EMINEM’S NIGHT WITH MTV

It probably wasn’t the comeback Eminem wanted. His appearance at the MTV Movie Awards this year will be a hard one to top. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with his music.

Two hours of live product placement, the MTV Movie Awards don’t come back with much in the way of live music. There were two performances tonight – Eminem and Kings of Leon. For Eminem, this represented his first major appearance since the release of his No. 1 album, “Relapse.”

He brought an award-show staple – a medley of recent singles “We Made You” and “Crack a Bottle.” But Eminem’s best performance came a few minutes later in the stands, when Sacha Baron Cohen’s flamboyantly gay character Bruno descended from the rafters in angel wings and landed, butt-first, in Eminem’s face.

Punches were thrown, curse words were lip-read and Eminem stormed out with a scowl. Credit MTV for having a little fun with the often humorless rapper, who’s long been a source of controversy for what many have deemed homophobic lyrics. In fact, the episode gave MTV what many of its recent award galas have lacked – a moment that felt a little daring.

Was it staged? Most likely. Eminem is a master pitchmen, and he’s used his homophobic tag to move records before (see the Grammys’ 2001 performance with Elton John). But if it was planned, Emimen should have stuck around and had more fun with the moment. After all, storming out was the obvious move, and what we’d expect from Em (as is much of “Relapse”).

But if the moment was a surprise to Eminem, score one for Cohen, who showed that the rapper, who hadn’t released an album of new material since 2004’s “Encore,” hasn’t grown up in the slightest.

(L.A. Times Music Blog)