Listen: Eminem and Royce Da 5’9″ on living life in the ‘Fast Lane’

Eminem and his bestie/former feuder Royce Da 5’9″ recently announced a reunion of sorts for a new EP due in June; today, there’s a taste of things to come.

The boys put the “pedal to the metal” for “Fast Lane,” and there’s a slew of metaphor, hackneyed and not. Along with the usual expectations on Em’s end for rhymes on sucking d*ck and decapition, there’s the sexy, sexy coo of “I hope I don’t sound too heinous when I say this / but Nicki Minaj: I want to stick my penis in your anus.”

I was about to launch into a feminist digression, on how the threat/come-on of anal sex to a female MC from one of rap’s mainstays is hardly a backwards (no pun intended) compliment but a boys’ club threat, the penance for entry into the male-driven industry is to invite a distillation of talent into a mere sexual object. Even for a pair of rappers who clearly have a mutual appreciation, and have collaborated extenstively before, even a joke-stripping of a woman publicly is to strip her of her power, blah blah. But then again: this is not new territory for Marshall Mathers or, rather, Slim Shady. This is to be expected. It’s, again, like a nitrous-masked Dennis Hopper crouched on the floor, shouting into a vagina. I look forward to Minaj’s “Roman-tic” response.

Meanwhile: “My natural persona’s much worse,” starts Royce, before his own collection of gross references, in hanging by one’s balls from a unicorn horn, lighting cigarettes with one’s assh*le and the “snatch of a fat dyke.” He toys a lot with a number of crazy cadences while Mathers stays in the higher Shady register.

This, all on top of a dense thumping beat and a horns section from deep within your “Inception”-bound dreams.

“Bad Meets Evil” is out on June 14 on Em’s Shady Interscope imprint. It’s the first major collaboration between the two since 1999.

Do you like the track?

[RapRadar]