“In my shoes, just to see/What it’s like, to be me,” he sings in an achingly fragile voice. Cuing up a heartening verse from Queen + Paul Rodgers’ “Reaching Out,” Eminem portrays himself as a modern Pagliacci who “hides behind the tears of a clown.” He balances his antipathy toward society with compassionate lyrical warmth.
But “Beautiful,” a self-produced track that he reportedly made while still addicted to prescription drugs, was poignant, confronting his frequent bouts with depression. Image Credit: Lex van Rossen/MAI/Redferns/Getty ImagesĮminem’s 2009 album Relapse, where he tried to recapture his salad days as the ribald storyteller Slim Shady, was generally considered a disappointment. “There’s so much music that he’s screaming at the top of his lungs.” “ told me that he literally had to pull everything out of himself to deliver that record because the music is so thick,” Khalil told Complex in 2011.
25 TO LIFE EMINEM PLUS
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. 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.Įminem has always been adept at running dizzying circles around his critics, nullifying attacks by embracing and one-upping them. 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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