Any parent of a teen-ager whose idea of an after-school greeting is "Yo, dawg, 'sup?" knows by now who Eminem is. But last week, the star rapper passed up a chance make inroads with an even more, uh, diverse audience. Eminem refused to give musical parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic permission to shoot a video version of "Couch Potato," Yankovic's parody of Eminem's Oscar-winning song "Lose Yourself," although he allowed an audio-only version to be put on Yankovic's new CD Poodle Hat, released Tuesday.

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Eminem passed on this once-in-a-lifetime-you-better-never-let-it-go opportunity because he felt the parody would dilute his song's serious, personal Artistic Statement or, as his spokesman put it, "change kids' visual perception on what that image was." That's curious, especially since Eminem has shown a marked taste for self-parody in his own videos.

Still, he has a point. The lyrics to "Lose Yourself" are serious, deeply felt words of a young man struggling to rise above his situation - as well as an example of what his official bio calls the "dazzling lyrical escapades that delve into the mind of a violently warped and vulgar yet extremely talented wordsmith." Whatever.

But as Yankovic countered, "It works better when you can poke fun at something that's kind of weighty and serious." Besides, Eminem ought to feel flattered. In pop culture of the past two decades, you haven't "made it" unless you've gotten the Weird Al treatment. His parodies are silly but amusing, they're something parents don't mind their kids listening to, and musically they're dead-on. Poodle Hat, for instance, includes an "Angry White Boy Polka" medley of tunes by Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Rage Against the Machine and others. Now that's an Artistic Statement.

The hook to this rap is that legally, Yankovic didn't have to get Eminem's permission to do the video - thanks to a case won nearly a decade ago by, ironically, another rap act.

In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 2 Live Crew was perfectly within its rights when it recorded an unauthorized, vulgar send-up of Roy Orbison's classic "Oh, Pretty Woman." Musical parody clearly constitutes "fair use," the court said, even if done for "blatantly commercial purpose." Period. Spoof positive, case closed. But gentleman that he is, Yankovic has insisted on going the extra mile - or, in Eminem's case, the extra 8 Mile. Despite the court's parody-at-will blessing, Weird Al has made it his policy to get permission from the artists - and to cut them in for a share of the profits. Michael Jackson made a nice helping of change from Yankovic's "Eat It," and Madonna got a slice of "Like a Surgeon."

Here is where Eminem is off track: As Justice David Souter wrote, parody "can provide social benefit by shedding light on an earlier work and, in the process, creating a new one." Far from devaluing the original, as some artists' agents whine, parody enhances it. Had the court ruled otherwise, it could have put a severe crimp in our nation's artistic, cultural and political dialogue.

More important, no work of art exists in a vacuum. It builds on what has come before. Eminem may not even realize to what extent his songs refer to what others have created. The right to freely employ existing work, even to mock it in parody, is absolutely vital for continued creativity. As Eminem would put it, Snap back to reality, Oh! there goes gravity.

Ray Cooklis