The flower power generation likes to brag about its prized Midwestern white boy with the nasally voice, the one whose lyrics were bizarre but beautiful and heartfelt. It’s a shame our generation has no Dylan—sorry, Conor Oberst—but we do have someone close, though he’s not who you’d expect. You see, this Midwestern white boy with the nasally voice comes from the streets of Detroit, and where Dylan changed the game for vocalists without good voices, Eminem changed the game for emcees with white skin.
It’s easy to forget how big Em was at his peak. 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP was the fastest-selling rap record ever; it has sold 21 million copies to date. Em was all over the press for his misogyny and homophobia, and to this day I associate that dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker with his name. Em was the example used by all our mothers when they said rap music was bad.
While Eminem wasn’t the first rapper to use offensive language (see: NWA, Mobb Deep), his albums contained some of rap music’s most theatrical examples of inappropriateness, and that made him an easy target for moms and Tipper Gore lovers everywhere. But there’s another reason why Em might have been specifically targeted—because of his race.
The list of white rappers who achieved major chart success in the ‘90s is slim—it starts with the Beastie Boys and ends with Eminem, with very little in between besides Vanilla Ice. But recently, more white rappers have gained followings, including mainstream artists like Paul Wall and Bubba Sparxxx and underground acts like Aesop Rock, El-P, and Brother Ali. In England, rapper Mike Skinner has achieved massive fame under his moniker The Streets, but calling that hip-hop is a bit of a stretch. But even with the growth of the white rapper, the fact remains that if you go up to someone and randomly ask them to name a white rapper, Eminem remains the one cited far more often than not.
It’s been quite a while since Eminem has been relevant. Encore was released in 2004, but that album was unnecessarily angry and more unfocused than his earlier work, a dropoff that may be connected to the controversy surrounding his music. Amidst assaults from advocacy groups and the media, he lost the aloof goofiness that made him interesting in the first place.
For almost five years we’ve heard nothing from Mr. Mathers, but this week he leaked a track from his upcoming album, Relapse, due in December. Titled “I’m Having A Relapse,” it finds Eminem adopting a Jamaican inflection and having fun over a basic beat. It remains to be seen if Em can regain his former status as the biggest rapper alive, but I think he’ll find that his own success has laid the seeds for a much more receptive climate these days.
Justin is … tika tika tika jhs55@georgetown.edu
