From a technical perspective, Eminem was head and shoulders above most of his peers. But you don’t sell 10 million copies of an album (The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show sold 10.2 million and 9.8 million copies respectively) strictly on technical merits. If so, Chip Fu of the Fu-Schnickens would be rolling in dough right now. Timing is everything. And during one of Hip Hop’s generational shifts—in Em’s case, the post “Golden Era” span that ran from 1998 through 2005—some of his biggest hits involved him simply emoting. This also coincided with a time when music sales peaked, and teenagers were buying more music than ever. According to the RIAA, recorded music sales reached nearly $14 billion in 1998. Combine this with an estimate by Nielsen that teenagers were spending 18.5% of their disposable income on music, and what you get is a marketplace ripe for the picking.
During this sales boom, Eminem was also using a veneer to cover most of his overtly emotional material. But his was humor and self-deprecation, which appeal to teenagers just as much as the angst you hear on “Role Model” and “The Way I Am.”
In the meantime, I’m drawn to the irony that Tyler, the Creator—someone clearly influenced both by Eminem’s penchant for shock value and teen angst—has beef with what he calls the ever-growing group of “post-Drake ass, cliché, jerkin’, LA/Slauson rapping, fuck nigga ass Hypebeast niggas.” And Hopsin—someone who has studied Em’s use of melody, shock value, angst and self-deprecation—dislikes Tyler. Both of them have an affinity for contact lenses, things wolf related and rhymes that channel teen angst. For that matter, all of the emcees mentioned above have their merits, and I would argue that they have more in common with each other than they think.
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/editorials/id.1740/
Nice read, discuss.
