Eminem reenacts Las Vegas concert shooting in new 'Darkness' video while calling for better gun laws

    Suzy Byrne
    Editor, Yahoo Entertainment

    Eminem has dropped a surprise album — and it’s politically charged.

    The rapper’s eleventh studio album, Music To Be Murdered By, was released Friday as well as the video for the track “Darkness,” which calls for an overhaul of U.S. gun laws.

    The six-minute video eerily shows a concert shooting playing out with both the dramatization and lyrics referencing the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, when Stephen Paddock opened fire into a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival. It was the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history, killing 59 people and wounding hundreds.

    The video for the song, which samples Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence,” also included footage of news broadcasts from several other recent mass shootings across the country.

    The end of the video sees Eminem (real name: Marshall Mathers) staring at a wall of TV screens as the news reports play, one after another. Each screen then turns to an image of the American flag. The words, “When will this end?” then appear across the screen followed by, “When enough people care.”

    View photos
    Eminem's video for "Darkness" calls for gun laws in the U.S. to be changed. (Screenshot: Eminem/YouTube)
    View photos
    Eminem's video for "Darkness" calls for gun laws in the U.S. to be changed. (Screenshot: Eminem/YouTube)

    The last messages urge people to register to vote with the note, “Make your voice heard and help change the gun laws in America.” A link to the performer’s own website is also included, which has a page with various organizations — including Sandy Hook Promise, Brady United Against Gun Violence
    and Everytown for Gun Safety — that are working to put “an end to senseless gun violence, or to help survivors and their families.”

    Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, applauded his efforts.

    So did Brady United Against Gun Violence.

    And the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

    However, another track on the album referring to the Ariana Grande concert bombing in Manchester — in which 22 people died — didn't go over as well. In "Unaccommodating," Eminem sings, "I’m contemplating yelling ‘bombs away’ on the game / Like I’m outside of an Ariana Grande concert waiting," seemingly making light of the bombing, which has caused a fan fury.

    In addition to Grande fans branding Eminem “trash” for the lyrics, the mom of Martyn Hett, who died at the Manchester Arena in 2017, slammed the rapper for having “no sense.”

    Eminem has yet to address the line or offer further explanation. (For what it’s worth, the rapper did help raise money for Manchester victims.)

    The album cover for Music To Be Murdered By — which features collaborations with Ed Sheeran and Skylar Grey — shows a bearded Eminem wearing a suit and hat while holding a shovel. There’s blood dripping down the opposite side.

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    The album cover for Eminem's Music to be Murdered By. (Photo: Shady Records)

    A second cover has the same spatter and Eminem, sans hat, holds a gun to his head on one side and a hatchet on the other.

    The latter was inspired by “the master,” Alfred Hitchcock, the performer said.


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