Is Eminem Limiting Himself?

[VINTAGƎ]

The more u listen to mmlp2, the more you realize how good he once was

Well I mean I love the album, but a lot of it is just lyrical flexing. Evil Twin's flow is raw, I just imagine if it was a song about something a little more serious. Something with more substance.

Lyrically, he is sharper than he's ever been, but the content is spotty now, because his focus is to be as lyrical as he is right now. I would much rather he scaled back his lyricism to make smoother songs. That's all.

He seems more focused on embarrassing his fellow rapper and not competing with classic songwriters.

[4Corners]

........................No

This album has every kind of Em track an Em fan could like.

Raw Hip Hop records: Brainless, Groundhog Day, Dont Front (counting it)
Classic Shady shit: So Much Better, Evil Twin, Baby
Concepts and Emotional: Bad Guy, Legacy, Stronger Than I Was, Headlights, Beautiful Pain
Funny and/or experimental: Rhyme or Reason, Love Game, So Far, even Deserpation or Berzerk
Other tracks where he's just spittin in DGAF mode: Rap God, Wicked Ways, Asshole

I mean, the guy crafted his 4th best album, his best other than his classics, at age 40-41. The only draw back or negative thing about the album is the choppy flow here and there, which take nothing away from the album or songs, and the couple weak tracks.

[Hopsinshadie]

When is Em going to make a serious album?

[4Corners]

The day pigs fly up his ass in a flying saucer, full of italian sausage.

[Hopsinshadie]

The day pigs fly up his ass in a flying saucer, full of italian sausage.

''Man oh Man.....'''

[VINTAGƎ]

........................No

This album has every kind of Em track an Em fan could like.

Raw Hip Hop records: Brainless, Groundhog Day, Dont Front (counting it)
Classic Shady shit: So Much Better, Evil Twin, Baby
Concepts and Emotional: Bad Guy, Legacy, Stronger Than I Was, Headlights, Beautiful Pain
Funny and/or experimental: Rhyme or Reason, Love Game, So Far, even Deserpation or Berzerk
Other tracks where he's just spittin in DGAF mode: Rap God, Wicked Ways, Asshole

I mean, the guy crafted his 4th best album, his best other than his classics, at age 40-41. The only draw back or negative thing about the album is the choppy flow here and there, which take nothing away from the album or songs, and the couple weak tracks.

I agree with this, but -- are the best songs on here fucking with Stan, TIC, LY, SFTM?

I mean, is it unfair to compare Eminem to Eminem? He has shown improvements in lyricism, and has shown us more versatility in terms of flows. He can manipulate words to his liking with relative ease now.

So shouldn't it stand to reason if he can be more complex than he's ever been, he still has it to actually be less lyrical and more focused on song content?

Headlights (and I don't like it but I know many on here do) has content, but is it the content we want? Do we need/want another song about his mom?

Like for me, So Far is a better song than Headlights, just for the fact the subject matter is new. It's about him aging and feeling out of place around all this new technology and the new landscape of music. And how through all of this fame and shit, he's still a regular guy.

I thought that was a fresh concept.

Honestly though I don't know what he can rap about for his next album. He's closed this chapter of his personal life, so I'm assuming rapping about his family life and stuff will be out of the question going forward. What will he have to rap about then?

My fear is him hanging it up with a limited number of truly great, transcendant songs.

We have plenty of shock rap stuff, funny stuff, rappity rap stuff. I just hope we get more Legacy-esque content going forward. More songs like the ones I mentioned, and less rappity rap stuff.

[Hopsinshadie]

........................No

Honestly though I don't know what he can rap about for his next album. He's closed this chapter of his personal life, so I'm assuming rapping about his family life and stuff will be out of the question going forward. What will he have to rap about then?

My fear is him hanging it up with a limited number of truly great, transcendant songs.

We have plenty of shock rap stuff, funny stuff, rappity rap stuff. I just hope we get more Legacy-esque content going forward. More songs like the ones I mentioned, and less rappity rap stuff.

He can't keep rapping about his life and past all the time.

I'd say more ''Rap God'' type songs. And hopefully someone challenges him and pisses him off, causes it to bring out the best of him.

He needs to be Rap terminator or a rap god. That's his best style, just spitting like a mo fo, but insanely and cohesively. Concept songs like Evil twin or guilty conscience are good. More concepts and characters is what he needs. Lots of story telling, but not about his life. But about his persona's.
He needs to invent persona's like he's a Rap God.

[VINTAGƎ]

@Hopsin

Maybe. He has created a world with different characters, some real, some fictional. Eminem, Marshall, Shady, Ken, Stan, Matthew, Kim, Paul, Steve Berman.

Maybe he could introduce a new character. Still though, that's not enough to propel him to that next level that he's shown he can reach.

Look at youtube, look at the many different classical compositions people have for Lose Yourself and Stan and shit. People playing that shit on violins and pianos -- that choir group doing their rendition of Lose Yourself for the Chrysler commercials.

The same way you see people compose piano renditions of Stairway To Heaven and stuff.

He can break out of the rap mindset and make shit any casual music fan can enjoy, and relate to. Or he can keep flexing his lyrical muscles to show other rappers how much nicer he is.

I'd rather he did more of the former and less of the latter. He doesn't even have to give it up completely. Just balance the material more. Instead of 8 rappity rap tracks and 2 real songs on an album, maybe 5 real, 5 rappity. Just more than he's done.

[VINTAGƎ]

When is Em going to make a serious album?

Oh. My. God.

I agree with this, but -- are the best songs on here fucking with Stan, TIC, LY, SFTM?

I mean, is it unfair to compare Eminem to Eminem? He has shown improvements in lyricism, and has shown us more versatility in terms of flows. He can manipulate words to his liking with relative ease now.

So shouldn't it stand to reason if he can be more complex than he's ever been, he still has it to actually be less lyrical and more focused on song content?

Headlights (and I don't like it but I know many on here do) has content, but is it the content we want? Do we need/want another song about his mom?

Like for me, So Far is a better song than Headlights, just for the fact the subject matter is new. It's about him aging and feeling out of place around all this new technology and the new landscape of music. And how through all of this fame and shit, he's still a regular guy.

I thought that was a fresh concept.

Honestly though I don't know what he can rap about for his next album. He's closed this chapter of his personal life, so I'm assuming rapping about his family life and stuff will be out of the question going forward. What will he have to rap about then?

My fear is him hanging it up with a limited number of truly great, transcendant songs.

We have plenty of shock rap stuff, funny stuff, rappity rap stuff. I just hope we get more Legacy-esque content going forward. More songs like the ones I mentioned, and less rappity rap stuff.

Let me start off by saying you will never be completely satisfied if you're going to hold his current efforts to his BEST ever efforts. You'll never have that void filled, so you should really stop expecting another "Lose Yourself". Yes, it's very unfair to compare Eminem to Eminem because the comparisons aren't two years apart - they're a decade apart. Hip-Hop is just like any other sport, and your sharpness and skills eventually deteriorate compared to your peak.

Why should he be 'less lyrical' to focus on song content? All of the songs people compare his current work to were lyrical AND focused on content. You can do both, you don't need to sacrifice one for the other. Yes, a song like "Headlights" is another song about is mother but it's direction completely different compared to ANY song he's EVER made about her. Speaking of that, can we actually list how many full songs are actually dedicated to her? All I can think of is:

- Cleanin' Out My Closet
- My Mom
- Headlights

I'm just thinking that off the top, so when people say he makes too many songs about his mother are wrong - if we're gonna talk statistically. Yes, he used to mention her here and there but actual full songs dedicated to her entirely are extremely minimal. It's also interesting because all three songs above are completely different when compared. The first is about his obvious hatred, the second is his unexpected parallels to his mother and the third is clearly about his growing up and forgiving her for all the shit that's happened. Whether "Headlights" was a song we wanted/needed, it was clearly a song Em wanted to put out and I'm glad he did.

As for what is to come, I don't know. I don't think Em wants to always rely on personal stuff because he's nearly out of that and I think he may have mentioned that in one of his written interviews. Something about being fish bowled so I think/hope from here on out, he's going to be a bit more conceptual/creative. He already tried those experiments all over this album:

- Bad Guy
- Rhyme Or Reason
- Berzerk
- So Far...

Sure there might be tidbits of personal life experiences which made/helped him write but really, not that much.

You make a lot of solid points but I just think, with art, it's different. Inspiration strikes when it strikes and age plays no role. At least not to me. It's just a matter of being inspired or not.

I'm a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and my favorite album from them is Stadium Arcadium. They made that shit when they were in their mid 40s. It is very comparable to their earlier stuff they did in their 20s.

There's tons of examples of older artists/actors/directors/etc that show age is nothing but a number.

I refuse to believe that I have to temper my expectations when it comes to Eminem now just because he is older. If anything, that should give him an edge because he's been doing this for so long and has seen and experienced so much shit, experimented with so many different sounds, it should be easier in some ways.

And let's be honest, he can start with production. I don't know what possessed him to start going out and finding a bunch of other guys to carry the load, but an album by default would sound more personalized if he did the bulk of the production.

That alone would be already pushing himself back to that TES/8 Mile era.

He has shown flashes of brilliance since his return in 09, and I feel he can reach it, if he stopped obsessing over being the most technically skilled rapper who ever lived

[mdemaz]

When is Em going to make a serious album?

[VINTAGƎ]

I will also add -- my hope is (and only time will tell) that 5-10 years from now, I can go back and enjoy Recovery and MMLP 2 as much as I do when I play his older shit. I won't know until that time. I don't know if these songs are timeless or not. I remember flipping out on my first few listens of TES because it was so different in sound compared to MMLP and initially I wasn't ready for that change. Now it's my favorite album of his hands down.

But there were certain songs that upon first listen, you knew were special. The ones I mentioned, upon first listen, you just knew they were awesome. They didn't have to grow on you, you didn't have to read the lyrics to get a sense of whether you liked them or not. You didn't have to keep playing it to force yourself to like it, they were just awesome and that was that.

I want more of those undisputed gems. I want that feeling again of hearing something first listen and loving it.

[VINTAGƎ]

You make a lot of solid points but I just think, with art, it's different. Inspiration strikes when it strikes and age plays no role. At least not to me. It's just a matter of being inspired or not.

I'm a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and my favorite album from them is Stadium Arcadium. They made that shit when they were in their mid 40s. It is very comparable to their earlier stuff they did in their 20s.

There's tons of examples of older artists/actors/directors/etc that show age is nothing but a number.

I refuse to believe that I have to temper my expectations when it comes to Eminem now just because he is older. If anything, that should give him an edge because he's been doing this for so long and has seen and experienced so much shit, experimented with so many different sounds, it should be easier in some ways.

And let's be honest, he can start with production. I don't know what possessed him to start going out and finding a bunch of other guys to carry the load, but an album by default would sound more personalized if he did the bulk of the production.

That alone would be already pushing himself back to that TES/8 Mile era.

He has shown flashes of brilliance since his return in 09, and I feel he can reach it, if he stopped obsessing over being the most technically skilled rapper who ever lived

I do generally agree with art being different, no doubt. I think Em sounds very inspired on this, in fact, I think he always sounds inspired on his albums - whether or not they come off that way.

As far as production, I don't know man...seems like every source just implies he wanted to experiment and focus on the writing more but I think he's coming around and I think Rubin had an influence musically and creatively. I think Rubin made it an objective to tell Em when songs he made were too...replaceable. The thing that made Eminem the man we know was that he was so individual, totally in his one world - EVEN Encore which is easily his 'worst' album had it's own aura about it. I haven't felt that aura about Em's music since returning, except a tiny bit on Relapse but I really think MMLP2 actually sounds like an Eminem record...which is an ironic statement considering his projects always sound different.

The other stuff is really just up to him and something he needs to figure out on his own. I do think being technically superior and complex was important for this album. Let's be honest, Em has been shit on constantly since Recovery and I think the complex writing is his response (aside from the actual music).

It's just such a weird feeling. The more I think about it, it's not so much content as it is "feel." Although content very much is a concern of mine.

Maybe it's because I'm older, but back in my heavy stan days, I would hear a song once and love it. Without Me is a perfect example. Loved that shit from day one. When I go back and listen to TES, I usually have to play that twice in a row. That and Business. I didn't sit down, read the lyrics online and say "okay this is a good song because look how lyrical it is!," I just liked the song, and that was it. I never paid attention to the minor details. They were enjoyable songs and I liked them just because.

But lately, I've found myself having to find a logical reason for liking songs. I'll hear a song and say "hmmm, alright, well let me play it some more," and then eventually say "yes, it's a good song, because of the way he constructed his rhyme scheme, it was very well done. Alright, I like this song."

I don't know if that's me being older and not blindly following everything the man does, but that instant love of a song that I used to have for 95% of his shit, I find myself feeling that less with his new stuff. And I'm trying to find out why, despite him being technically better on paper.

It's frustrating to feel that way. And I really think if he went back to making more of his own hooks, more of his own beats, his fans would get that feeling again.

I got it a few times on this album, and no coincidence, mainly on songs either he or Rick Rubin produced.

I don't think some of the beats he raps on now are bad so much as they just fail to capture who he is.

At the same time, I feel Recovery is as close to TES as he's gonna get (hopefully I'm wrong) and that production wasn't his sound at all...but the content was there.

So I don't know. I don't know what "it" factor some of his stuff is missing now. But I refuse to believe it's gone. He still has it. He just has to find a way to implement it again.

[Hopsinshadie]

In the NBA, your body ages. Rap is not a sport. So like you, I don't give Em a free pass due to his age. And I won't, sorry.

[Hopsinshadie]

In the NBA, your body ages. Rap is not a sport. So like you, I don't give Em a free pass due to his age. And I won't, sorry.

Rap is a sport. You're implying your brain and motivation doesn't deteriorate with time.

That can't be compared to injuries in a sport. As long as your brain is functional, it's up to you.

[Hopsinshadie]

Yes it is up to you to make it happen. If you don't execute and apply yourself, nobody else will. At this point, Eminem should just drop the label and go Underground. Be like Hop. the hell with labels. just rap.