talks about sexually assaulting his mother and killing his wife is not someone you’d want to have brunch with. He also made his debut at a weird time: the Columbine shooting happened in 1999, discourse surrounding Marilyn Manson and the role that some people felt his music and image played in that shooting was everywhere as were conversations about violence in music in general and its impact on children.  With all these discussions doing the rounds it never occurred to me that Slim Shady was a persona. I figured he was just a dangerous man who’d been given a record deal like a lot of the gangster rappers I also listened to at the time.

Knowing what I know about Marshall Mathers now however, I think Slim Shady was ingenious. Whether it was intentional or not, Marshal created a vessel that he poured all his rage, hurt, disappointment and confusion into. Slim Shady said everything Marshal couldn’t say and did things Marshal couldn’t do. Slim Shady was a container holding everything toxic, disturbing and gross leaving Marshal free to explore other parts of himself and his passions without being weighed down by past traumas.

It pains me to say it because it means I must acknowledge my own age, but Eminem is in his fifties now! He’s considered one of the best rappers of all time and is well respected amongst his peers, but more importantly (in my opinion) he’s alive and appears to be thriving which is rare for someone who encountered the challenges he did from such a young age. We saw that he attended his daughter’s wedding, we saw her announce her pregnancy. We saw him, through his art, apologise to and make peace with his mother before her death. Had he not created an outlet for his pain I might be writing about him in the past tense.

While writing this I decided to listen to the Slim Shady LP. I turned it off halfway though because as a grown, somewhat ‘woke’ woman some of those tracks are a little hard to listen to now. I wonder if Eminem feels the same? That’s not to say he shouldn’t be proud of the album and the Slim Shady persona – I still stand by the fact that it’s a great album, it’s just very much of its time.  But I wonder if it all feels a bit alien to him now given all his personal and professional achievements? I wonder if now, as a man who is about to be a grandfather, he listens to those tracks and feels so far removed from the anger and pain present in each bar.

Intentionally or not, Eminem found a way to channel his rage and pain in a way that not only made him successful but may also have kept him sane and alive.

A game of dominoes

Ali Siddiq did time in prison for selling drugs. This is unfortunate, but thankfully everything happened when he was young so after serving 6 years and being released while still in his twenties, he was able to create a new successful life. This new life revolves around comedy, something he decided he wanted to pursue while he was incarcerated.

From what I can tell Siddiq wasn’t a bad person. He was raised well by his mother and even though his father was… um… an interesting parent, it seemed as if he loved his son and took care of him in his own way. If I’ve understood Siddiq correctly, the point of the Domino Effect parts 1-4 is an examination of how one event in your life can lead to all kinds of unforeseen circumstances.

One of my many takeaways from his specials is that Siddiq is a very intelligent and self-aware person. This may be controversial, but he was a smart drug dealer who I think would have avoided prison were it not for the not-so-smart people around him. Once incarcerated, instead of falling apart and allowing himself to get involved in more shady shit, he instead moved in a way that created more positive opportunities whilst also taking the time to honestly reflect on his life and choices. That said, being imprisoned at such a young age couldn’t have been easy and despite the jokes, there must have been many days when he witnessed and/or experienced terrible things.

Siddiq has mentioned both in his standup and in interviews that his comedy career began while he was incarcerated because he enjoyed entertaining his fellow inmates and making them laugh. I can’t imagine it’s easy to entertain people in that environment so clearly he was good at it.  While telling jokes is one thing, re-living what I’m sure was one of the most painful experiences of his life for the entertainment of others must be challenging – especially in the early days when he first started talking about this time in his life. However, like Rock and Eminem, Siddiq has used his negative experiences to propel him to success.

Some people don’t survive prison. Some survive physically but not mentally. Few survive and thrive. Siddiq is one of the few. Not only is he thriving but his storytelling through comedy serves as a deterrent to people. He never glorifies his past and in fact, if you pay attention, his story serves as a warning to be mindful of the choices we make.

Takeaways

Statistically, people like Eminem, Rock and Siddiq usually don’t fare well. The shame, hurt and rage they are forced to carry with them eventually consume them to the point where they end up buried under addiction, mental health problems, regular run-ins with the criminal justice system or death. We could say that these men were lucky, and maybe there’s some truth in that, but the other explanation for their survival and success could be because they each confronted their emotions. Instead of burying their feelings out of shame or even machismo, they released them by acknowledging what they experienced and how it made them feel.  All three chose to do this publicly through comedy and music, but this doesn’t always have to be the case, we can deal with our demons privately or with a few trusted people.

When things go south in our lives it can be devastating and our initial reaction is to hide it, along with how we feel about what’s happened, but what I’ve learned from the three men is that to confront what’s happened, to name how we feel about it and why, then to create a safe and healthy outlet for all of those emotions (or, somewhat healthy where Slim Shady was concerned!) can be the difference between being stuck in a loop of shame, regret, anger and sabotage, or healing and moving successfully into a new more promising existence.