[Severian]

Originally Posted by louder

You surprised me a bit, but then you didn't. Ha. I do get your point, however, do you really think that insecure/"defeatist" mode Em really something new?

Back on Recovery, he said:

OK, I remember him being afraid of Lil Wayne — who was in his prime ten thousand times more charismatic than Em even if he’s not a better technical rapper... But OK. You’re probably right.

I don’t give a fuck about Eminem, so I forget a lot of the forgettable moments in his forgettable discography. For my money, his only album that’s actually worth listening to is “Slim Shady LP,” and that’s not even “worth listening to” for anyone who wasn’t already listening when it came out. It’s not something I’d give to any fledgling rap fan in the 2010s. It’s just a reminder that, in 1999, a weird white kid with toy box beats and a Dre co-sign said some goddamn ridiculous things.

This new album is titled "Revival", so I guess it's going to be a revision to Recovery.. an attempt to be more "mature" and "seriously serious". He also ended the song by yelling "BITCH, I MADE STAN!" which seems like a transition kind of thing into the next song, so I can only assume that the album will have some cliche concept about "fighting inner demons" and "regaining your self esteem".

UGH. “Revival?” Ok. We’ll see. Actually I won’t see because I won’t be listening to any Eminem albums, but I’ll hear about it. Maybe.

It's just interesting to me that this guy's ego won't just let him make a "4:44" (on his own terms, which means an album for the fans instead of desperately trying to cater to the charts and the youth). His whole legacy is built on nostalgia, which is ironic because his biggest fans are like 14, and there's nothing that frightens him more than the thought of becoming irrelevant.

I actually think most of his fans are 30-something folks from rural Michigan. Not Detroit proper, because Detroit’s moved on. But I think Eminem’s most loyal fans are the grown versions of the kids who heard “My Name Is” way back when, and decided they could like rap without betraying their culture of casual racism. Think people who wear camo-print even when they’re not hunting. Think moms who married out of high school, and now take LPN courses at community colleges because they’ve worked at Target or Ride Aid all their lives, and they think they’re on their way to an actual nursing degree, but end up just going to community college forever and joining the PTA.

Kids certainly get into Eminem, but it’s a phase. I don’t think new Eminem fans are made anymore.

One of the main reasons Eminem can’t do a bare-bones, no bullsht 4:44 album is that he doesn’t have the artistic ingenuity to pull something like that off. He doesn’t have relationships with the best best-makers in the game. He can rap like a calculus equation, but he doesn’t have the kind of flow or storytelling skills to carry a minimalist, soul-centric album. He’s not married. He doesn’t have a “team” of people in his life who keep him relevant even when he’s not doing shit like Jay has with Beyoncé and Solange and Kanye.

Eminem doesn’t have a story to tell. And 4:44 is a story. It’s Jay’s “side” of another epic, glorious story that doubled as an advertisement for the Jay album that would follow (talking about “Lemonade” of course), and Eminem most certainly doesn’t have fuckall to complain about.

If he were to make a back-to-basics album (whicg it doesn’t sound like he is, what with the seriously serious stuff you mentioned... he’s been overly serious since 2001 for fuck’s sake!) he would have to speak to white people. He’d have to speak to Trump voters. He’d have to speak to white privilege, and neo-Nazism and all the things that his fans embrace. He’d have to take a stand against it, and that would mean losing fans. Unlike Jay, Em cannot talk about how to stay black and proud, and not give in to stereotypes. But even Jay-Z is kind of full of shit on that front. But Em just doesn’t have the source material.

Whatever.