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Originally Posted by louder
Eminem dropped a surprise album yesterday and I was curious enough to listen to it.
No surprises here, it wasn't good, but I respect the effort.
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Nah, it’s really not good.
Twitter and stuff is full of probably 40-something white people who never left their rural Nebraska home towns saying, “The King is back!”
But nah. Its only virtue is that it’s not as patently, obscenely terrible as his last several albums. But it’s not good.
I don’t think he gets it. Rap is not the new rock... that’s not what’s happened. *Hip-hop* is the new *pop.* That’s what’s happened. And a lot of that has to do with the emphasis being less on REALLYFASTBARS—SPUTTERYJILTEDBARSBARS and more on tapping into moods through keen production and the like.
Em comes from an era when people didn’t listen to hip-hop to feel things. They listened to it to hear wordplay, and size up the chops of different players. Now people listen to hip-hop when they’re having relationship trouble, or when they’re having identity crises, or thinking suicidal thoughts. They listen to hip-hop to feel really happy (Chance) or to hear weird and mind-fucking previously undreamt of genre mashups (JPEGMafia, Death Grips) or when they’re “in their feelings” (Drake).
Very few rappers are bar-focused. Kendrick is chief among them, but even he (especially he, to be honest) approaches hip-hop more like a massive canvas on which to paint a picture or set a scene or tell a story, using ideas and sonic atmospherics instead of “just words.”
Eminem still sucks. This isn’t his 4:44. He’s always going to have a fan base among a certain kind of fan, but he’s not relevant.
His songs that make fun of “mumble rap” actually make me want to listen to mumble rap because it’s morw interesting. At least Future has some vibe and mood in his songs.
Eminem. Nope.