This post represents a shift from how I programmed Plug One in the past. Before, I wouldn’t imagine adding a piece about a mainstream artist. But times have changed.
Plug One isn’t designed to represent everything I write, but it should reflect my current ideas about hip-hop culture. At the moment, it’s important to engage with mainstream culture, if only to try and imagine a space where authentic and imaginative art can thrive. Whether that includes deliberately commercial music or independently released recordings doesn’t matter as much. Five years ago, it did — at least to me.
Regardless of the fact that he’s a mainstream rapper, I think Eminem’s Recovery is a great example of an musician who is valiantly trying to redefine himself. Although I consider it an creative failure so far — with 2.9 million albums sold, it’s certainly a commercial success — the album holds some important lessons on artistic renewal for the hip-hop community.
This essay was posted September 22 on the Rhapsody SoundBoard blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.
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Why Eminem still matters
The rap nerds don’t know what to do with Eminem. Ten years ago, they loudly proclaimed him a genius, the greatest MC of all time. He was a master of the 16-bar verse, and a vocal stylist who employed bounce, speed-rapping, and drawling affectations at whim. His lyrical provocations, from turning his ex-girlfriend Kim into a symbol for abusive male-female relationships to exporting Detroit street rap culture to the suburbs, drew kudos from songwriters like Randy Newman and Elvis Costello, and rock dudes that usually denigrated rappers as mumbling, inarticulate hooligans. And as acclaim followed, so did massive success, as megahits like 2000’s classic The Marshall Mathers LP blasted through the marketplace.
But now, the hip-hop intelligentsia has written Eminem off. For them, he’s just another aging rapper with rapidly deteriorating skills. They believe that his new album Recovery is a noble failure, an unsuccessful attempt to reignite the dying embers of his early 2000s dominance over the pop Zeitgeist. The Internet teems with mockery over some of his lyrics, with this line from the number one hit “Love the Way You Lie†achieving special infamy: “Now you get to watch her leave out the window/ I guess that’s why they call it window pane.â€
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