No Rock And Roll Fun

BUT, EM, THEY'RE ONLY RELEASING THINGS YOU TALK ABOUT IN YOUR LIVING ROOM: Eminem - a man whose career has depended on Voltaire-levels of toleration of "your right to say them" - makes an unlikely figure to go running off to the law courts to block someone else's records, but he's brough a lawsuit blocking the Source from releasing the CD version of his early racist rapping. Wonder why - after all, he's not denying the existence or the veracity of the recordings, choosing instead to mumble an apology and put it down to passion and youth, and all the blocking of the CD is going to do is make it look like there's other stuff on the disc that could throw him in an even worse light.

Having said which, The Source is going a bit overboard with this story - the whole of the February issue is going to be cleared to rake over the minute details, with or without the covermount. Sure, it's not an episode which reflects well on young Marshall, and if the magazine had come up with further, more recent evidence then we'd be looking at a major furore. But we're not sure there already well-publicised ages old tape is quite worthy of the Kruschev At The UN tactics.