by Tornado » Dec 29th, '10, 22:33
The Eminem stans are out in force boy
People getting into a debate about pop music. How would you define pop as a genre exactly? What defines pop to you? Look at MJ & Gaga, completely different styles but still considered "pop artists". Pop has no definite sound which you can define it with. Reason? Trends change, you see it in different decades. You can tell whther a song was made in the 70's or 80's compared to nowadays. A while back, due to the rise in Hip-Hop, Pop had a more "urban" aspect aspect to it. Take Justin Timberlake's Justified Album. Cry Me A River, produced by Timberland, Like I Love You featured Clipse so Hip-Hop as a whole was being seen as the new thing to do and when that happens, you are gonna get watered down, radio friendly tracks in Hip-Hop because it's slowly being manufactured to a stereotypical sound. Nowadays Pop tunes are more Electronical, using Synths & Saws (Gage being an obvious example). I mean, name me a Recent Hit Top 40 tune that isn't sampled and non-electronic that people can instantly recognise.
As for Recovery, if you have features like Rihanna on there, of course people was gonna think "what the fuck" no shit sherlock. Rihanna got more poppy the more albums she's released, listen to all of them if you think i'm bullshitting. I mean Em worked with Dido before, someones who not Hip-Hop at all and he made Stan out of it. Listen to LTWYL, unusally for a rap song you remember the chorus, when you listen to Em you don't usually talk about the chorus as being the best part of the song with most tracks do you? It's the lines that leave you like "Oh Shit"
A lot of Recovery is watered down. With any other release (with the exception of Infinte for different reasons) you know it's Em. When he spat a verse, you knew it was unique. Recovery? It's a watered-down friendly version of him trying to be a punchline rapper. In short, a more lyrical Wayne with an angry yelling voice throughout. Productions of tracks didn't help either. Not Afraid sounds weak alone as a beat, like banging on Tin drums sounds cheap and corny. There's also a heavier reliance on soft acoustic music and soft electronic music which makes the tracks like LTWYL & Spacebound sound poppy. I don't mind acoustic guitars being used, but it definately had a poppy feel to it. If you compare those 2 tracks to an acoustic track from Who Needs Actions by Plan B, you can hear the difference. Some tracks were just poorly done. Won't Back Down feels like watered down pop-rock rap beat and i ain't gonna start on the lyrics & mixing. Talkin 2 Myself just sounds poppy. No Love, to me that beat is one of the worst i've ever heard on a album. Everything about that song just reminds me of pop. I guarentee if Em wasn't on that, most of you wouldn't like it. Even You're Never Over's beat sounds like Pop, just Em did a decent song on it though. It has a pop sound but it is a good song.
Whilst making this, Em was influenced by what he's heard which is basically the mainstream sound cos this has a very poppy feel as a album. You look at any other album, he has the typical-cluture-bashing-light-hearted-jokey songle song but that was it. Recovery like a good 60%+ of tracks have a pop feel to them. Worst thing is they don't sound like Eminem songs. None of us want Em to do the same shit over and over (a problem with recent album subject content) but atleast he has his individuality. In Recovery in all honesty, he sounds like he's trying to appeal to the pop listeners for the most part tracks like Going Thru Changes & So Bad have a proper feel to it. Even at his height of fame around 02, TES may have been a "pop" album because it's popular but as a Hip-Hop album, it's the best representation of Hip-Hop in 02.Recovery is a advert for Poppy beats, overly lyrical weak punchlined rhymes and hooks. Since when has Hip Hopas a genre been about that? This is Pop-Rap in both senses of the word pop.
Look, being Pop doesn't mean it's shit automatically so don't be offended if someone says Eminem has gone pop
3K & Out
...plenty wrong with it, and it's poppy...
doesn't RnB stand for rhythm and blues?
