Eminem Sucks

Yeah that's right I said it.

With the upcoming release of his new album "Recovery" hitting shelves this Monday I am beginning to feel as though I am the only person not excited about this thing. A new Eminem album is the equivalent to a national holiday here in the United States. The guy is all over magazines, TV, radio, the internet, there is just no escaping the promotional machine for Eminem.

I know I will get attacked for asking this, but why? What is the big deal? His beats suck, his concepts are lame, his voice is annoying and his flow just ain't all that hot. He is this generations definitive cross over artist, appealing to both hip hop purist (some), soccer moms and everyone in between. When the reality is that he should be some niche genre artist with a cult fanbase at best, at worst just another aging back pack rapper with a Myspace page trying to recreate the golden age.

My feelings in regards to Eminems success have always been mixed. When I originally heard "My Name Is" it was a bit of a shock to see a white guy who kind of looked how I looked, talked like I talked and had a weird sense of humor similar to mine while being co-signed by the likes of Dr. Dre and played on MTV.

At the time things were different, if you were a white kid wearing white tee's and talking with an accent you were a bit of an outcast. The type of kid who skipped school, smoked weed and probably from a broken home. I was none of the above. But close enough to where I could easily relate to that crowd easier then the mainstream alternative.

Eminem was sort of like our anti-hero. He represented us in a way that had never been done before. White Americans have always had a counter culture figure to admire in some form or another but for my generation it had almost seemed impossible that our hero would emerge out of the hip hop scene, we were the types of kids nobody wanted to previously acknowledge existed. Americans have always liked their icons to have a little soul but not so much that they become dangerously "black".

And to me there in lies the problem with Eminem. As much as he represented a small minority of us, he quickly became the anti-anti-establishment. It wasn't long before the whole world was wearing their hair in a bleached ceasar and wearing white shirts. Rather then rebel in the fashion of someone who genuinly grew up admiring black culture and having a true love for hip-hop as he claimed, he instead allowed his people to crank up the promotional machine into overdrive and milk his cross over success for penny they could drip. The hell with bashing the Backstreet Boys, he was now on par with them.

So, to get back on point, what has Eminem done in the last ten years that is still worthy of his hype? Made one classic album, The Marshal Mathers LP, and five really crappy ones. Starred in a terrible racist biopic that should have been called Tarzan In Detroit. Was exposed by The Source Magazine as being a bigot when a tape he had recorded in his early twenties emerged of him bashing black women and calling blacks "ni**ers". Which ofcourse got swept under the rug by the mainstream media and resulted in the firing of The Source's co-founders Dave Mays and Raymond "Benzino" Scott from the magazine.

In ten years what has he done to make hip hop better? Think about how great the music was pre-Eminem then evaluate the quality of the ten years since. There is no comparison. For someone who is such a fond admirer of hip hops history how has he used his fame and exposure to make the culture better? Besides sign 50 Cent who's marketing campaign is that of Donkey Kong in a bulletproof vest. Why not sign someone with skill and talent as opposed to someone who is an easy sell.

When I look at the track listing for "Recovery" I think of everything that an album of this magnatude should be. Someone of Eminems stature could gather production and guest appearances from the best and brightest hip hop has to offer, he could provide the type of freedom in his rhymes that others are not allowed and attempt to usher in a new era of music, but he doesn't. Instead he gets a guest appearance from Lil Wayne and gets hooks from Pink and Rhianna. These are the types of gimmicks up and coming artist use to sell records. Not a guy who has sold eight hundred million units. Pathetic.

I could go on forever but I won't. On Eminems death bed I have no doubt that he will look back on his life and career and see that it was wasted. To me that is punishment enough. Hopefully he will just realize the error of his ways before it is to late and make amends for this. But I doubt that. Enjoy "Recovery".