Minus the Chain Saw, Eminem Seems a Bit More Mature

Fans have to be prepared to work hard at rap-rock concerts. Between the host and the five acts Friday at Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in Devore, the crowd was asked to wave its hands in the air, shout “yeah” or just plain make some noise about, oh, 2.3 million times.

The 20,000 fans did their best to oblige during the 4 1/2-hour Anger Management Tour stop that featured crowd-pleasing but mostly one-dimensional performances until Eminem took the stage--atop a roller coaster.

The towering, brightly lit device was the centerpiece in a circus-like stage design that grew out of a line in “Business,” a track on his album “The Eminem Show.” In the song, a collaboration with Dr. Dre, Eminem shakes his head at the furor around him in recent years: “What is this? There must be a circus in town.”

But the fun began before Eminem stepped on stage, as video screens featured images of politicians and others, from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to second lady Lynne Cheney, denouncing the rapper’s music with terms such as “outrage” and “shocking.” It was reminiscent of the ‘50s TV clips of adults attacking rock ‘n’ roll as the work of the devil, integrationists or perhaps the Communists.

The audience, naturally, howled.

To make the remarks appear even more clownish, nine of the video clips were placed together on the screen to resemble the boxes on “Hollywood Squares.”

Though some fans may see the change from the 2000 Anger Management Tour, when Eminem walked on stage with a chain saw, as a sign that he is softening, the rapper’s willingness to simply have fun on stage was a liberating sign. There is an increasing maturity in his work, and he has enough confidence in the material not to limit himself to a single role on stage.

It was telling Friday that Eminem stepped away from all the sideshow effects and left his many cohorts in the wings for an intimate version of “Cleaning Out My Closet,” the most absorbing track on the new album. It was the hip-hop equivalent of an acoustic solo turn in a rock show.

Besides, Eminem’s young fans knew the chain-saw image, which some adults denounced as irresponsible, was really just a playful nod to the horror-movie elements in his music.

They also saw the humor in pushing parents’ buttons by employing satanic images, the same way the heavy metal bands have done over the years.

One reason for Eminem’s massive appeal, in fact, is that he has both rock ‘n’ roll and rap instincts, giving him far more dimension than the other acts on Friday’s bill--the rock group Papa Roach and hip-hop entries Ludacris, Xzibit and X-ecutioners.

Those rock instincts help him in the studio, where his most powerful songs--including “Stan” and “Cleaning Out My Closet”--have the same self-discovery and confession that rock picked up from folk music.

He’s not the first rapper to incorporate this gripping personal commentary in his songs. Ice Cube and 2Pac, among others, spoke about their experiences in ways that were both artful and convincing. Most bestselling rappers these days, however, deal in such generic tough-guy or party-guy sentiments that the music seems fleeting and disposable.

Live, Eminem brings together the self-affirmation and spectacle of rock and the edginess and modern sonic vitality of rap.

Not all of Eminem’s set was as endearing as the highlights, which ranged from the gripping “Stan” and “Closet” to the ridiculously catchy, PG-rated “Without Me.”

The rapper still shares far too much of the stage with his pals from the rap group D12, and the ugly portrayal of women in such songs as the macho-minded “Superman” is disheartening--even if hundreds of young women near the front of the stage screamed throughout the song as if he were serenading them with a love ballad.

Unlike rock performers who apologize for stardom, Eminem has always sought a wide audience, and some of the cruder elements in his music seem designed to make sure the young suburban hip-hop crowd continued to think of him as hard-core.

But he got far, far stronger responses Friday for the quality material in his repertoire than he did for the merely crude numbers.

In his best moments at Blockbuster, Eminem didn’t need to ask anyone in the well-behaved crowd to raise their hands or shout, “yeah.” The hundreds of fans who held up lighters to show their affection during “Closet” may have been employing a ritual borrowed from rock, but it felt right at home on this chiefly hip-hop night.