Meanwhile, the rollicking, synthesized funk rock backing of Aftermath/Shady producer DJ Khalil plus Kobe Honeycutt’s tortured chorus heightens the interior drama. “The last two albums didn’t count/ Encore, I was on drugs, Relapse, I was flushing them out,” he confesses. “Almost went at Kanye, too.” He doesn’t blame them for his loss of relevance at the dawn of the 2010s instead, he criticizes his own uneven output, invokes the murder of his best friend Proof in 2006, and cites his addiction to prescription pills. “I almost made a song dissing Lil Wayne/It was like I was jealous of the attention he was getting,” Em admits. On this anguished highlight from Recovery, Eminem unburdens himself with honest, plainspoken revelations. “I don’t promote violence, I just encourage it.” He’s animated by his outsider status, aiming shots at the über-wealthy and hip-hop guide The Source: “As long as I’m on pills and I got plenty of pot/I’ll be in a canoe paddling, making fun of your yacht/But I would like an award/For the best rapper to get one mic in The Source.” He saves his best line for critics like Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White, who condemned Eminem in 1999 for “exploiting the world’s misery.” “You probably think that I’m a negative person, don’t be so sure of it,” Eminem raps. “I say the world’s already fucked, I’m just addin’ to it.” Though the beat by Jeff Bass is pedestrian and plodding, Eminem – the “human horror film, but with a lot funnier plot” – has no difficulty elevating it. “People say that I’m a bad influence,” he raps on this track from the End of Days soundtrack. Image Credit: Gregory Bojorquez/Getty ImagesĮminem has always been adept at running dizzying circles around his critics, nullifying attacks by embracing and one-upping them. He goes off for all of six minutes, his verses getting faster and denser as the song progresses, until he reaches a crescendo in which his words become a fast-forward blur–turning a pretty good song into an absolute showstopper. ”Ī highlight of 2020’s Music to Be Murdered By, “Godzilla” featured a posthumous guest vocal via late emo rap icon Juice WRLD, who had died just weeks before the track was released, and an almost numbingly intense performance by Eminem. He raps, “Now what bothers me the most about hip-hop is we so close to picking up where we left off with Big and Pac/We just lost Jam Master Jay, Big L got blasted away, plus we lost Bugz, Slang Ton and Freaky Tah. He dismisses claims that he’s just a “2003 Vanilla Ice” by rhyming, “So now you try to pull the race card/And it backfires in your face hard/’Cause you know we don’t play that black and white shit.” Then he reflects on how death seems to hover over the genre, wondering if all the beef is worth it. Throughout our list of his 50 essential songs (originally published in 2017 and updated on the eve of his 2022 Super Bowl appearance), Eminem fearlessly displays that devotion to task and proves why he’s been one of pop music’s most fascinating, complex characters.Īppearing on the Internet sometime before its inclusion on the semi-official Eminem mixtape Straight From the Lab, “Bully” is the best of the loosies Eminem made during his virulent war of words with Benzino and Murder Inc.’s Ja Rule and Irv Gotti. But for a poor, white, emotionally unstable MC to excel in hip-hop and not be viewed as a villainous buffoon, he must possess prodigious artistic gifts and a real commitment to personal transparency. He’s also, on occasion, regurgitating grotesque sexist, homophobic stereotypes. When Eminem raps about violent, tragicomic death, he is furthering a grand murder-ballad tradition in folk and blues music. But spend serious time with Eminem’s entire catalogue and you quickly realize that those two sides of his music are inextricable, one always informing the other. They eschew the more viciously somber, rock-leaning character studies helmed by Em and his longtime Detroit collaborators Jeff and Mark Bass. Some fans celebrate only the funny “Slim Shady,” when the musical comedy is quality controlled by executive producer Dr. It’s just now he’s finding it harder to joke about the darkness that has always fueled his best work. Just listen to the vulnerability and self-doubt on his recent single “ Walk on Water.” The Detroit rapper continues to make art about how people are driven crazy by weakness and lack. Though he’s been a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning star for over 20 years, Eminem is not an unequivocally triumphant figure, either within pop music or within his own mind.
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