Darkness by Eminem is a new song that tries to get into the mind of the Last Vegas shooter, including recreations of the mass shooting. Via Vox:
Eminem has continued his recent tradition of surprising fans with new album drops: Music to Be Murdered By, released Friday, is both a Hitchcock reference and a promise from the rap diva to slay. How well Eminem fulfills that promise is already a matter of heated debate — just as it was with his 2018 surprise album, Kamikaze — but there’s no denying Marshall Mathers makes an impact: Within 12 hours of its release, the album was reportedly charting at No. 1 on iTunes in 53 countries.
The breakout track from the 20-song album is “Darkness,” a harrowing, disturbing takedown of gun violence, framed through the point of view of the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, one of the worst mass shootings in modern US history.
The motives of the Las Vegas shooter remain a mystery, but in “Darkness,” Eminem paints a picture of an isolated man with mental illness, “loathing in Las Vegas” but emboldened by the failure of US gun control legislation:
I got ammo for all the hecklers, I’m armed to the teeth … Finger on the trigger, but I’m a licensed owner / with no prior convictions, so loss, the sky’s the limit
The track briefly includes reportedly recreated audio of gunfire and screaming crowds, and ends with an overlay of real news footage from the litany of mass shootings that have happened since the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. The accompanying music video further reenacts the Las Vegas shooter’s point of view (but not graphically) and ends with a call to register to vote to “help change gun laws in America.”