Eminem

“I see my shit as comical,” said the 24-year-old Detroit-based rapper, whose raunchy raps are the product of an overactive imagination, albeit based in reality. “Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end. Besides, I’ve got a couple of serious songs on there, ‘Rock Bottom’ and ‘If I Had,’ which, all jokes aside, is how I really feel. But anybody with a sense of humor is gonna like it. Anybody with a guilty conscience or who’s uptight is gonna be offended.”

The lyrics aren’t pretty but neither is the premise behind slasher flicks or movies about natural disasters that wipe out entire cities. Let’s not even touch real life: This is the six o’clock news, “America’s Most Wanted,” “Jerry Springer.”

“‘Saving Private Ryan’ was probably the illest, sickest movie I’ve ever watched, and I didn’t see anybody criticizing that one for violence,” said Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers.

The Slim Shady LP comes with a parental advisory sticker but Eminem feels adults don’t give young people enough credit. “I grew up listening to 2 Live Crew and N.W.A. and I never went out and raped a girl or shot nobody,” he said.

“I think critics look for shit to pick on. That’s why they call them critics. Critics need a new somebody to pick on because it’s been boring. Critics haven’t really had too much to say about hip-hop lately. There’s a lot of people who are so uptight – ‘I can’t believe you said that.’ It’s just words. And if little old me can upset the world, that’s crazy to know.”

When Eminem crossed the 49th parallel to Canada on his current Slim Shady Tour, he received no hassles at the border. No one awaited him at the hotel in downtown Toronto with a burning effigy in his likeness and there were no angry mothers with picket signs outside his show at the Opera House later that night.

“For the most part, most people are smart enough to get the joke, to see the humor in it, so I don’t really come across that much negativity,” Eminem reiterated. “Timothy White wrote something on me in Billboard and nobody really backs him up. Nobody really followed on it. He thought he was gonna start this huge wave and really all he did was promote me.

“I read the article and the only thing that pissed me off was that he said that I was making an incestuous coo toward my [3-year-old] daughter because I told my daughter in a song, ‘I love you.’ So what’s wrong with him? What’s on his mind? You know what I’m saying?”

Eminem doesn’t believe the scenarios depicted in his song lyrics will invite copycat killings, druggings and rapings. “If my music influences anybody, those people were crazy to begin with,” he maintains.

“I’m not a role model. I don’t claim to be a role model. I’ve had wackos who are much crazier than I could ever be. I get people who come up to me and they’re like, ‘Slim Shady, Slim Shady, cut your arm off. Let me see you cut your foot off. If you’re so crazy, come on…'”

So while a small number of nuts try to provoke him, a young contingent of female fans aggressively proposition him at his shows and don’t seem at all bothered by the language and violence directed at women in his songs. “For the most part, when a girl sits down and listens to my album, I think that they’re thinking, ‘Well, if he hates women, I can change him,'” Eminem joked, noting the myth that all women want to change their men but men never want their women to change.

“I don’t know what they think. I don’t stick around to find out. I’m not trying to go to jail.”

Speaking of non-jailbaits, Eminem was told he’s just a short cab ride away from Geri Halliwell. The former Spice Girl was in Toronto for an intimate chat on video channel MuchMusic.

“She’s the one that I don’t want to impregnate,” said Eminem, who didn’t mention that in the lyrics of “My Name Is.” “I wouldn’t impregnate her. I’d use a condom,” he quipped.