[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
In fact, if you are under the age of 20, you were a fucking child when he first came out so no one really cares what you think of his first albums especially in retrospect. [/quote]
No…if you’re 19 or 20 and a fan of rap there’s a pretty big chance that Eminem was your first favourite rapper. I’m 20, and by fourth and fifth grade pretty much every guy was an Eminem fan.
And most kids had a good grasp of what he was saying, too. He’s a great writer but a pretty straight foreword one, his lyrics weren’t going over anyone’s heads.[/quote]
His lyrics were also surrounding teenaged angst which is why he ended up doing songs like Stan…because kids were listening to his lyrics and emulating shock-rap.
That doesn’t mean you ahd a firm grasp of hip hop or the songs he wrote that didn’t fit the “hi, my name is” style that got him onto MTV so easily. It was brilliant marketing and song writing, but no, I would never say that most kids around that time really grasped the level at which he was rapping at.
He simply gave white America someone they could relate to in hip hop…especially since white teens made up the majority of hip hop cd sales back in the late 90’s.[/quote]
I really doubt kids were listening to his songs and emulating them. A lot of Eminem’s lyrics on his second, third, and even his first album were reactions to the way he was portrayed in the non-music media. Stan wasn’t just a song to discourage kids, it was also an attempt to show his more sane side.
No one ever looked up to Slim Shady, it was clear that character was insane. Being a kid doesn’t change that, because unlike a lot of other rappers Eminem never actually glorified what he did, he made fun of himself. And every kid I knew didn’t just like the funny songs, they liked the serious songs too.
Those joke songs may have been great for buzz, but to say they didn’t have any redeemable content otherwise is also wrong. By his second album, more often than not the joke songs weren’t actually about being obscene or controversial, but poking fun at the groups that attacked him after he hit big. And he was clear enough that any kids could notice. Who are “they” in this song?:
You’re right, there are a lot of kids who just aren’t old enough to really get Eminem. They were the same teenagers who bought Relapse last year and didn’t notice how bad that record was. But for every one of those kids there’s an older guy who probably became a fan after 8 Mile came out and Em put out his more serious sounding third album. And that guy doesn’t understand the clever stuff in those joke songs at all.
I respect your opinion on the Eminem album since I’ve noticed you’re a hip hop head and a smart one, I just don’t think the age thing made a lot of sense. I’m a 20 year old who likes his first 3 records more than his other stuff, but I did have good reasons. I don’t blame him for trying something new, but his new stuff doesn’t entertain or strike me as being as clever as the Shady-Marshal dynamic he had in his first two [and a bit on his 3rd] record. [/quote]
Eminem is my age. He would sound retarded coming out with the same style he had in his early 20’s. Any artist who can last more than ten years and stay in the public consciousness MUST change their style to some degree…unless you are Prince and so “alternative” that everything you do was setting a genre by itself.
Even LL Cool J understands this…and seeing what he came up with, Eminem sounds like he will be around much longer as a result.’
Any time an artist changes their style, they run the risk of losing some old fans and gaining some new ones. He took a risk…and his record sales show he made the right choice.
