How Eminem can save the Middle East

…”The hard-nosed American rapper 50 Cent, who played a sold-out gig in Beirut with buxom Lebanese superstar Haifa Wehbe last summer, has a lot of fans in the Arab world. Young Arabs identify with the resilience and irrepressibility of a man who struggled up from an incredibly difficult life and rose to the top against all odds – not to mention his swagger, quick tongue and irresistable beats. Their experiences often resonates with rap’s depictions of oppressed communities struggling against poverty, absence of opportunity, political impotence, street violence, indifferent government and a hostile mainstream culture. Arabs bitter over American foreign policy could relate when Kanye West electrified a televised Hurricane Katrina relief program with his outraged cry that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” or when Eminem denounced Bush and the Iraq War (“No more blood for oil, we got our battles to fight on our own soil”). “  Read More