Article on Eminem being in the top 10

[ShadyMathers]

EMINEM

Highest bid for the “G.O.A.T.” title:

And I could give a f**k what category you place me
Long as when I'm pushing up daisies and gone
As long as you place me amongst one of them greats
When I hit the heavenly gates, I'd be cool beside Jay-Z
- “Never Enough,” Encore (2004)

Wow. Eminem bites his tongue - ironic for a guy who has been known throughout his career to do otherwise.

White rappers have always walked on egg shells. I mean, no one, let me say this again, no one wants to be the “Elvis” of hip-hop. However, for every act like the Beastie Boys and 3rd Bass who actually help more in advancing the art form than many of their black peers, there’s always a dumb a*s like Vanilla Ice who has to screw it up for all of them, big time. It just enforces the view adopted by many blacks in the hip-hop community that white rappers are nothing but, as Public Enemy would put it, “vultures of culture.” Talk about taking one step forward, then ten steps backward. It sucks.

Therefore Eminem just might be the only underrated and overrated rapper in history. On one hand, he is underrated in that some black fans, blinded by their racial antagonism, love to contend that he is no more talented than many black emcees in the game; and that his white skin benefited him greatly, pointing to the fact that he is the most commercially successful rapper ever as proof. On the other hand, he is overrated in that some white fans, blinded by their racial allegiance and general ignorance of rap history, love to believe that Em is the best to ever to rock a mic.

Well, the truth lies between these two viewpoints.

Straight outta Detroit, Eminem had to fight for respect due to the burden of his skin color, battling his way under the radar through a sea of hungry wordsmiths throughout the mid-'90s. Even if some black people were reluctant to do so, they eventually had to respect the fact that he had paid his dues in the underground circuit and he had the skills to back it up. Finally there was a white guy that could be a contender for the “G.O.A.T.” title.

Very few rappers in history can match this guy in pure technical skill – in fact, he just might be the most technically gifted ever. His complex blend of internal rhymes and multi-syllables, driven by a fluid delivery, is simply astounding to hear, especially the way he makes couplet-ending words that are not supposed to rhyme do so. His enunciation is virtually razor-sharp, even with a slightly nasal voice that is borderline irritating. When he isn’t spewing vulgarities every five seconds, he has showed that he is capable of displaying a vocabulary that is advanced in comparison to a lot of his rap peers. And he is probably unparalleled in the use of assonance, cramming in several similar vowel sounds into his bars with relative ease (“Bad Meets Evil,” anyone?). Sometimes, just by listening to him rap, he made his contemporaries sound like they were from the Stone Age.

Moreover, who the heck battles by punking oneself? Did that even cross anyone’s mind, let alone exist? It remains to seen whether Eminem’s innovation of self-deprecating battling will ever catch on, but seeing that scene in his 2002 movie debut 8 Mile, where he disses himself during his turn before flinging the mic at his speechless rival is classic. Art imitated life, as he had used that tactic as an up-and-coming emcee, with astonishing results.

The peak of his lyrical delivery, rhyme construction and battling skills seems to be in his early years, when few outside Detroit took notice. But even with mainstream releases like The Slim Shady LP (1999) and The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), he was still incredible, plus he had the final stamp of credibility approval by the legendary producer Dr. Dre. And, of course, there was his Slim Shady character, which added a much-needed dimension to his character - something he had lacked in his early career. It is this outrageous alter ego – an apparent by-product of influences from rappers like Redman, Chino XL and Esham - that helped Em make a handful of songs like "'97 Bonnie and Clyde," “Kill You” and “Kim” that could make one wonder whether to be repulsed by the content of the lyrics, or be in awe of the way they were delivered, or laugh, or be baffled, or even embrace all of these reactions one at a time.

But Eminem’s formidable strength in songwriting goes beyond the profane and perverted, and this is perhaps an undervalued quality of his. Far from the insane and disjointed barbs of Slim Shady, songs like “Stan” and “Lose Yourself” fully reveal Eminem’s ability to be more introspective, creative and mature in his raps. But as popular as such songs are, they get buried under insubstantial pop fluff like the singles “My Name Is” and “The Real Slim Shady.”

Therein lies the major weakness of Eminem as a rapper – Slim Shady pretty much ran the show. Regardless of the level of talent, it is easier to shock just for the heck of it than to create a song of substance; and most of the time, Eminem just went for the shock factor. There was too much of the cheap gimmickry, and too little of the pure talent. His subject matter is not all that impressive, either. Yeah, these black rappers, all they do is talk about money, cars and b***hes, like some white fans always implicitly or expressly claim. Well, all Eminem has done really is talk about his mom, wife and daughter. How is he any different? Besides, he’s not the first or only emcee who has chronicled the pain of his personal life, 2Pac being a prime example among countless other rappers.

As a result, Eminem is yet to deliver that knockout punch of an album. Even his strongest effort, The Marshall Mathers LP, which eventually sold more than nine million copies, pales in comparison to an album like, say, Common’s excellent Like Water For Chocolate, which was released that same year and sold twenty times less! Comparing most of his work to that of some who rival him in talent throughout rap’s history, even among some of his contemporaries, Eminem’s albums seem rather disposable and dated. As his career went on, his on-record behavior grew less tolerable, the shock value of his lyrics began to subside, and his work became just as formulaic as his peers who were reveling in their materialism and debauchery until, finally, he sank to his nadir with 2004’s Encore, which pretty much confirmed the most distressing artistic slide in rap history.

Well, at least he had five years to prove to the world that yes, if you don’t know, now you know – white boys can rap. Think about it: what other white emcee before him, on the solo tip, had made such an artistic and commercial impact? Let me answer that for you – no one. And no other white rapper has been able to do that since. He has set the bar so high that people like Bubba Sparkxx and (*snicker*) Paul Wall are yet to reach it. Hell, he’s set the bar high for rappers in general, period. It is due to guys like Eminem that some people would readily argue that being a white man in a black man’s world has disappeared altogether. After all, what has skin color got to do with rapping skills? Absolutely nothing, and Eminem is the best example of that.

The issue of race will always pop up whenever Eminem’s greatness is discussed. Once a guy who caught a lot of flack when grabbing a mic just because he is white, he won nine Grammys and an Oscar and sold more records than any other rapper (save for 2Pac) partly for that same reason, and he knew it. And while he has triumphed over his racial setbacks and become a much-needed voice for the white lower classes in America, do not expect to hear rappers sampling his voice in their songs’ hooks a la “Bring ‘Em Out” anytime soon. I guess time will tell whether teenyboppers, who make up Em’s core fan base, can just grow up (literally and figuratively) by quitting the blind hero worship and be more analytical of his entire body of work. The same goes for the skeptics, who need to see through the juvenile humor to realize that Eminem has penned and performed some of the most amazing rap lyrics ever.

No wonder Em was quite subdued when judging his legacy. It’s a divided world, after all. As for me, and as a big fan of the bleached-blond white boy with an attitude, I know where he stands in my 10 Greatest Rappers of All Time list – at #10.

http://www.epinions.com/content_4799111300

[E&M]

So Eminem is 10th and 2Pac is 8th, and Biggie is 9th lol..