Breaking news! Eminems' "Love The Way You Lie"(Featuring Rihanna). Is MTV News' number 9 on the top 25 songs of 2010!Eminem's story:
For more than a decade now, Eminem has always operated with a safety net: his Slim Shady alter ego. Slim says and does the kind of things that normal people can't (or don't), dealing almost exclusively in wanton acts of violence and/or depravity and never, ever apologizing for any of it. At times, the act has been so convincing that you're not quite sure if Em is Slim Shady, which is how he's been able to get away with songs like "Kim" (in which he stuffs his wife in the trunk of his car), "Kill You" (where he rapes his own mother) and even "3 a.m." (the one where he goes on a pill-addled murder spree).
Because of Slim, no matter how brutal or unflinching Eminem's subject matter, his fans have always been able to laugh it away, even if, deep down inside, that darkness still terrifies them. "That isn't really Eminem," the logic goes. "It's Slim Shady. It's different."
But in 2010, Eminem changed things up. He got sober, he got serious and — for the most part — he shelved the Slim Shady character altogether. It was a bold, if not necessary, move, and the end result was Recovery, an album that has wowed critics and fans alike, thanks in no small part to the complete absence of that alter ego. Instead, we all got to see Em as his most honest, his most brutal ... and, in the case of "Love the Way You Lie," his darkest.
On the surface, "Lie" is an unblinking, unyielding examination of a relationship gone horribly awry, a rapidly descending tale of two lovers who cannot live without each other, and seem destined to die because of it. It's a masterwork of unfiltered angst, full of violence (both real and imagined) and threats (or promises), and the fact that it resonated to such a degree with the record-buying public — it was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks — is both a testament to its power and more terrifying than a dozen songs about stuffing someone in a trunk.Read more »