Bisexual Australian musician Sia has donated her proceeds from a collaboration with Eminem to a glbti charity, after criticism about the rapper’s homophobic lyrics in his new album. Sia appears in the track Beautiful Pain on The Marshall Mathers LP2 album, which also features the song Rap God where Eminem raps that he will ‘break a motherf**ker’s table over the back of a couple off faggots and crack it in half,’ and ‘you fags think it’s all a game till I walk a flock of flames off a plank.’ A new Pitchfork review of the album says the rapper bandies about “misogyny and gay slurs” as if his “conciliatory 2001 Grammys performance with a pink polka dot suited Elton John never happened” and that “Eminem’s return to ruffling feathers carries the stink of desperation”. Eminem has used the explanation that Slim Shady is a persona to defend his lyrics. He’s told Rolling Stone “the real me sitting here right now talking to you has no issues with gay, straight, transgender, at all”. Sia has echoed this, tweeting: “He has a character called Slim Shady who represents the worst and darkest bile of America. I see how it can be unclear. But I assure you he is not homophobic himself. He does certainly respect the gay community he is close to in his personal life.” She says: “I know personally that he is not homophobic, but a performance artist. I would never work with someone I believed to be homophobic.” However following heavy criticism, Sia has also donated her proceeds from Beautiful Pain to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 9th November 2013 - 10:31am