Just some thoughts

I haven't gotten around to writing a whole lot lately and I really want to start back up again.  I'll probably do another music review around the corner at some point here, but for now I just want to talk about... stuff.  I wanted to note an artist in particular I've been thinking about a lot lately: Eminem.  A whole lot of controversy swirls around Eminem, but regardless, I think he's an incredible rapper.  Yeah, he's losing a bit of his flair and originality, but he's still a lot of fun to listen too.  An album that's grown on me a lot is "The Marshall Mathers LP" mainly because its when he was at his prime.  He was still the angsty, angry white rapper that he stepped into the spotlight as in "The Slim Shady LP" and is just starting to realize his potential which was most clearly seen at the height of his career in his 2002 release "The Eminem Show." 

The first time I heard Eminem was at Sam Goody,  an old music chain that was shut down a few years ago.  They played music videos in the store a lot, most of them didn't catch my attention at a whopping ten-years-old, but Eminem's video for his first hit single "My Name Is" is an animated cartoon.  Automatically I remembered Eminem.  The next time I experienced Eminem was through his appearance on Dr. Dre's song "Forgot About Dre."  This was actually the first rap verse that I learned and I learned it in 6th grade.  "Now days everybody wanna talk/ But they got nothin' to say/ 'Cause nothin' comes out when they move their lips/ Just a bunch of gibberish/ Well, mother fuckers that's because the forgot about Dre."  Even now I still remember it. 

After this I payed attention to him a little bit, but not a whole lot.  It wasn't really until about the release of "The Eminem Show" that I really started to listen to Eminem.  I memorized all the words to "The Real Slim Shady"  and I knew at least the chorus to several other songs.  After his "Encore" release in 2004, however, I started to get a little annoyed with Eminem.  He had started moving towards the pop scene; his songs didn't have that same edgy and angry feel that I loved; I started to really get annoyed with him.  "8 Mile" didn't really help either, seeing as how he had blown up into this mainstream artist.  Everyone was asking me if I had heard of Eminem and I was getting sick of it because I had started listening to him about 5 years earlier.  I stopped listening to Eminem for a long time

It wasn't until last year, my freshman year in college, that I remembered him.  He hadn't done anything in a long time and part of me was happy about that.  I went home the same day I thought about him and I got a few of his older albums, "The Marshall Mathers LP" among them.  Not until I actually listened to this album all the way through did I realize that I had actually already listened to it a long time ago.  At one point in time, a friend of mine bought it, listening to it over and over again, the song "Criminal" in particular.

I've started listening to Eminem again more recently and "The Marshall Mathers LP" has really impressed me.  Lyrically, Eminem has always been great.  His controversial subject matter has always pushed the envelope, Eminem even goes as far to add recorded phone messages from his producer on his album saying how he doesn't know how he's going to sell the album.  Eminem has always had a knack for being a comedian, but its really his hard, edgy approach to rap that makes him great. He not only pushes the social boundaries for rap content, but he pushes it personally.  He talks about killing his ex-wife, Kim, and bringing his daughter Hallie along while he does it.  On another note though, in "Stan," he acknowledges the sort of effect that his music can have on people and tries to tell  them that its just him messing around.

I don't think that Eminem is the best rapper of all time, but he's definitely in my top 5 personal favorite rappers.  He's a lot of fun to listen to and if his angry and often disturbing lyrical content doesn't bother you, I would definitely recommend listening to him.  He's not like many other artists and in all honesty, there haven't been any other white rappers have even come close to Eminem's success.  His newer stuff isn't great, but some of it is still worth a listen.  Out of all of his albums, I would recommend "The Marshall Mathers LP" and "The Eminem Show" because that is the true Eminem that originally rose to fame out of Amityville.