Jun 16, 2015

American Gangster is a good album by a great artist, never really saw it as anything more and I completely forgot about OBFCL2. It'd probably find its way onto the back half of that list though.

 

Jun 16, 2015

when you're dissing eminem you say nothing substantial and when you're praising him you still say nothing substantial. I've never seen anything like it

 

Jun 16, 2015

I prefer Slug's more aggressive style (Lemons lacked that) and You Can't Imagine is more consistent than GLU.

 

Jun 16, 2015

What's wrong with By The Throat?

 

Jun 16, 2015

business isnt undeniably bad, neither isnt solder. sing for the moment/cleaning out my closet are dated, but still powerful testaments to em's popularity at the time -- which you dismissively allude to re: trl. like, that's true, but you're being way too emphatic about it. of course eminem is melodramatic, but on the contrary, that's often what makes his best work so compelling.

the fact that you both defend ur incestuous critical pact with narsh, then make an unsubstantiated grandiose assertion about mbdtf, makes this one of your worst posts on s80. hand in your login, 10 minutes in the penalty box. hooking.

 

Jun 16, 2015

sorry ill color code my post next time

 

Jun 16, 2015

nothing. it's pretty good. cuban linx 2 is a masterpiece.

@captain awesome "of course he's melodramatic--that's what makes him so compelling!" is a h--- of a reach. when i bring up trl, i'm not limiting the scope of his popularity, i'm characterizing the scope of his writing on that album. one of your worst posts on section 80.

 

Jun 16, 2015

Why is that a reach? It's a tad broad, ill admit, but 100% accurate... from Kim to his mom to his beefs, the personal drama littered throughout his best work is what arguably made him the zeitgeist defining artist that he was. (edit: i think this is what often trips up other posters. they say compelling, and point to his worldwide popularity as evidence of why he is/was compelling. its a bit of a misnomer, but i understand the logic. imo, TES is trapt in time but still evidence of an artist before the fall.)

in terms of writing, say goodbye to hollywood is a great example of an essentially melodramatic track with a pretty compelling pov. solider is part of that narrative, which is why i bristle at knocking that specifically

but this is 2015, and we're debating TES. the critical debate is over, it's a great album.

 

Jun 16, 2015

MBDTF first half was very enjoyable. But the second half was way too filled with too many features.
So Appalled is definitely like this. It just feels boring and "when will this end" after Jay Z verse. Same goes with Runaway and Blame Game. They were pretty enjoyable from the start but became way too boring and too long. Song from TES like this is Say What You Say

To the highs. First half was definitely the high point of MBDTF. But The Kiss-Soldier-Say Goodbye Hollywood>>>>
Songs like Sing For The Moment, Till' I Collapse and White America add to the highs as well
Lows on TES would be Say What You Say and Drips.

Features in MBDTF were really good when you look at them one at a time but there is too much of them in some songs. Looking at it like that TES loses here, Obie would have been better in a more serious song or song like Say What You Say but shorter and better
Dr. Dre verse on Business would've been nice, but i already think the song is good.
When The Music Stops is definitely underrated, Bizarre verse actually makes sense there lol

I have to say production on MBDTF is godly, TES has OK production, but MMLP>TES production-wise

This is the first time i actually write anything like this. Call me r-----ed, i don't give a flying f---. But i can say after listening to both albums and writing this review i appreciate MBDTF more than i did before, but it doesn't top TES.

 

Jun 16, 2015

so are you saying his music's tendency to the melodramatic is what made him compelling as a cultural figure? made him zeitgeist defining? sure. totally. it doesn't make the music more, well, compelling. it makes it pretty one-dimensional. (which a lot of great rap can be, i'm just saying.)

if you think the critical world has decided the eminem show is a great album, you need to hang around better critics.

no

 

Jun 16, 2015

Fair enough. I'll have to revisit OBFCL2 I guess. It's been awhile since I've given it a full listen.

 

Jun 16, 2015

disagree, i think the drama eminem injected into his music clearly made him more interesting as an artist. as my professor on r bresson ray carney used to say, an artist needs to convey an imaginative space in their work (this is the underpinning of the auteur theory in a way). eminem at his best absolutely had that -- i suspect most of the great rap artists, individuals describing their world, do.

you're no doubt already aware of that last part, as you hint parenthetically. somehow, deep down however, you reject eminem, in your very fiber. why? is it self loathing? running from some monster, some nightmare.. take a seat on the couch, i have time at 3:30. lets hash this out

 

Jun 16, 2015

popcorn.gif

 

Jun 16, 2015

sigh, no. the parenthetical is something i hoped would work as shorthand, since i think my point was pretty clear. apparently it wasn't. what i'm saying is that, okay, let's look at albums from this year: the rae sremmurd record works in spite of its being one dimensional. the earl sweatshirt record works precisely because it's one dimensional. The Eminem Show aimed to be this huge, zeitgeisty album from the biggest pop star in the world. to do that, you really need to sink your teeth into the nuances of the issues you're dealing with. (eminem also needed to because this is the writing style he chose--square dance only works if it really comes at its targets from a clever angle. he constructed it that way. he failed.) if eminem had made an album that was just rapping for rapping's sake, or was just huge pop singles, fine. but it's designed to be this look at the totality of a conflicted person thrust onto one of the world's biggest stages, and in that respect, it's kinda trite and toothless, no?

 

Jun 16, 2015

i don't see how TES is better than MBDTF

 

Jun 16, 2015

whoa whoa whoa. what the f--- is this? you're sighing? is something wrong with your respiratory mechanics? b/c i know you aren't expressing disappointment in my even kneel assertion about TES's legacy and his fairly obviously, if expired, talent. i can't speak to the album's aims, nor do i think is that particularly relevant in assessing what it gets right. what i do know is this is a fairly successful last gasp from one of the worlds then-biggest stars. (also, not sure why you're picking on square dance, i dance to that.)

with the benefit of it being 2015 (and now that kanye has clearly grabbed that baton and run it into the ground), you may use words like toothless, i suppose, i think it still holds up under the concept of eminem's life at that moment being a giant circus, which is tightly reflected in the production as well as the lyrics. he's tittering on the edge, with the final verse of my dads gone crazy summing up his career/impact/appeal in a way that made essentially 98% of his future output pretty moot.

to me, this is an album designed to be a big, mainstream album, here's 3-4 hits... while also sustaining his angry, put upon, self-righteous brand. its a successful expansion of his persona under the public eye -- i remember being rly taken the first time i heard the start of cleaning out my closet, and hearing him claim he was the one truly being persecuted. that flip so self-serving (and, true, I was 15), and yet, its such a great example of this kind of rock star mentality he had at the time. i guess, ultimately, i dont think its fair to judge TES as a Rap Album like you would, say, something from big boi. This was one of those rare albums from a global superstar in peak form -- under that guise, your notions of failure or triteness kind of miss the point.

 

Jun 16, 2015

we can debate those other points into the ground forever, but we'll never see eye-to-eye on this album because i think you're flat-out wrong here. he wasn't as clever or funny or creative here as he was in 98-99.

 

Jun 16, 2015

debatable, sure, and ill give you perhaps hyperbolic. but as a cultural force, eminem was never more potent than he was here, no? i think you may be underselling his attempts at social commentary -- my overall msg is that eminem was in a space few rappers have inhabited -- TES is the kind of ego-riddled, rock influenced album from a global star the likes of, idk, bono

i assume you concede the rest of my points

 

Jun 16, 2015

lol. stop.

you and i are, as usual, arguing at ever-so-slightly cross purposes. you are prone to talking cultural context, impact, significance (where "culture" is broader american pop culture, not hip-hop). i'm talking very specifically about the music itself. you and i both know that tes would have done nearly identical numbers if it were 30% better or 30% worse.