By Jeremy Kaplan
There are few artists that come around the music industry whose voices can speak to an entire generation of fans for their entire careers. As far as I'm concerned, one of those musicians is Eminem, whose music has spoken to hundreds of millions of fans while battling a hefty group of oppressors throughout his career.
Most people my age (I'm 20 at the moment) could relate to Eminem's lyrics while growing up. His second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, was the CD that everyone I knew bought as soon as it came out (coincidentally making it the fastest selling solo album of all time). Despite the fact that it was so explicit that even the uncensored version had some words deleted, I saw in between the cursing and the violence because the music still applied to me directly.
While I deeply felt these lyrics at the time, the fact is that I went through this rebellious, angry phase literally half my life ago. And although I've remained a huge fan of Eminem, the demographics of his fans alike may have shifted over the last decade.
Despite a handful of breakthroughs, hip-hop remains predominantly a black genre, so maybe the fact that Em is white is still as special as it was when he first debuted. From what I could tell in my hometown, it seemed like a healthy balance of white and black kids between the ages of 10 and 20 were buying his records. But when his third album (The Eminem Show) and his semi-biographical film (8 Mile) both came out in 2002, his lyrics trended more towards his personal side, so the little kids that wanted only to hear vulgarity wouldn't get the same jolt they got from The Marshall Mathers LP. Instead, he presented himself as an over-the-top inspirational rapper with "Lose Yourself." The lyrics actively took a different route with a more optimistic message: Take chances when opportunity comes because it doesn't always stay.
Most of my friends who had bought his first and second albums drifted towards other types of music by the time Encore came out in 2004. I was in high school, but I began to appreciate Eminem's topical versatility and lyrical flow rather than just the lyrics themselves. For example, the bonus track "We As Americans" blew my mind with its wordplay: "I don’t rap for dead presidents/ I'd rather see the president dead/ It's never been said/ But I set precedents." By this time, I only knew mostly rap fans that were listening to him, so the age demographic became less relevant since the now-teenage owners of The Marshall Mathers LP were beginning to relate to all types of music in a different way and were over the whole "He curses!" aspect of the music.
After Em returned last year following his five-year hiatus, the biggest question about his fifth album, Relapse, was who would still buy his music. And the answer is simple: His true fans. Those fans are people like me, supporters of great hip-hop no matter what skin color the MC. Em's lyricism on "Insane" (where he raps very graphically about rape) may be vulgar to some, but I call it original and daring. Any artist who can be his or herself has my support. The same type of innovation is present again on Recovery. Who else is rapping about making it rain with coins instead of $100 bills? People who have seen beyond Eminem's vulgarity and enjoyed his music for its complexity are the ones who will be with him until the end. While his alter ego Slim Shady may be taking some time off, his real fans aren't. The kids have grown up now, but so has his music.
Have you stuck with Eminem his entire career? Tell your story in the comments!
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