Eminem has an album dropping this week and, as we’ve mentioned before, at least one of the tracks, “Rap God“, has some harsh words for the gays. That rascal Eminem, back to his roots. The artist has had an uneasy relationship with the LGBT community going all the way back to 2000. Since, for better or worse, he’s going to be in the news a lot this week, we thought we’d offer a quick primer on the highlights (and low blows) of Eminem vs. The Gays.

Hi breakout third album, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), was where he first got called out for homophobic lyrics. Here’s a sample from the track “Criminal”, Eminem at his homophobic best:

My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge

That’ll stab you in the head, whether you’re a fag or lez

Or the homosex, hermaph or a trans-a-vest

Pants or dress, hate fags? The answer’s “yes”

No surprise, but gays were offended and GLAAD called for a national dialog on homophobia in music. Eminem never exactly apologized for any of his lyrics, but he did have what was seen as a sort of “redemptive” moment by performing with Sir Elton John at the Grammys in 2001. Eminem later said in an MTV interview that he was the one to suggest performing “Stan” with Sir Elton John. “I didn’t know he was gay. I didn’t know anything about his personal life. I didn’t really care.”

That was a dozen years ago. In the meantime Eminem has sold over 220 million records and, except for a 2010 track, “Elevator”, in which he took a crack at Adam Lambert, Clay Aiken and Lance Bass he’s largely left the gays out of his lyrics. That is, until his latest album.

Beyond his music, Eminem had an uncomfortably close encounter with the business end of Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen‘s gay character) at the 2009 VMA, something he later admitted was staged. Staged or not, the gag played upon Eminem’s perceived discomfort with gay people.

In 2010 he sat down with Anderson Cooper for a 60 Minutes interview. When asked about the aggressively anti-gay lyrics in songs like “Criminal” he got defensive, pointing out that black rappers with similar lyrics weren’t getting the same level of scrutiny. (He might have had a point there.) He also blame it on his upbringing, “Yeah, this scene I came up in. That word was thrown around so much, you know, faggot was like thrown around constantly to each other, like in battling.”

There was one relatively bright spot in the Eminem vs. Gays timeline. That was his 2010 comment on gay marriage in a New York Times interview: “I think if two people love each other, then what the hell? I think that everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want.”

Which brings us to the latest chapter in the Eminem vs. The Gays saga.  On Tuesday he releases The Marshall Mathers LP Part 2 and apparently it’s open season on the gays again. The already released “Rap God” talks about breaking a table over the backs of some “motherfucking faggots” and then calls out a “Little gay lookin’ boy, So gay I can barely say it with a straight face lookin’, boy.”

Ugh.

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What makes this so discouraging to the LGBT community is just how influential Eminem is. He’s the gold standard of rappers, and if words like “faggot” and depictions of violence against gays get a pass in his work it percolates through the entire hip hop genre, rolling downhill to fuel schoolyard bullies everywhere.

Reviews of this new album have been glowing. It is sure to be a massive hit and the inevitable handwringing over the homophobia and the misogyny it contains has already begun. There will be calls for him to apologize– he won’t; calls to boycott listening to his music– most of us won’t. And, just a guess, but the whole brouhaha gets capped off by a much-hyped VMA performance with…. Sir Elton John.

God help us.