The Future of Eminem (Official Discussion Thread)

[LilWayne]

Yeezus is trash though.

[LilWayne]

IANAHB2>Yeezus

[Kill You]

Why did you bring up Yeezus? You need to stop doing that, lol. Yes, MMLP2 definitely exceeded my expectations (which were admittedly low), but you need to stop entering every thread and going on your spiels of bullshit. I bet you have no idea why MMLP is "great" and Yeezus is "trash", but you just state it vehemently anyway.

it's my opinion though...I did it to piss of mononym.

[shadyblogger]

I feel like if Em went back to his natural color again soon it would bring up painful memories of Recovery.

[Kill You]

I feel like if Em went back to his natural color again soon it would bring up painful memories of Recovery.

Ugh even bringing it up brings back memories.

[Mike_88]

Producing, producing, and once again producing. Album after that in 2016 or 2017.

[whiteamerica2]

Outstanding production on his next album will be what saves it from being trash. It needs to be sonically amazing. On relapses production level. A smooth flow. He should go back to the "the warning"/"forever" style

[Snakebeast]

Outstanding production on his next album will be what saves it from being trash. It needs to be sonically amazing. On relapses production level. A smooth flow. He should go back to the "the warning"/"forever" style

Fuck no. He's better now by far.

[shadyblogger]

Yeah 2009 he was pretty good but 2013 is just so dope for him

[CrashBand]

Sometimes I think Kill You is a troll tater than an idiot.

[VINTAGƎ]

For those that feel a long wait is alright because you can't rush art/genius/etc:

I agree, but at the same time, art is subjective. Eminem worked on Relapse for -- I don't know how many years. He raised his bar technically...but we still got Old Time's Sake. We still got We Made You. We still got Bagpipes.

He had 3 years to make this one. We still got Stronger Than I Was. We still got The Monster. Not historically terrible songs, but songs that -- I'm sure we expected more from given he's had 3 years to piece this thing together.

I don't want to wait another 3-4 years for an album with hit or miss material.

If this is how it's gonna be from here on in -- experimenting with different sounds and flows and concepts, etc and creating songs that are polarizing -- let's get that now. Let's get that next year.

Why wait 3-4 years, gas ourselves up thinking that all that time in hiding means he's gonna drop a bomb on us...only to have him drop a solid album with a few hits or misses.

This is not a shot at Em. I love MMLP 2 -- I'm just saying, art is subjective and has no correlation to time. It's all about headspace.

He wrote most of MMLP (if I'm not mistaken) in the brief time he was touring Europe. He was gonna name the album Amsterdam initially or some shit. That album is flawless.

Two years later, he drops Eminem Show, another flawless album.

My favorite band, The Black Keys wrote El Camino while they toured. I loved it and so did the overwhelming majority of critics.

You can write a masterpiece in 6 months time, if you are in the zone, or you can try to force a classic by spending an unnecessary amount of time trying to craft the perfect songs, only for the hype to build and for fans to be disappointed. Look at Dre. He's so deep in his own head he won't put out anything. He's paralyzed. I don't want Eminem to get like that.

If he's gonna put out more material, it has to be now. He's not getting any younger. I thought the Relapse one year, Recovery the next was fucking perfect.

I'm not expecting an album in 2014 as it seems like he put a shit ton of work into this project judging by how much material he said he made for it that we'll never hear -- but 2015? Absolutely. If he's not done with solo shit, he needs to get a move on.

[Hopsinshadie]

I agree. Em should put our 3 to 4 albums in the next 5 years. No point in waiting.

[bcooper21]

d12 album

[shadyblogger]

Yeah I really think we should wait it out however long that may be. It feels like the more albums/songs Em has out; the higher the bar is set for him to accomplish something amazing. Like MMLP 2 really set the bar high for his future endeavors imo. If he's going to put out another album that will top MMLP 2 it's going to take time and going to be difficult as fuck. I think he could probably do it but if he did pull off another true classic then that might be his last.

[VINTAGƎ]

For those that feel a long wait is alright because you can't rush art/genius/etc:

I agree, but at the same time, art is subjective. Eminem worked on Relapse for -- I don't know how many years. He raised his bar technically...but we still got Old Time's Sake. We still got We Made You. We still got Bagpipes.

He had 3 years to make this one. We still got Stronger Than I Was. We still got The Monster. Not historically terrible songs, but songs that -- I'm sure we expected more from given he's had 3 years to piece this thing together.

I don't want to wait another 3-4 years for an album with hit or miss material.

If this is how it's gonna be from here on in -- experimenting with different sounds and flows and concepts, etc and creating songs that are polarizing -- let's get that now. Let's get that next year.

Why wait 3-4 years, gas ourselves up thinking that all that time in hiding means he's gonna drop a bomb on us...only to have him drop a solid album with a few hits or misses.

This is not a shot at Em. I love MMLP 2 -- I'm just saying, art is subjective and has no correlation to time. It's all about headspace.

He wrote most of MMLP (if I'm not mistaken) in the brief time he was touring Europe. He was gonna name the album Amsterdam initially or some shit. That album is flawless.

Two years later, he drops Eminem Show, another flawless album.

My favorite band, The Black Keys wrote El Camino while they toured. I loved it and so did the overwhelming majority of critics.

You can write a masterpiece in 6 months time, if you are in the zone, or you can try to force a classic by spending an unnecessary amount of time trying to craft the perfect songs, only for the hype to build and for fans to be disappointed. Look at Dre. He's so deep in his own head he won't put out anything. He's paralyzed. I don't want Eminem to get like that.

If he's gonna put out more material, it has to be now. He's not getting any younger. I thought the Relapse one year, Recovery the next was fucking perfect.

I'm not expecting an album in 2014 as it seems like he put a shit ton of work into this project judging by how much material he said he made for it that we'll never hear -- but 2015? Absolutely. If he's not done with solo shit, he needs to get a move on.

Not to sound like a dick..but I respectfully disagree with all of this.

- The more often he releases music, the less momentous the occasion. Especially on the tail end of his career. With the 3 year gap, huge marketing campaign, and MMLP sequel, he just barely outdid Recovery. Anything less will be, well...less in the eyes of the public. Then people will say no one cares as much as they used to. "Unless it makes an impact then don't bother".

-DaVinci was known for taking long as fuck to finish his art, often many many years. You can't put some arbitrary timeframe on developing a masterpiece. Besides, he didn't spend 3 years on the Monster. He spent 3 years writing and recording tons of songs so he could pick the select few, or the "right ones" for the album. I'd rather have the specifically selected set than whatever the first 13 songs he comes up with are.

- How long we wait, and hype it up has nothing to do with the quality. Continuing with DaVinci, if I was a student of his, and someone had the foreknowledge that he was making what would be one of the most famous paintings in history, but I had to wait 5 years to see it...where I set my standards from hype has nothing to do with the actual quality of the Mona Lisa. I'm still confused how you could say art is subjective, and then claim to know the specific time frame that he needs today to create his best work.

-He has somehow managed to outsell himself by a little each time since his comeback. If he ended it with that, people could look back and say "Fuck. Every time Eminem released an album...all the way up until the very end.. he blew up the scene. His name stayed massive his whole career". The first time he sells less than he previously did, that's broken. Now it becomes, "His impact isn't quite as big as it used to be, but he's still one of the biggest rappers". Right now if he stopped, he could be inked in as the biggest rapper ever. No matter his age, his peers, the generation...his impact was uncontested.

-He's so fucking good and on such a large scale people expect a masterpiece. Every time. People expect absolutely nothing less than the best lyricism in the game. He can do absolutely nothing less than have the biggest first week and total sales. If there is even one or two "just okay" songs, it isn't a masterpiece, and old Em would've done it better.

He won't, and I don't want him to, release anything that he doesn't think will fulfill the impact that he is known for. The more often the music, less impact. Less impact, less sales. Less sales, "not as relevant, not as important anymore". For fucks sake, if the guy has a bad guest verse he "fell off". At this stage of his career, he needs to make sure every last contribution he has is as important as possible.[/Quote]

I respectfully disagree with your assessment.

Jay-Z, who has nothing particularly interesting or groundbreaking to rap about, has 15 studio albums to his name. His name only grows with each new album, despite its critical reception. Everytime he drops is a "momentous occasion" -- look at the marketing behind MCHG. They advertised it as some sort of modern day Picasso work. The start of a new movement. Of course, it was none of those things -- just another subpar album added to his discography. But it doesn't tarnish his legacy. People still love Jay-Z.

Eminem only has 7 albums to his name. 8 if you want to count Infinite, but 7 commercial albums. And only 3 of them are universally praised. SSLP, MMLP, TES are universally praised. Encore is universally panned, and his last 3 have been universally mixed.

The more albums he puts out, the greater his chances are of getting another universal classic under his belt. Spending precious years, especially now in his 40s -- trying to make the perfect album, does more harm than good. Do you think 26 year old Eminem worried about crafting the perfect album when he did MMLP? Probably not. He was inspired, he wrote, he recorded, that was it.

This new Eminem is becoming like Doctor Dre. So obsessed with his legacy that he spends way too much time "crafting." Recovery was done in less than a year. It's also gotten more Grammy noms than any of his other albums. Outside of this forum, people loved it as a whole (although critics were hit or miss on it) -- he didn't need 3 years to do it. He was in the right creative space, he worked on the album, and dropped it a year after Relapse.

Art does not take time. As a writer myself, I can speak to that. I can go months without working on a script. Then out of nowhere, an idea pops in my head and before I know it, I have half a script written in 3 weeks time. It's all about inspiration, and being in the zone. Art and time spent crafting said art do not correlate in any way. You can spend 5 years of your life working on garbage. Time makes no difference.

Eminem didn't need these crazy waits in between albums before so why start now? It's because, like I said -- this new Eminem is obsessed with his legacy. His place in the game. He has the Dre syndrome. Trying to craft a perfect album. Getting in his own head.