All hail the glory of Boom Selection, who have solicited bootleg mixes of the new Eminem single, “Without You”. They’ve started posting the best of what they’ve been getting – and some of them are really fab. I can say without hesitation that the best of the bunch is the one over the music of “Come On Eileen”, because it’s just so perfectly done and boppy and joyous. I’m pretty keen on the Led Zepelling “Wanton Song” mix, which is cut up just right, and just rocks like crazy.

The obligatory Kylie mix starts off pretty strong, and is generally pretty good, but wears me out a bit. The Human League “Don’t You Want Me” mix is an interesting failure – the mixer slowed down the vocals too much, and is sloppy with matching up Eminem with the beat. The one pairing it up with Michael Jackson’s “Burn This Disco Out” is marred by slowed-down vocals too, but does win some points with me for being a less-than-obvious MJ tune to bootleg. There’s a good electro bootleg (mixed with FC Kahuna) which is musically good, but the vocals are slowed down too… ah, what are you gonna do?

I still haven’t actually heard the original version of “Without You” just yet, so the mix with the X-Ecutioners which only uses the instrumental and not the a cappella is an interesting one – it just sounds like a good hip hop song to my ears without knowing either song. It sounds like Dre did a good job on this track, I wonder how the original compares to all these boots.

The Eminem rhymes are nice enough – pretty standard Eminem pop stuff, it sounds like he very conciously attempting to replicate the “state of the Shady address” thing he did on “The Real Slim Shady”, right down to the dissing of high-profile celebs – Moby, Limb Bizkit, Chris Kirkpatrick. Why does he go after such weak, irrelevant targets? Does he expect them to fight back? What does anyone gain from dissing Moby? Would that make anyone think yr clever, much less hard? It’s kinda like stealing a sickly kid’s milk money, or punching little old ladies. I don’t doubt that Eminem is talented and clever, I just wish that if he was going to battle someone, he’d really go for it.