Sex and rodents: the shocking 2005 verse Eminem dedicated to gerbilling
Eminem doesn’t hold many qualms when it comes to the content of his songs; this is a man who has happily rapped about murdering the mother of his own child, after all.
But even though he had long since developed a reputation for veering into subjects that others wouldn’t go near, there was a widespread feeling that he actually went too far on his Curtain Call greatest hits album from 2005. He recorded three new songs for that compilation, and one of them, frankly, made for especially uncomfortable listening.
‘Fack’ is widely considered to be one of the worst songs Eminem has ever made, if not the very worst of all, and that’s saying something. While known as one of the best rappers of his generation, he has unquestionably released some duds during his day, and ‘Fack’ feels like the most egregious.
To call ‘Fack’ vulgar is, truly, to undersell it. It sees Slim Shady pull an attractive woman and have sex with her, an act that plays out vividly throughout the song, before she introduces him to a rather unorthodox sexual act. To be plain about it, she sticks her finger up his backside, which he very much enjoys, before introducing something else, too.
For anyone who doesn’t know, and with apologies for piercing the blissful barrier of ignorance, the act of “gerbilling” is a sexual practice that involves putting a gerbil, or, indeed, another sort of small rodent, into a rectum for the sheer thrill of it. That, basically, is where Eminem takes this unholy song in its third and final verse.
Gerbilling is, thankfully, generally considered to be an urban myth, and there isn’t any evidence to suggest people actually do this. It also doesn’t seem remotely viable that they could even if they wanted to, for rodents aren’t likely to play ball with this sort of thing.
All the same, the idea of gerbilling has a weird sort of cultural resonance. A certain celebrity who shall remain nameless here has long been associated with the act, which must be irritating for them, and it is a disgusting sort of act that, real or not, sticks in the mind.
Eminem, apparently for the sake of shocking his listeners, decided to evoke it in his song, which, if we are to be extremely generous, we can perhaps say, was transgressive in a somewhat interesting way. To include such a song on an album of greatest hits, which, by its very nature, is going to pull in more casual listeners than an ordinary album would, is certainly a statement. If nothing else, he couldn’t be accused of pandering.
Eminem has defended the song in that spirit, referencing ‘Fack’ on his track ‘Shady XV’, rapping: “Yo, I put that shit on a greatest hits album / Now that was awesome / It takes some massive balls to do some shit like that.”