Eminem
Inventive title, ho!
One of my favorite artists of the past ten years is the aforementioned rapper, which is something that would probably surprise quite a few people, and most conservatives would probably think I'm going to hell expressly for liking him.
First off, just about anything backed by Dre, I can listen to and enjoy. Both 50 Cent and The Game fit into that category. I'm not the biggest fans of theirs, though, since their fare generally runs more to the standard hip hop material of parties, strutting, and occasionally rapping about what their ghetto is like. It's interesting, but I can't identify it, really. Overland wasn't the best of areas, but it certainly wasn't a ghetto. Anyway, Dre behind the beats makes just about any song listenable, so there's that.
Beyond that, there are generally two things that separates Eminem from his contemporaries. The first is his general style, which is to say he doesn't have much of one. One review I read of him stated that his breath control is amazing, and I have to agree. He certainly doesn't have the speed of a Twista, but lyrically, he's capable of going a lot longer than just about anyone I've heard. There are songs of his that I simply cannot sing along with because I run out of breath about half way before he breathes. He also has a capacity to generate lyrics which are interesting simply from a phonetic standpoint, which is really the core of rap as a purely technical music form. I've said before that rap is poetry set to music, but now I think there's more than that. The really good artists have a means of generating a phonetic sound that goes beyond that. There's really very little meter, but there is a similar discipline behind it, it's a rawer form. In a way, the form relies a lot more on alliteration than it does on rhyming, though the difference is slight.
But I get away from myself, Eminem does this better than any one else. If you can divorce the phonics from the words, he generates a rhythm that almost no other artist does. This is why when he's going on about the normal fare, I can still get into the song.
The second reason I can get behind Eminem is that there is an artistic quality to his work. Talking with Jaryd and Joe about hip hop, something that we're all very weirdly familiar with (doubly so considering we're all suburban white geeks), I compared Eminem to Edgar Allen Poe, and they both looked at me with a bit of shock, but it's a comparison I think fits very well. There is the obvious darkness comparison, both of their art carries a very dark feel, but so does Marilyn Manson. Eminem uses that darkness as an art, that he delves into the macabre to evoke emotion, rather than purely to shock.
This post came up from a listening of "Kim," which, along with "Kill You" are Eminem's most controversial songs. Kim, in particular, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. While he's rhyming about killing his girlfriend in pretty graphic descriptions, there is an underlying emotion which comes across through the song. While I can't say it's up there with the greats of culture and whatnought, it is a very effective vehicle. He goes to lengths that the vast majority of humanity will not go to, and in so doing says all the things that we all think when we get angry.
The simple premise of being cheated on by a girlfriend is somewhat overdone as an emotional vehicle, which is why I feel such a song is more refreshing than offensive. Rather than pining away like your average Stabbing Westward song, he's expressing his pain through anger, a phase that is one of the steps to getting over things.
I wholly think that his critics don't look at it as art, they look at it as hate, and I can somewhat understand that. Go look up the lyrics to Kim, and you'll find some pretty bad shit in there. But at the same time, I can listen to that song, and relate it to a recent breakup. While that statement will likely scare a lot of people, it's not the anger, necessarily I identify with, it's the pain. Similar thoughts go through everyone's head, something that is very well done in the movie Closer, where there are two very awkward situations of break ups where there is the standard grilling session that comes after breaking up, wondering why, wondering what went wrong.
There, it's sadness, it's an expression of loss and emptiness, which is only one of the myriad of emotions that go on there. Eminem's song expresses the same situation and emotion, but instead looks at it from a different angle. It's quite obvious to me that he did not kill Kim, unless there's some alien simulacrum running around. It's a horrific song, don't get me wrong, but the thing about it is that it's supposed to be horrific. When you see the first murder victim in Seven, you get the same emotion. Shock, horror, fear. But beneath that is artistic intent. There is a story there, a reason to continue watching. It is not Jackass, where the intent is simply to make you go "ew." That I can't get behind.
But saying and showing horrible things can be artfully done, even if I never watch Seven anymore unless it's the edited version...:P
One of my favorite artists of the past ten years is the aforementioned rapper, which is something that would probably surprise quite a few people, and most conservatives would probably think I'm going to hell expressly for liking him.
First off, just about anything backed by Dre, I can listen to and enjoy. Both 50 Cent and The Game fit into that category. I'm not the biggest fans of theirs, though, since their fare generally runs more to the standard hip hop material of parties, strutting, and occasionally rapping about what their ghetto is like. It's interesting, but I can't identify it, really. Overland wasn't the best of areas, but it certainly wasn't a ghetto. Anyway, Dre behind the beats makes just about any song listenable, so there's that.
Beyond that, there are generally two things that separates Eminem from his contemporaries. The first is his general style, which is to say he doesn't have much of one. One review I read of him stated that his breath control is amazing, and I have to agree. He certainly doesn't have the speed of a Twista, but lyrically, he's capable of going a lot longer than just about anyone I've heard. There are songs of his that I simply cannot sing along with because I run out of breath about half way before he breathes. He also has a capacity to generate lyrics which are interesting simply from a phonetic standpoint, which is really the core of rap as a purely technical music form. I've said before that rap is poetry set to music, but now I think there's more than that. The really good artists have a means of generating a phonetic sound that goes beyond that. There's really very little meter, but there is a similar discipline behind it, it's a rawer form. In a way, the form relies a lot more on alliteration than it does on rhyming, though the difference is slight.
But I get away from myself, Eminem does this better than any one else. If you can divorce the phonics from the words, he generates a rhythm that almost no other artist does. This is why when he's going on about the normal fare, I can still get into the song.
The second reason I can get behind Eminem is that there is an artistic quality to his work. Talking with Jaryd and Joe about hip hop, something that we're all very weirdly familiar with (doubly so considering we're all suburban white geeks), I compared Eminem to Edgar Allen Poe, and they both looked at me with a bit of shock, but it's a comparison I think fits very well. There is the obvious darkness comparison, both of their art carries a very dark feel, but so does Marilyn Manson. Eminem uses that darkness as an art, that he delves into the macabre to evoke emotion, rather than purely to shock.
This post came up from a listening of "Kim," which, along with "Kill You" are Eminem's most controversial songs. Kim, in particular, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. While he's rhyming about killing his girlfriend in pretty graphic descriptions, there is an underlying emotion which comes across through the song. While I can't say it's up there with the greats of culture and whatnought, it is a very effective vehicle. He goes to lengths that the vast majority of humanity will not go to, and in so doing says all the things that we all think when we get angry.
The simple premise of being cheated on by a girlfriend is somewhat overdone as an emotional vehicle, which is why I feel such a song is more refreshing than offensive. Rather than pining away like your average Stabbing Westward song, he's expressing his pain through anger, a phase that is one of the steps to getting over things.
I wholly think that his critics don't look at it as art, they look at it as hate, and I can somewhat understand that. Go look up the lyrics to Kim, and you'll find some pretty bad shit in there. But at the same time, I can listen to that song, and relate it to a recent breakup. While that statement will likely scare a lot of people, it's not the anger, necessarily I identify with, it's the pain. Similar thoughts go through everyone's head, something that is very well done in the movie Closer, where there are two very awkward situations of break ups where there is the standard grilling session that comes after breaking up, wondering why, wondering what went wrong.
There, it's sadness, it's an expression of loss and emptiness, which is only one of the myriad of emotions that go on there. Eminem's song expresses the same situation and emotion, but instead looks at it from a different angle. It's quite obvious to me that he did not kill Kim, unless there's some alien simulacrum running around. It's a horrific song, don't get me wrong, but the thing about it is that it's supposed to be horrific. When you see the first murder victim in Seven, you get the same emotion. Shock, horror, fear. But beneath that is artistic intent. There is a story there, a reason to continue watching. It is not Jackass, where the intent is simply to make you go "ew." That I can't get behind.
But saying and showing horrible things can be artfully done, even if I never watch Seven anymore unless it's the edited version...:P
posted by Kindralas at 9:02 AM
3 Comments:
I don't like hip hop, or rap, or Eminem. Like Cobain, I wonder how much of his stance is art and how much is pose. Thus do the generations split. Let us now listen to NIN.
I swear to God my word verification word was "heesy."
Well, I think I touched on this, but didn't necessarily elaborate. There is a definite portion of the hip hop world which is pure posturing. The perfect example of this was on VH1's public service announcement on hip hop which was actually very interesting and informative to me.
They discussed Biggie and Tupac's murders, and pointed toward the circumstances leading to Biggie's death. All of his friends told him not to go to the west coast, that the feud had gone so far that it wasn't simply a rap battle anymore. He ignored them, trying to piece things together, and show some solidarity, and got shot for it.
But, the message that got to me was this: You listen to a lot of Tupac's songs (there are some quality exceptions), it follows in the same vein as most rap, or at least, the stereotyped version. Tons of posturing. But if you look at Tupac's history, he wasn't a gangbanger. He was not a gang member. Very few rappers are (actually, I can only think of three which truly lived the life they rap about, Snoop, 50, and Game).
If you look at 90% of rapper's rap sheets at the local police department, you'll find nothing. But people don't generally see that. When some guy is preaching and glamorizing the thug life, he must have lived it, right?
I disdain the posturing, because it's not real. Rappers like Nas and Mos Def, who have seen things, but not done things, and rap about seeing things, and not doing things, are a bit of an inspiration in rap music. Most have seen and not done, but rap about doing, which strikes me as a slap in the face of those who've done, if you understand my meaning.
So I generally don't get behind those sorts of rappers. But street cred being what it is, they have to do something to get attention. Luckily, for those of us who are a fan of the genre but not the lifestyle, the genre has trended more toward rapping what what you know, and less toward street cred. The two biggest hip hop acts of the moment follow this vein: Eminem and Outkast, and both can be exceptional and surprising in their artistic vision and statement.
Hip hop is not a musical form for everyone, just like country and classical aren't. The removal of melody from the structure turns people off. But, as I pointed out to Jon, who isn't a hip hop fan, and doesn't understand, but understands music, hip hop's greatest enemy is dissonance. The art is based far more on expectation than normal musical styles, to the point of removing anything which might generate anything unexpected, including melody, which one could view as tasteful dissonance.
The hip hop that I enjoy the most doesn't go completely to the extreme. Dre and Outkast, especially, are excellent artists in the vein of creating a melodically devoid hip hop beat, and then putting a song along with it.
One final thought, however: Ask the average white hip-hop fan what he thinks of Britney Spears. Almost universally, you will hear revulsion. Why? Because she doesn't write her songs.
Neither do hip hop artists. They just write lyrics. Lyrics are not music, they're poetry. There has to be something more than meter to be music.
Actually, one more thing: Hip hop is without a doubt the best musical form to listen to while doing something else which occupies your attention. Example, currently listening to Mockingbird, by Eminem, and in ignoring the lyrics, there is an appeal to the simple phonic structure of the rap over the melody.
It's something difficult to explain, and led Gwen and I to have a rather heated discussion once. She wondered why I don't write. The answer is that I don't feel it. I never have felt art. Very rarely does anything artistic evoke an emotional reaction to me. She told me that was very sad, which led me to wonder why.
I am, more than anything, a puzzle solver. I am rarely happy if I don't have something to figure out in front of me. Therefore, I can appreciate rap because it is a very base art form. Where poetry has a lyrical quality that is appealing, rap music goes a step further, focusing on compound syllables and slant rhymes.
One analogy I can make is that poetry is about the visual, about using words to generate an image. Hip hop's somewhat bastardized version is about the audio. From a certain perspective, the whole of hip hop can be considered the greatest study of phonics ever done.
But it is quite understandable if not everyone finds phonics and the art of making words that shouldn't mesh well phonetically do so interesting.
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