Will Eminem's "Recovery" Bring On the "Death of Schtick"?

(ORIGINALLY POSTED ON TAN3000; but I'll be getting into this Death of Schtick more so we put it over here also)

On Eminem's "Recovery", Jon Caramanica offers another quality submission for his budding cachet as hip hop's GOAT journalist of the moment. (i extend the props to, one, note that GOAT debates in hip hop are somewhat silly, always of the moment, and, two, to point out that JC Manic's GOAT skills fall under an Obama-esque "The Bridge" rubric, which underscores that while others might be more pointedly pushing hip hop thought forward, the bridge is what allows everyone to get on the same island and build together. Hopefully with a more solid expansive foundation. It's why guys like Gladwell and Klosterman are celebrated as geniuses and then get backlash when everyone is on the island looking for somewhere new to go. There's two different types of pioneers at work here, both doing necessary-but-different work, but i digress...)

I'm still marinating with Eminem's latest work, so I'm just adding a couple extra nuggets/points of entry. But I do agree with Em being "one of the most crucial figures in pop culture in the last 20 years" and even more. So needless to say I'll be revisiting, probably often, but for now:

1. Eminem as genie in a bottle: Caramanica does a great job, and an important one, I think, in putting a bubble/walls around Eminem's early pop supernova success. Those albums, that time, and everything else is a case study in and of itself. Specifically because Eminem is still a freakishly genius manipulator of language and words, yet doesn't carry the same cachet/popularity. So we can discern that an ingredient in his radioactive success from before is no longer present, and has nothing to do with his actual human talents.

2. Slim Shady as one of the great "fictional characters": it might help us reconcile Em's artistry to look at those early albums like a series for a fictional character. Treat them as a "phillip rothian doppelganger gambit", like the latest from Brett Easton Ellis. That might not be a spot on analogy, but mostly I want to avoid these terrible NY Times interviews that feel inappropriate in a bad-meaning-bad way... better to err on the side of the wrong book than completely not appreciate how much of a writer-athlete Em is. (that last link should go to a facebook thread with hip hop bloggers discussing a bad NYTimes interview with em, if not friend/fan Jay Smooth/illdoctrine who should be a regular part of your cultural diet regiment anyways)

3. Eminem as David Foster Wallace:

On Eminem's New Video "We Made You", and What's Different This Time Around

The new eminem video is in rotation on every urban hip hop blog at the moment. Because of Em's departure from the game it actually provides perspective on how far technology, new media etc have come since Marshall Mathers was last dominating the scene.

Back when he first blew up, if you were looking for minority (as in smaller, not racial/cultural) opinions and voices you had to go out of your way to seek them out. The public perception/reception of an artist was part of the whole music marketing infrastructure where the money/labels controlled the message. But now anything that comes out is guaranteed to have a good spread of Stans, Haters, Crazies, Thoughtful Opinionators chorusing in the comments.

In Eminem's case specifically, his albums have always had an intriguingly stark dichotomy between his white people songs and black people songs: he had the mainstream songs intended for mass consumption, lush with pop culture references sing-song hooks, and rhyme-schemed for accessibility. Then he had those songs that reflected his background as an underground emcee used to freestyling, battles, dense hyper-lyricism-as-end. This is the former:



You can argue Em's pop rhyming is still denser/"harder" than most, but it's really about the artist intent. At the turn of the century it would have been difficult to get a comprehensive sense of the response to this ethnocultural dichotomy in his music, though everyone was certainly aware of it. You could get it out of reviews from journalists that ponder such angles, but not direct from the masses. Without having a melange of multicultural friends with varying degrees of background and interest in hip hop it was all speculation as to whether "My Name Is" or "Without Me" was cheesy to the black dude who grew up with hip hop, vs. the white girl in college who loved it. That sort of thread. But now it's something you can track closely via the related niche blogs, and, as I see it, it sort of platforms the art/music/product as window into the thin-slicing mind.

um, in mercifully shorter terms: a song like this is made to provoke reactions; it's almost more of an art piece than his actual "serious" songs. But it's only now in 2009 that we have the ability to treat it as such, before all takeaways were tied to its ability to generate money.

Will Oren Yoel Be Asher Roth's Dr. Dre?

I haven't given much (read: any) attention to Asher Roth, the seeming PG-13 Eminem sequel. I think that's changing now after having peeped the second video. White or black, any emcee is going to need beats if he's going to blow, and this one is a banger. Asher always had skills, but now he might have his Dre:

(Asher Roth's album, Asleep in the Bread Aisle is dropping April 20th (4/20) *WINK*
Eminem's Relapse is dropping May 19th.

methinks we'll see these two names linked together again. illroots got to peep Asher's"As I Em" and it's supposed to be nice.)

should be an interesting beat to pick up. and speaking of, said album production is held down mostly by Oren Yoel. so yeah, we're going to see what frat-rap has to offer, but some new blood on the production front would be a most excellent development.

I Don't Know If He's "Back", But A Relapse Is Definitely In Effect

Looks like Eminem has gotten over that whole "IT'S GOTTA BE PERFECT!" thing all creative folk deal with (the good ones tend to have that issue, at least), and is returning to the hip hop landscape.

Mp3's are starting to leak, video snips are starting to spread, and the publicity machine is revving up as only it can for the blonde hip hop wonder. And his return is a two-prong attack...

Officially: His book/memoir, The Way I Am, written with Sacha Jenkins comes out next Tuesday. Music aside, Marshall and Sacha are two of the most creative, smart, compelling minds in hip hop so I'm looking forward to peeping that.

Even more intriguing, however, is the "long-awaited" album, Relapse. There isn't an official release date, but looks like it's definitely coming out before the year's end.

For the most part Eminem's recent appearances have been skillful, but lethargic and not particularly entertaining. What one might expect from a once-hot rapper now dealing with fatherhood and the rest of the world that doesn't care about a hot 16.

Jay-Z dropped The Black Album, his best album, then retired (technically), and has since been fading into old age and diminished relevancy.

But Em is an artist who gives hope for countering that loss of edge. And unlike Jay's Kingdom Come it sounds like his mind is in the right place. From Detroit Free Press:

"I can tell you this much: Slim Shady is back. Not Marshall Mathers," he said. "Slim Shady, that jackass everybody fell in love with? Yeah, he's back."

White People Like Stuff

So, the blog Stuff White People Like continues to grow as a phenomenon. The site's over 15M hits and counting, and Christian -- who I interviewed before he got a publicist and media gag order -- has apparently managed to cash in his Wire-inspired Moment of Zen to the tune of a quarter million dollars or so. As those crazy caucasians like to say: Huzzah!

The Houston Chronicle got in on the action yesterday and name-dropped TAN as THE progenitor of racial conflict. Aww. That's very kind of them.

Proof is in the pudding, so suffice to say SWPL has more lovers than haters. But the backlashers are getting restless. To wit: The Root and The New Republic put down extended efforts at shooting The Man down in his tracks. I'm a SWPL fan, but The Root's piece is a pretty thorough critique from the black perspective. The site might prove a final data point to flesh out an Eminem Effect or whatever, where black backlash rises according to a white person's success at exploiting a pillar of black culture. Cause making fun of white people was around long before Jazz and Hip Hop, knahmean? Sheeit, we know white people better than we know ourselves. Cracka-ass Cracka is like our second language. Christian has some hot lyrics, but for an audience raised on Pryor, Murphy, Rock, Chappelle etc. ... it's gonna be weird to see the "sensation" in it all.

Anyrace ... maybe there's an "Obama Effect" on all race-related content and media this year. Between The Wire and The Big O, I've been getting a lot of dap high-fives from random white people on the street. There's definitely something special in the air

'Stuff White People Like' Book Sold To Random House [NY Observer]
Race-Related Blog Causing Controversy [Houston Chronicle]
Why I Don't Like Stuff White People Like [The Root]
From Blogs To Riches [Washington Post]
Why White People Like SWPL [The New Republic]

The TAN 25 Hip Hop Albums

Joey over at Straight Bangin' decided to try and compile a list of the Top 25 Greatest Hip Hop Albums. "Greatest" was eventually deemed too overblown with ulterior connotations and was changed to "Favorite" as hip hop bloggers began to send in their lists. Since the project was announced Passion of the Weiss has joined the accounting team to help crunch the numbers; Weiss has also posted a list with some of the other hip hop bloggers who are participating (Byron Crawford, Dallas Penn, Start Snitchin' to name three), and done some digging into those albums that didn't make his top 25 cut.

I hope to write more about some of these albums, hip hop's affinity for lists, and why some albums didn't make the cut, but for now, without further delay, here is the TAN 25.


1. Midnight Marauders - this album deserves a coronation ceremony as the greatest hip hop album of all time, it makes everyone's top ## list.

2. The Black Album - I would say all of Jay's value and worth is wrapped up in this album; I would argue it's the most important album since the turn of the century. There is a lot more to say about this one.

3. De La Soul Is Dead - The masterpiece from the hip hop artist's hip hop artists.

4. Like Water For Chocolate - Common's first three albums are all classic, but I submit this as his zenith, it's an album for just about any occasion.

5. Marshall Mathers LP - Its interesting how compartmentalized the Eminem era has become with more distance; nevertheless at his peak hip hop doesn't get any better.

6. Donuts - The most contemporary album to make the cut, Dilla's instrumental/beat opus is a perfect record for these iTimes.

7. Things Fall Apart - The Roots opus, if I had to give someone an album that would make them a fan of The Roots this is the one. I only wish the Badu/J. Scott live version of U Got Me from Chappelle's Block Party was on this album.

8. Mama Said Knock You Out - This is the album that makes LL stand for Living Legend. Arguably the most versatile mainstream emcee ever.

9. The Infamous - Prodigy's lyrical performance on this pushes it above and beyond. With their first two albums The Mobb helped usher in the street thug era as much as BIG and Jay did.

10. Muddy Waters - After a great debut, and an interesting artist statement with Dare Iz A Darkside, everything clicked on the third album, Reggie Noble's best.

11. 36 Chambers - The Wu debut is a no-brainer, and hasn't been surpassed by any of their members individually, or as a collective, since.

12. Liquid Swords - Well except that, for me, Wu Tang loses a lot of appeal if you don't include GZA. This is the quintessential emcee's album.

13. Illmatic - One intriguing revelation discovered in making this list is that I consider Liquid Swords and Illmatic about the same. I'd probably give Illmatic the edge for production variety, but then again that makes it less cohesive than Swords.

14. Paid In Full - Rakim was way ahead of the curve, this album has all his classic joints.

15. The Great Adventures of Slick Rick - The storyteller, the slick personality, and the voice. Slick Rick was always a uniquely refreshing emcee, and one of the few able to walk the thin line ... "Hey Young World" was the song other emcees could never do.

16. A Prince Among Thieves - This is my baby, the album that's least likely to be found on other lists. It's the ultimate concept album. Taken as individual parts, it wouldn't quite add up, but seen as a whole it may be the most beautiful and complete project hip hop has ever created. When we talk about the future, I think this album needs to be in the conversation. Surely Chris Rock thought so also when he purchased the rights for his film production company.

17. Long Live The Kane - Kane, a pantheon emcee; I'm not positive this his best, but I'll go with it, and he needs to be on here.

18. The Score - I suspect I like Lauren's album better, but I'm not sure that's hip hop enough. Fugees had a great formula, if one of the male emcees was better lyrically, they may have been the greatest of all time.

19. The Chronic - Dre changed the world with this one. Not as consistent as I'd like to remember, and wish I could combine this with selected joints from Doggystyle, but whatever.

20. Enta Da Stage - Classic east coast hip hop. The Beatminers pushed this one over the top.

21. Internal Affairs - Pharoahe is the most slept on. He does it all, and does it on this album.

22. Criminal Minded - KRS needs a slot, his albums can be inconsistent, but you can't go wrong with this one.

23. The Main Ingredient - PR and CL need to have a slot on my list, they held me down. I'm not positive this is better than the mecca and the soul brother, but its definitely not worse, and its not mentioned nearly as often. Mecca established them, but this album made them a household name in hip hop.

24. Takes A Nation of Millions ... - you can only go so far before mentioning this. Its lower on the list simply because everyone loves it, and I find it a little inconsistent, but if you're making a true "greatest" or "most important" this clearly vaults near the top.

25. Ready To Die/Straight Outta Compton - tie for the last slot. I think the first 4 or 5 joints on Straight Outta Compton are as good as it gets, but I don't ride it all the way through. And I don't jock BIG as much as everyone else, much rather have a collection of his assorted hits than either of his albums riding all the way through.

And there you have it, I think final numbers get crunched this week but if you want to submit a list, send it to me, or leave it in the comments, and I'll pass it on to Passion & Bangin' LLC.

What's Your Soundtrack?

Someone sent this in to me, and I thought I'd play along.

IF YOUR LIFE WERE A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...


Opening Credits: Stan - Eminem
Waking Up: Rocket Man - Elton John
First Day at School: We Need A Resolution - Aaliyah
Falling In Love: Mad Crew - KRS-One
Fight Song: Don't Stop Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson
Breaking Up: Speed Of Sound - Coldplay
Prom: Bad - Michael Jackson
Life: No Idea's Original - Nas
Mental Breakdown: Lose My Breath - Destiny's Child
Driving: The Basics (2.1) - Jor-El
Flashback: At Last - Joss Stone
Wedding: Cradle To The Grave - Mobb Deep
Birth of Child: You Can't Hurry Love - Diana Ross & The Supremes
Final Battle: I'm Like A Bird - Nelly Furtado
Death Scene: Flava In Ya Ear (freestyle) - Jay-Z
Funeral Song: These Three Words - Stevie Wonder
End Credit: One Eleven - Jay Dee

Notes:
I didn't cheat. And there are a number of oddly appropriate couplings, "Waking Up," "Breaking Up," and "Funeral Song" are striking. Mad Crew and Flava In Ya Ear are amusing associations for "Falling In Love" and "Death Scene." I'm glad one of my songs made the cut (The Basics 2.1), and that song is great for driving. So yeah, that was fun...

The Incredibly Wack Emcee's Incredibly Wack Bio

So glad you're peeping my bio. It’s definitely going to be the highlight of the package here...

There are a lot of good emcees out there, but I’m not one of them. I am so wack. It’s kind of preposterous how wack I am. If I wasn't so wack I'd be able to come up with a song or even a line or two that vividly illustrates a preposterous level of wackness, and my symbiotic relationship with said level. I’m so wack you have to peep out when I’m on a track and cop my EP because it might just be the wackest shit you ever heard in your life. You’re not going to want to download, you’re going to want to buy this incredibly wack shit. You can make a profit on E-Bay off the "buy it now" wacktitude. Monumentally wack. Colossally wack. A benchmark moment in the history of wackness. My lyrics are corny. I bite off only the wackest of emcees. I have no rhythm or timing. No cadence. No substance. My voice can hardly be made out, the soft whisper of nails on a chalkboard. I have a taste for wack beats. I like to fake sing, but I’m not good at it. And I don’t mean not good like Pharrell not good … I mean “please turn that wack ni**a off NOW” not good. I’m pretty ugly … missing a couple teeth. And it’s not a cute missing of a couple teeth, it’s a “please turn that wack ni**a off NOW, because he’s wack, and he looks nasty with no teeth in his mouth” missing of a couple teeth. Did I mention the pimples on my face leak puss whenever the temperature goes over eighty degrees? My clothes are holy, ratty, and smelly. In battles I freeze up like Eminem in the beginning of 8 Mile, but that's the end of the movie. Well, except the scene where he gets f*cked up. And the scene where some other ni**a is banging my girl. I experience those scenes on a daily basis. At my best I’m the guy who says punchlines that elicit nothing but silence. Sometimes my punchlines make people want to punch me (see previous nine words for an example). I get other MC’s real pumped up because they know in a battle they’re going to get in my ass with just a couple lines, and have the crowd covering their mouths with their hand saying "ooooooooohhhhh snap, oooooohhhhh dip!" if I wasn't so wack I'd know people don't use "oh snap" or "oh dip" anymore.

Word … so peep me out. I’m history in the making. Coming to a mic near you …

(all descriptions, physical and otherwise, inspired by that ugly ni**a TAN himself)

Cracka CrackDown! - "Too Many Crackas Rapping" Edition

Ok. Most everyone was down with the SNL "Lazy Sunday" Chronicles of Narnia song/video. You might not have agreed with Slate's Josh Levin that it could save hip hop, but it was certainly funny and entertaining.

Then the Natalie Portman joint dropped. And of course Natalie's so hot-cute that it'd be impossible to hate on her. Plus she was pretty funny. But the laugh wasn't as full-bellied as before. Those who listened close heard the faint whisper (gasp?) of concern underneath the bemused chortling. Was it a free-for-all on rappin' crackas ?? Natalie represented a dangerous line, and the risk was obvious.

Sure enough ... The Tipping Point - starring Jodie Foster.




Ahhh, the bittersweet taste of assimilation. No one ever said it was going to be all interracial mating, Eminem (in his prime), and seersucker shorts. But regardless, I'm thinking that's just about a wrap on the middle-aged women rapping at graduation ceremonies. Please surrender your microphone to the nearest person of color. Thanks for playing.

(yes, I discovered this later than others)
Jodie Covers Em [stereogum]
Calves Yes, Rapping No [No Parachute]
Lamest Speech Award [The Superficial]
~
Cracka CrackDown! - Enron Edition [TAN]

How TAN-Man Saved Hip Hop By Killing Himself ... Someday

So I posted earlier about killing yourself to get a little extra notoriety.

Now I admit, killing yourself might be a little sensational, and beside the point, maybe, but the real thrust of the idea was about hip hop marketing.

I asked CopyRanter what was going on hip-hop-styley during Ad Week, and he responded, "what is this hippity hoppity you speak of. I don't want my hips to start hopping anytime soon thank you. Please leave me be Negro."

Which got me thinking. That's not a good response for any self-respecting hip hop lover to hear. And then I thought some more. Maybe hip hop was absent because right now it is at a crossroad. Most people (in fact most anything that evolves) face a crossroad, or turning point, somewhere in that twenty to thirty age range.

This is the stage hip hop is at now, and it’s trying to find a new voice, a new brand identity.

When hip hop started, the message was very clear: this is the street, this is raw, this is the underbelly of the beast. If you brought hip hop into your house, there were actual pieces of street left in the living room. Along with the guns, forties, and blunts.

And hip hop was viral because the message and product were all intertwined in one neat anti-neat package.

“somebody … anybody … everybody … SCREAM!!!”



*this space is allotted for post interaction - i.e. screaming*

*go ahead, don’t be shy … scream*



So this was very effective when the startup Hip Hop Inc was putting itself on the map. It found its niche and spread.

Seth doesn’t mention it in the books of his that I’ve read, but hip hop is a prime example of the effectiveness of an idea virus.

In the mid-late 90s, Puffy added glam and polish to the basic message. He made it fun and glossy and constantly “remixed,” but he re-mixed things we knew. Like any savvy marketing mind he realized there’s nothing new under the sun, so it’s about mixing familiar themes/basslines/samples into new translations. He made hip hop more Purple. And it wasn’t just the music/product. He also tweaked the message. With Puff we really begin to see the evolution from criminality that is politicized and/or angry (like an NWA or Public Enemy), to a crime that is now about empowerment. It’s about capital and capitalism. Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. It used to be more about the fight and independence, because that’s all you had. You, your heart, and your pride. But with Notorious BIG as the ultimate pitchman, the message became one of Thinking Man’s crime. “How we gonna make this money so we can live how we want to live?” This familiar, but slightly remixed, hip hop package exploded with Puff at the helm.

This, as opposed to say Sean John, is Puff and Biggie’s real legacy. They were market leaders when hip hop graduated from Underground University and began having to pay some bills. Throw in the West Coast franchising and this is how hip hop began to rise up the ranks in the Capitalist Hive.

But now hip hop is at a new stage. It needs something new to sneeze about.

A lot of people look at Eminem’s emergence in 99-00 as a big race issue, an example of the great white rapper being chosen by his people.

And I’m certainly not going to argue race as a big intriguing factor. But I think it’s important to acknowledge Eminem’s stylized emotional accessibility as another message-shift in the hip hop marketing plan. Artists who didn’t follow the criminality-as-capitalism formula setup by Biggie and Pac and Nas and Jay-Z didn’t usually do anything “unique and different” so much as they did anti-crime music. No new currency, just two sides of the same coin.

But Em brought new money with him. And it’s probably worth mentioning at this point that when I say "Em did this" and "Biggie did that," it doesn’t mean absolutely no other artist did any of these things, I believe in the idea pool, it just means they were the big-popular-known name. I think Eminem's influence can be summed up via one line that he used in radio freestyles, “I don’t sell crack, I smoke it.”

The sensibility of that line is what turned hip hop on its head a little. You could argue that such a line could never be uttered by a black artist. This is where race enters the equation in a big way. Once Em got over the initial hurdle of his race, the once insurmountable obstacle became the ultimate safety net. Em had freedom to express whatever his crazy/demented/artistic mind could come up with. And because Em remained so loyal to the hip hop motif, his message changed the product, hip hop opened its eyes and realized it too could express whatever its crazy/demented/artistic mind could come up with.

So when I go from NWA to Eminem to Kanye West I don't see a racial through-line. What I do see is an attempt to find a newer, better, and more accessible brand identity.

But it is again time for change.

The marketing of empowerment through hip hop will always be viable. But it's no longer where the blood is drawn from, it's no longer "the edge." That era peaked with College Dropouts Getting Rich or Dying To Try.

Dying to try ... that brings it back to killing yourself for notoriety.

My hope and dream is that i will be able to make a contribution to the next message shift for hip hop. That is, at least partially, the purpose of The Assimilated Negro.

There is something in this rapping, and blogging, and hip hop, and marketing that signals a shift.

And I'm going to be part of it, even if I have to Kill Myself to make it known.


ok. now back to jokes and jokes and jokes ...

Blue Notes -- "My Name's Not" (audio)

"My Name's Not" is an obvious parody on "My Name Is" by Eminem.

It's been a polarizing selection from the catalogue over the years. People either get with the program and love the tongue-in-cheekery ... or they say "what the hell is this" ... especially in shows after you've just done a real serious/hardcore song.

There's also been an interesting lifecycle, where when it was first done, not terribly long after the initial Eminem breaks into hip hop phase, it was nice. Then there was a period, where it was like, "who the f*ck are you to do be doing a parody of Eminem, our lord, god, and saviour." Now time has passed, and Eminemers have some perspective, I think this bit has held up well.

"I'm so obsessed, I vish I vas a honkey ..."

holla ...



where's the lyrics?