What records is he setting? And why do they make him easily top 5 all-time when he hasn't put out anything good in 15 years?
For me Eminem is a guy who read and studied every book on how to rap. Technically he is great, but he lacks flavour. I don't put him on the same levels of any of the greats. Record sales doesn't equal greatness. He got street cred because he was endorsed by Dr. Dre so he shot to the front of the line over night. He had the machine backing him and every white kid in America wanting to be him. Economically it was a slam dunk for everyone involved.
I'd say his current stuff lacks flavor, but during his prime- his delivery was top notch. In my mind, the biggest issue is longevity. He's just been in the game too long. We've heard him rap over 100s of beats. It's going to get old over time + his hunger just isn't the same (that's where the lack of flavor comes in).
When I say he lacks flavour I'm referring to his subject matter. He rhymes every word from a thesaurus effortlessly and he has some sick flows but what he says imo is not impactful like a Nas or Chuck D. I would rather listen to a Redman song than an Eminem song. Illmatic is regarded by most as the best rap album ever because it has so much "flavour" where as I don't think any of Eminem's albums even come close to be spoken in the same breath. There are many albums I would be a head of any Eminem album. It's hard to compare success when Eminem had the most access commercially, ever. Nas, Redman, Chuck D, Method Man, and Rakim never came close to cracking the top 40 heavy rotation at any point in their careers. Tupac was way more influential than Eminem and had all of the flavour in his music and did so "keeping it real". All of the rappers you listed respect him and why not, but it's not like he invited any of them on his albums though. He was under the Dre umbrella and made a lot of brothas money. The television show Atlanta had a great episode where this philosophy highlights it very well, "Born 2 Die".
The Marshall Mathers LP is a classic, imo. Of course, Illmatic may be the best album ever released, so it shouldn't be a shot at Em if he hasn't released an album on that level, but I believe the Marshall Mathers LP isn't that far off.
I thought it was going to be worse. it was pretty much 4 vs 1 against the biggest guy that was with Ross and at the end he just stood up and walked away lol. A little to much hype on this one.
Eminem had nothing going on for him at all when he started his career as rapper, what are you smoking? If anything Dr. Dre took a huge risk to sign him while he was a no name rapper with no future under him. The fact he was a white boy was (and he still kind of an handicap to get recognition and appraisal from the hip hop and rap aficionados even today). Dr. Dre even said when he first heard him he thought he was a great rapper and he never thought he could be a white guy. Eminem is everything you would want from a 'gangsta' rapper, very rough childhood, full of trauma from a very dangerous city, surrounded by crime with no money, doing freestyle battle to get some money on the side and writing about his personal life and trauma. He got street cred because he is coming from the street not because of the machine behind him. I can understand people getting annoyed by his fanbase full of casual and not true knowledgeable about hip hop culture in general but he is clearly not the product of the machine backing him up quite the opposite, everybody in the mainstream have tried stopping him and cancel him for the longest time. Ironically, that helped him become even more famous. Once he became the well famous & established rapper that he is now people act like he was always accepted and promoted by the media. That's a huge lie. He was arguably the most controversial rapper because of the nature of his lyrics and the fact that he was a white guy made it even worse for them.
He only had his first single/album produced by Dre, Had the weight of Interscope backing him, oh yeah and went on his own world tour the month after his debut album was released. Then he immediately hopped on the Warped tour and while on tour he gets added to the Up In Smoke tour. 3 world tour's in just over a year. So you're right, he didn't have nothing going on when he started his career. lol
I'm really feeling it so far. Only have a few songs left, but it may be on the same level as Kings Disease 2 depending on replay value. There are very few songs I can go back to since Relapse. This album seems to have quite a few that slap for me. Fuel may cause me to throw out my neck. My lord did JID come with that fire, then Em brought it to another level.
