Eminem, unretired.

My fantasy? That the artistic seeker combine the modes of “We’re Still #1” and “Bully” and art it up for the rap underground. It would sell like, oh, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. And the spirit of Slim Shady would live on.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200602/?read=article_christgau

i love em but i am having a very hard time imagining what he's going to write about. being "bored"? if you're bored go get involved in real estate development or charity work or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRbIp66VwY4

pissing off lana del rey fans is one of the most admirable things he's ever done.

He's just doing his old thing of violently insulting whichever diva he heard is currently popular in order to get some attention. A bore.

Um, the method by which he did it is disgusting.

mc paul barman with more famous friends at this point

Still sells albums, and hopefully still got some good tracks, but still w the whole factor and but can't help thinking of The Onion's headline:
Marilyn Manson Now Going Door To Door To Shock People

Um, the method by which he did it is disgusting.

I'm sure he had no idea. Who is this Eminem anyway? Who does he think he is making fun of Lana bae queen?

sorry, naughty word corrected to "whole" by safe library computer

“I may fight for gay rights, especially if they dyke is more of a knockout than Janay Rice/ Play nice? Bitch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain sight of the elevator surveillance/ Til her head is banging on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens.”

He'll fight for gay rights if he's doing it for an attractive lesbian (nice). He'll punch Lana Del Rey in the face like a football player did to his wife-to-be, a real thing that happened in 2014.

Anyone who thinks either of these thing is "admirable" can fuck off into space.

Ah well, maybe zinging Del Ray's music would be too easy; why bother shooting u-no-whutin a barrel when you can shoot yourself in the foot w another man's possibly career-ending move

But he's got us posting about him again oops bye

The thing with Eminem is I always figure he's too caught up in having strung together Janay Rice / play nice / Rey right / face twice / Ray Rice / day light / plain sight to care about what he's saying.

does he still hate his mom

Is she a woman? Then yes.

at this point his "I am still 16 years old" schtick is almost as embarrassing as Mick Jagger's

Eminem, why you so angry? You and Kanye need to cheer up and play Donkey Kong.

People are still making excuses for this used condom of a human in 2014?

^

he's a racoon, not a person

People are still making excuses for this used condom of a human in 2014?

― Cousin Slappy, Wednesday, November 12, 2014 5:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At least critics don't seem to be doing the same anymore.

at this point his "I am still 16 years old" schtick is almost as embarrassing as Mick Jagger's

― Οὖτις,

um Mick Jagger is 25

The thing with Eminem is I always figure he's too caught up in having strung together Janay Rice / play nice / Rey right / face twice / Ray Rice / day light / plain sight to care about what he's saying.

Yeah. The rhymes lead him and he doesn't question where.

he probably should

a suddenly conscious em could make an amazing album but i'm not holding my breath
as it is, it's interesting to see that his technical acumen is still as good as anyone's
otherwise, to be painfully obvious, his cultural moment has clearly passed
the chesty marshall mathers voice is starting to get a bit weird; i wonder what that's gonna sound like in his sixties

The thing with Eminem is I always figure he's too caught up in having strung together Janay Rice / play nice / Rey right / face twice / Ray Rice / day light / plain sight to care about what he's saying.

Yeah. The rhymes lead him and he doesn't question where.

lol this is nonsensical bullshit

it's a weird quirk of the English language that assonance is only attainable thru hate speech it's true

otherwise, to be painfully obvious, his cultural moment has clearly passed

if only! but he still seems to be popular?

i guess i'm thinking of popularity and cultural importance as different things

i'd like to as well, and tbh i want to agree, but it seems ever harder to argue that artists who shift units and create hits are culturally unimportant

his huge popularity is p inexplicable at this point

(says the guy who actively avoided his set at Lollapalooza in Chicago, while my teenage nephew eagerly ran to catch it)

his huge popularity among young ppl is especially inexplicable! like if it was just old ppl on a boring nostalgia kick it'd be understandable at least

i'm told that "fuck your sensibilities" is a popular stance among teenagers with access to their parents itunes account

right, which makes total sense - but it's weird that there's no disconnect for the teenagers upon realizing that Em *is* their parents

i think you can credit the elvis factor to a large degree for em's popularity, plus em's stuck to pandering to suburban/rural assholes rather than moms

which is more or less what I said to my nephew - why would I want to hear a guy my age complain about his mom

xp

jay-z's a bit more of a frank sinatra in his endurance strategy, kanye says he's a bruce springsteen but if the next album isn't born in the usa he might just be a kurt cobain that didn't die young

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDVkkwl6aJo

btw his sales:

By the end of its release year, Recovery had sold over 5.7 million copies worldwide.[120][121] It was one of the best-selling album of 2010 in the United States with 3.4 million copies, and it had sold 2.3 million copies in other territories for a total of 5.7 million copies worldwide by December 2010.[122][123] According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, it was also the best-selling album of 2010 worldwide.[124] The album was the best-selling album in Canada in 2010 selling 435,000 copies; more than double the album in second place.[125] Recovery was the third best-selling album of 2010 in Australia.[126] Since its release in 2010, the album has sold 4.5 million copies in the United States,[127] and about 10 million copies worldwide.

The MM LP 2 second best-selling album of 2013 in USA.

Eminem is now older than Lennon ever was Alfred

Don't assume Lennon would have grown up either tbf

what i'm genuinely surprised by is that no young turk has made a big deal about going after em to get on
even more surprised em hasn't tried to set something like this up so that he can manage a years worth of beef and then make up for the Best of Both Generations Tour 2018

i think it's important to remember sometimes that it's not that more people are buying eminem so much as a large portion of his audience is still buying eminem. Relapse sold a fifth internationally what Marshall Mathers LP did. Recovery was a genuine comeback but MM2 isn't hitting as hard, even if its relative standing is impressive compared to everyone else's. But this guy makes critically respected juggalo shit, of course wal-mart still sells copies.

this is a weird detour to take (I'm sure lex loves it lol) but by the time he died Lennon had clearly made a concerted effort to move beyond the mysogyny/violence/assholishness of his past. Em charts no similar growth afaik

xp

xxxp prob would have already happened if more words rhymed with Kendrick

Lennon's music also got worse/borderline unbearable in its mawkishness but what do you want, good music or a decent human being (I err on the side of the latter personally; Em is neither)

xp

Lol yeah I'll shut up I'm not really interested in comparing lennons projected dickishness against em's actual dickishness, was just being a dick

projected? dude was a wife beater

When was this?

LENNON: It is a diary form of writing. All that "I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically -- any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am not violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

projected? dude was a wife beater

― I Love Makonnen: New Answers (The Reverend), Thursday, November 13, 2014 7:57 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm with you mate, the "projected" part is his dickishness post-1980

This thread is so empowering to women!

(which I have little doubt in tbh but I said I wouldn't go there xp)

jay-z's a bit more of a frank sinatra in his endurance strategy, kanye says he's a bruce springsteen but if the next album isn't born in the usa he might just be a kurt cobain that didn't die young

― da croupier, Thursday, November 13, 2014 12:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isn't dying young an inextricable part of being a kurt cobain? or is a kurt cobain that didn't die young just a billy corgan?

if dying young won't change your mind, then baby baby right on time

Lennon who?

gallagher

Kurt Cobain was a wife-beater, too, and killed himself leaving a very young child behind. There is no bigger asshole. Oh well, back to electronic music, it won't disappoint me the way rock and roll does....

xp wins, I don't know why you assumed I was excusing Eminem there. It was meant as a criticism.

kurt cobain was not a wife beater tho

what i'm genuinely surprised by is that no young turk has made a big deal about going after em to get on

i think that kind of gets to the "relevance" part; he sells a ton of albums, still (and has more "likes" on Facebook than almost anyone else IIRC). but I'm not sure he seems relevant enough that a young rapper would get much mileage from dissing him. he's kind of off in his own semi-detached universe. eminem has always had fans who wouldn't otherwise listen to hip hop (for racial and other reasons), and I think now he has a huge international (I can't stress that enough) following that doesn't largely overlap with what we would likely consider a "hip hop audience."

and yeah even his earlier albums, so celebrated in their time, are hard to listen to now. though i still get "forgot about dre" stuck in my head every few weeks.

slim shady lp still holds up imo

I saw him at Wembley Stadium and he was all about technique. Very little charisma and not much to say, just sheer skill. It was more like watching an athlete than a musician. The claims made for him circa MMLP seem ridiculous now. I hear the influence of his flow and his voice-shifting in lots of young MCs but the idea of him as a complex character or a cultural icon belongs to another era.

Kurt Cobain was a wife-beater, too

have never heard this accusation before tbh

slim shady lp still holds up imo

― da croupier, Thursday, November 13, 2014 2:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed

xp I haven't either. I mean, you can't know everything, but that seems like something that would go completely against everything I've ever heard about Kurt's relationships with/to women.

a big part of why threatening to punch lana del rey is so offensive & creepy is bc of lack of truth-value to his rapping any more imo ... it feels cynical, eminem-doing-eminem self parody & only the most gamergate of rap critics could defend it at this point ... that assumption that bc the PMRC was wrong in the late 80s that pop stars will always be right in visiting violence ... I would rather defend "Kim" because while that song is about violence towards women you actually feel the effect of it, like it's a super-uncomfortable song that alienates the listener rather than making the listener complicit in his brand of misogyny ... this stuff though, much like his last album's lyrics about driving over his ex and then paving over it, it feels like schtick

so cynical for 'giving the audience what it wants' ... more scary violence! but not finding it w/in himself, or something

xps to RM/RM, fair enough but I still think that ascribing eminem's toxicity arises from mere thoughtlessness is a ridiculous proposition, I mean it is just clearly not the case

it's pretty central to his character, it is who he is

that was a whole lot of the MMLP too. but it did have to do with a moment in time -- like he was doing this stuff on his earlier freestyles and it was just from that schoolyard who can be grosser/meaner/more violent/more over the top side, and then SSLP came out right in the middle of the TRL era and that voice, always in it just for shock & effect, found a whole new audience, and generated a big outrage cycle. Then MMLP came in and trolled it really effectively. But yeah, like a class clown or w/e he needs to be paid attention to to thrive. If he's just doing the same thing and nobody is doubling down on outrage, then the same gimmicks don't really fly again.

ok, so forgive the analogy here, but duchamp did lots of things in his career. he could only sign urinals for so long before it stopped being interesting.

oops mangled sentence xxp, swap out ascribing for claiming or sth

Funny that the most enduring song of his is probably the one with zero violence or pop culture, "Lose Yourself."

while i might give you violence but re: pop culture he breaks down in the last verse and notes the lack of mekhi phifer in his past

deej (and lots of other people) otm

yeah there's no way that the meaning of the lyrics isn't central to eminem and his persona; he's not exactly the cocteau twins of hip hop.

p.s. the cocteau twins of hip hop is chief keef

Future1

!

xp to wins. OK fair point.

Nicely played by Iggy Azalea

http://www.vibe.com/article/eminem-jokes-about-raping-iggy-azalea?utm_source=sc-tw&utm_medium=ref&utm_campaign=Eminem

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/eminem-the-home-body-20150731

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1OmWlmmXHI