C90Shady wrote:EminemBase wrote:Well he's clearly just trying to recapture the spirit and attitude and not literally imiate the old him. He's stated before that he wants to sound different every album.
You can clearly tell "Cold Wind Blows" is a sort of homage to "Kill You" and... other examples show he's trying to recapture that MMLP angst but... at the same time, he's never going to sound like he's just spit a "Criminal" verse to you because he's purposely trying to create new styles.
I'm sure that he'd be quite capable of spitting a very similar verse to those from MMLP if he was content with not sounding different and evolving. He's messing with formats and trying to get new sounds, so you're not going to get a replay.
But if it was his task to say, re-create a song like "Criminal", with the exact same style, voice and way of rapping, I'm sure he could. When you actually look at it, examine everything - He's actually better at most elements technically. It's just the content and execution which is different, if he imitated the way he used to rap, with his new technical aspects in mind, he'd probably sound better.
But I'm glad that he isn't doing that. When an artist gives up on sounding new (if they are even good enough to realize the value in evolution), they give up on improving. And therefore may as well quit. So the fact he's still changing and striving is a great sign.
I agree that he is deliberately trying to sound different, but I honestly don't think he could re-do a song like Criminal even if he wanted to. His overall flow has just changed too much, his rhyming is different. Also on tracks such as "On Fire", the song is "just spitting", but it still isn't comparable to any of his '97-'03 styles. When you listen to The Slim Shady LP or The Marshall Mathers LP (and perhaps parts of The Eminem Show), you'll notice that while he does sound different on every record, he's got that general flow that he always sticks to.
And that has just changed.
That's not true about him maintaining an overall flow. He switched his style on all those three albums and it was vastly different each time. Switched it multiple times on each album actually.
I think you're more right on him not having the same razor sharp wit. Althougn, it's there in flashes. But I think he could absolutely imitate those flows if he wanted to. But he's just too conscious of sounding very different all the time.
But his flows on Relapse for example, are just... insanely good. So tight and well-structured. He'd have no issues replicating his old flows, as for whether he could write the same... that's questionable but I think he could. He just wants to sound new.
