Slim, What If You Win?

• Author: PARELES, JON
• Position: Eminem stirs controversy at the Grammy Awards

In the race for Album of the Year, the Grammys may not be ready for Eminem

A funny thing happened on the way to this year's Grammy Awards: Eminem made them controversial. When the nominations were announced for the 43rd annual Grammys, which will be handed out on February 21, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP was a finalist for Album of the Year. Protests immediately flooded in from groups fighting homophobia, violence against women, and other favorite topics of the rapper who makes some people laugh and others furious.

No matter that Eminem won two Grammys last year; those were in the rap category, unnoticed by the mainstream. Now the Grammy Awards, a symbol of respectability in the music business, has seemingly endorsed Eminem's violent fantasies and homophobic reflexes by putting him in the company of parent pop like Paul Simon and Steely Dan and ambitious younger rockers like Radiohead and Beck.

Eminem goes to great lengths on The Marshall Mathers LP to describe himself as a self-destructive jerk, and, in songs like "Stan," to clearly distinguish between fantasy and reality. But the people who don't hear his album as a (sick) joke, and don't care that it was one of few albums from 2000 that challenged listeners to think, hate seeing Eminem get even more attention. Meanwhile, Steely Dan's Two Against Nature, also up for Album of the Year, has songs about a speed freak, sex with an underage runaway, and a guy who makes a pass at his young cousin. But nobody's complaining since it's suave adult pop, not hip-hop.

Eminem shouldn't start writing his prime-time acceptance speech just yet. The Grammys are chosen by music-business veterans, who tend to prefer pros like themselves rather than foul-mouthed upstarts like Eminem. They take respectability seriously, and many of them are still dubious about rock-and-roll, much less hip-hop. They like smoothly tuneful pop, love songs preferred; they recently added the category "Traditional Pop" (isn't that a contradiction?) to make sure Tony Bennett standards had a place.

Ballads, not rockers, are almost always chosen as Song of the Year for songwriting (though this year U2's uptempo "Beautiful Day" has a chance), and familiar names have the edge over newcomers. Some people are Grammy magnets, getting nominations and awards whenever they're eligible. Paul Simon, who's competing with Eminem for Album of the Year, has already won Grammys in the 1960s, the '70s, and the '80s, and was also nominated in the...