Growing up, I really liked listening to Eminem, to the point where it pretty much was my defining personality trait. And while it is cringy to admit this looking back on it, there really was no better time capsule of the late 90s and early 2000s than his discography.
See, you really had to be there to get it: Family values and conservatives nuclear families were at a potent cultural war with media that made an active effort wanting to provoke them. Even if you were tactful in your criticism fo society and tried to cleverly layer your message and commentaries, people would still find a way to twist it into their narrative and censor it becuase it would be harmful to kids and their good morals.
Of course, that war would eventually come to all media outlets, including Rap and Hip Hop Music. Now some would argue that violence is inherently to this sort of genre, if not the vast majority of more narrative fictions. To never mention certain topics and ban their discussion (which happened even if you complied to their norms and were as tame as possible) would be to dumb down all products and consumers as a whole for being forbidden to consume and think for themselves.
Which traces back to Eminem. While a lot of it's contemporaries did have edgy humor to ragebait audiences into paying attention to their messages (that flew over their heads anyway), Eminem did it in a way that really, made it's entire personality to be offensive without barely having anything to say. It was edgy and in your face because that's all it really had to offer, not realizing that his music would have aged a lot more gracefully had he just taken more time out to see that there's more to adult topics than simply making an entire verse out of your songs about your ballsack being big.
I'd be lying if I said everything about Eminem's sense of humor is garbage, because some jokes do land, his lyrics are ridiculously quotable and the production does have it's charm. To this day, he's ridiculously popular and people from younger generations than mine can clearly appreciate something that I don't. Even if I find it hilarious that he's the favorite rapper among both experienced listeners who personally, I think should know better, and white conservatives who barely listen to hip-hop and delude themselves into believing that the character of shady is just like them when at the same time, complain when music artists get 'Too woke' with their artistry.
But there's a reason this type of offensive South Park-esque humor fell off in mainstream media. Young people bought offensive things out of the counter-culture principal that their dad didn't like it, so it must be good. But culture nowadays became so multifaceted that the need for a counter-culture barely exists anymore. Our knowledge of the word became a lot more vast, to the point where you think that if you had the popularity, time, money and range to spread a world-wide message that you believed in when making a product, you sure as fuck wouldn't use it to diss a minor celebrity like Gary Coleman, not only it would date your music horribly, but you would look incredibly goofy and shallow for it.
Maybe that's the point, maybe I'm just overanalysing an artist that was never meant to be taken seriously. But am I really supposed to be surprised when people say his others releases aren't nearly as well recieved? That everything that came after the fame of this release (Or the one before it that no one listened because it wasn't good either) failed to capture the same magic because it's just rehashing the same thing that made it popular ad nauseum when it wasn't even genius the first time?
I have a lot of soft spots for Eminem and I can appreciate him being self aware in it's sillyness, but I wouldn't blame anyone that said his discography was never good to begin with for the reasons mentioned previously.
See, you really had to be there to get it: Family values and conservatives nuclear families were at a potent cultural war with media that made an active effort wanting to provoke them. Even if you were tactful in your criticism fo society and tried to cleverly layer your message and commentaries, people would still find a way to twist it into their narrative and censor it becuase it would be harmful to kids and their good morals.
Of course, that war would eventually come to all media outlets, including Rap and Hip Hop Music. Now some would argue that violence is inherently to this sort of genre, if not the vast majority of more narrative fictions. To never mention certain topics and ban their discussion (which happened even if you complied to their norms and were as tame as possible) would be to dumb down all products and consumers as a whole for being forbidden to consume and think for themselves.
Which traces back to Eminem. While a lot of it's contemporaries did have edgy humor to ragebait audiences into paying attention to their messages (that flew over their heads anyway), Eminem did it in a way that really, made it's entire personality to be offensive without barely having anything to say. It was edgy and in your face because that's all it really had to offer, not realizing that his music would have aged a lot more gracefully had he just taken more time out to see that there's more to adult topics than simply making an entire verse out of your songs about your ballsack being big.
I'd be lying if I said everything about Eminem's sense of humor is garbage, because some jokes do land, his lyrics are ridiculously quotable and the production does have it's charm. To this day, he's ridiculously popular and people from younger generations than mine can clearly appreciate something that I don't. Even if I find it hilarious that he's the favorite rapper among both experienced listeners who personally, I think should know better, and white conservatives who barely listen to hip-hop and delude themselves into believing that the character of shady is just like them when at the same time, complain when music artists get 'Too woke' with their artistry.
But there's a reason this type of offensive South Park-esque humor fell off in mainstream media. Young people bought offensive things out of the counter-culture principal that their dad didn't like it, so it must be good. But culture nowadays became so multifaceted that the need for a counter-culture barely exists anymore. Our knowledge of the word became a lot more vast, to the point where you think that if you had the popularity, time, money and range to spread a world-wide message that you believed in when making a product, you sure as fuck wouldn't use it to diss a minor celebrity like Gary Coleman, not only it would date your music horribly, but you would look incredibly goofy and shallow for it.
Maybe that's the point, maybe I'm just overanalysing an artist that was never meant to be taken seriously. But am I really supposed to be surprised when people say his others releases aren't nearly as well recieved? That everything that came after the fame of this release (Or the one before it that no one listened because it wasn't good either) failed to capture the same magic because it's just rehashing the same thing that made it popular ad nauseum when it wasn't even genius the first time?
I have a lot of soft spots for Eminem and I can appreciate him being self aware in it's sillyness, but I wouldn't blame anyone that said his discography was never good to begin with for the reasons mentioned previously.