Eminem

I don’t judge people on what they say or their opinions. I judge people based on the effect they have on others. When Eminem says anything, the world stops. He grew a beard and it made actual news – A lot of people say Eminem is the best rapper of alive. I don’t agree with those people, but they have a legitimate argument. Saying Eminem is the best rapper alive is understandable, but lazy. Rappers are weird because they don’t age like Athletes as much as they age like wrestlers. As long as the charisma is still there their character can still be believable. So with that said Eminem is like the Stone Cold Steve Austin of Rap, he was amazing at his peak but to call him the best wrestler today wouldn’t be fair to AJ Styles or Seth Rollins. If that analogy is too nerdy, Eminem is like The Simpsons of Rap, great at their peak, but calling it the best show on TV in 2019 is insane. This is why it’s so frustrating to have real conversations about Eminem because his legacy outshines his current state. Plus, I’m almost 80 percent sure Eminem fans aren’t rap fans because the things they love about him today aren’t what make rap good. “Oh he rhymes words really fast” “ok but what was the song about” “DID YOU SEE HOW MANY WORDS HE RHYMED” “but I don’t know what he’s talking abo-“ “HE CAN RHYME ANYTHING, HE RHYMED THE WORD ORANGE, HE’S KEEPING HIPHOP AL-” you get the picture. It’s tiring. So with that said let’s get into the surprise album Kamikaze

It's simply so natural to ridicule the modern-day rappers. The face tattoos, the styrofoam glasses, the gibberish promotion bars, the fantasy mumbled streams—SNL sent up the look, Jay-Z blueprint the sound and now, Eminem commits quite a bit of his own unexpected rendition with the album Kamikaze to bringing down the way of life. Any semblance of Migos and Lil Pump are to this 45-year-old ‘reckless’ rapper, what kid groups and Britney Spears were to him very nearly two decades prior: focuses for his vile as well as multifaceted tirades, yet in addition implies through which Eminem can catch for eye and contention. In reality, however, the outrage he heaves against 2018's young stars is of an unexpected sort in comparison to it was in the TRL period. Eminem appears to be really distraught, undermined, and harmed, as opposed to just trolling. That is on account of Eminem's December 2017 collection Revival, regardless of appearing at No. 1 on the Hot 200, neglected to produce hits, discussion and enduring deals. While that record was foreboding and sprawling, Kamikaze is super strong and fast “pyumm” Eminem would personify it as. Also, as opposed to imagining not to be annoyed by Revival's gathering, he's made a collection length Downfall-style freak-out, venting about the specialists who've taken his spot, offending the pundits who don't give him his due, grieving his own particular sentiments of decay, and pre-empting feedback that the greater part of this is a beautiful masturbatory activity.

At eleven years old is about the time I dove heavy into Hip-Hop, well at least main stream Hip-Hop. I was just a kid, and when I begged my mom to spend $15 or so on a CD she would think I'm crazy but every now and then she would give in. In 1999, I had a few CD's from Tupac, Biggie, Puffy, Jay-Z, Ma$e, and often I would settle for singles that my mom would agree to buying for me, and even those I had to beg for. If my mom knew about the explicit content on these albums, I promise you there is no way in Hell she would have bought these for me – One day in 1999, I see this white boy on Mtv pop up on the tube and say “Hi Kids..” as if he was talking to me. I thought I knew what explicit content was until I discovered this cat. Any ways, I would of never imagined that dude and that album would have such an effect on my musical experience, as well as my music endeavors at a later age. Please keep in mind, this narrative is not so much about Eminem's Slim Shady LP as it is about one of the major contributors of that album, and a legendary Detroit MC, and my relationship with these two people and the Detroit Hip-Hop scene in general.

Though it’s still relatively unknown to casual music listeners, Eminem’s first true album came in 1996 and was called Infinite. Despite attempts at radio singles on it, it sold no more than a thousand copies in its first week, all of which were out of the back of Em’s car, and he was disappointed with its reception. Just three years later, he was a star, and The Slim Shady LP had sold 283,000 copies first week. Em’s rise was rapid and relatively unexpected, even for the rapper himself.

After a lengthy marketing campaign that maybe only Eminem is capable of, the rapper put out his ninth studio album Revival, which completed the trilogy that began with Relapse in 2009 and continued with Recovery in 2010. The album was controversial in that as soon as the track list for it was unveiled, the world was critical. This was unfair, but the collaborators on it – names like P!nk, Skylar Grey and X Ambassadors – were not the kind that the world wanted to hear on music with Em in 2017. Hardcore fans urged other to be less judgemental and not enter the album with prejudice, but when the album dropped, they were damn near proven right. The project was another step away from what we fell in love with Eminem and his music for and his musical choices like production and flows over certain beats made him seem like a shell of his former self. The album as a whole is not some sort of disaster – I’m a huge fan of “Believe” for example – but it’s a definite dip in quality from his best work like The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show, and even more recently, Recovery. Whenever their work is panned by critics and/or fans, artists and rappers specifically either seem to be in denial or make excuses for themselves and I don’t blame them. Putting your heart into a piece of art only for it to be shunned must be a crushing experience to an extent – I’ve experienced it on a much smaller scale with people calling my writing “trash”, often clearly without even giving it a chance. But that’s not what Eminem did. Out of nowhere, approximately eight months after Revival dropped, a full length Em album appeared on streaming services called Kamikaze.

When I was first getting into Hip-Hop at eleven-years-old towards the end of 2008, Eminem was still on his hiatus from music and the public eye. By then, he would have been gearing up to release Relapse and putting the finishing touches on it, but I was none the wiser, more immersed in discovering Lil Wayne’s extensive catalogue. I’d obviously heard classics like “Like Toy Soldiers”, “Stan” and a slew of his other hits from the early 2000s, but my first introduction to Eminem as an actual fan of Rap music came when he released “We Made You”, the first single from his 2009 comeback album. It never made me want to listen to the full album but I did see the video for “Beautiful” and enjoyed the introspective side to him a lot. By the time he was ready to put out his next album Recovery, I was a more avid music listener and it was going to be the first Em album I’d heard from start to finish.