How Eminem broke racial barriers as white man and became successful in black music space? – Firstpost

In #TheMusicThatMadeUs, senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri chronicles the impact that musicians and their art have on our lives, how they mould the industry by rewriting its rules and how they shape us into the people we become: their greatest legacies

One of the best-selling artists of our time, Eminem (like Elvis) grew up in a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Detroit, only to be mighty influenced by their musical culture at the time. It may be a comparison he hasn’t quite fancied, but Eminem’s early hip-hop influences from his neighbourhood shaped his artistic expression, making him an iconoclast in the typically Black genre.

With provocative lyrics that transgressed various moral and social norms, Eminem burst into the scene in the last 1990s and became a monumental figure who has to this day continued to enjoy a massive fan-following. Having won numerous awards, including 15 Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards, 17 Billboard Music Awards, an Academy Award and an MTV Europe Music Global Icon Award, Eminem was earlier this year inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Recently, he released Curtain Call 2, a sequel to his hit songs album Curtain Call 1, which featured monstrous hits like his Rihanna collaborations “Love the Way You Lie” and “The Monster”, his song “Won’t Back Down” with P!nk, From “The D 2 The LBC” with Snoop Dogg , and “Walk on Water,” which featured Beyonce and Eminem together. This collection also features songs from albums like “Relapse”, “Recovery”, “Hell: The Sequel”, “The Marshall Mathers”, “Revival”, “Kamikaze”, and “Music to Get Murdered By”.

Curtain Call 2 is a great opportunity to look back at what Eminem’s contributions have been in the world of rap and how his song-writing and vocal techniques have played a crucial role in carving a new identity for rappers in a historically coloured genre. Although he’s far sober today from the flagbearer of American angst that he was in the 90s and early 2000s, Eminem continues to be the voice of the very marginalised.

Following his debut album Infinite (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), his move to work with Dr Dre opened the world to Eminem’s staggering talent. In 1999, he introduced us to the epochal The Slim Shady LP that cemented his legacy as a prolific poet and a rapper par excellence. Over the years, he has frequently shown the impact of his rock influences like Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin , unafraid to experiment with sound, meter and lyricism.

We have seen how his creation of alter egos be it Slim Shady or Ken Kaniff has given him suitable distance from himself to sing about so many things that occupy his mind space. Often even Eminem’s most gruesome description is served with a generous helping of self-deprecation, making the gut-wrenching nature of many a song suddenly more light-hearted.

Through the sadistic, violent alter ego Slim Shady, Eminem prima facie sang about homicide, rape and drugs. When you look beneath the layers of the songs’ in-you-face shocking lyrics, you recognise the underlying thread of frustration over being impoverished, how marriages can break down and families can come apart because of unresolved issues of violence, sexual perversion and economic fringes.

Slim Shady and Ken Kaniff reappear multiple times over a career that has seen albums such as The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002), both of whom were contenders for Grammy Album of the Year, Relapse (2009) and Recovery was released the following year. Among his many credits is the Oscar he won for Lose Yourself from the soundtrack of 8 Mile , where he played a fictionalised version of himself.

The Academy Award made him the first hip-hop artist to win the coveted Oscar for Best Original Song, taking him to the peak within a genre that he has grown into. Through his Shady Records, Eminem is directly responsible for many new age rappers who he launched, including the inimitable 50 Cent.

He has never shied away from collaborating with seemingly disparate artists and giving his unique flavour to their musical identities. In fact, his sampling of Dido’s “Thank You” in “Stan” and move to use her in his video, brought a very unusual perspective to both their works. Stan’s epistolary technique and the vulnerability with which he explored the idea of being a dangerously obsessive fan was peak Eminem eloquence.

Few artists had addressed what maniacal fandom can be like and Eminem managed to do so without pointing fingers, thus giving us an opportunity to understand how precarious celebrityhood can be as well. In the process, he gave our lexicon the word “stan”, denoting a whole different level of fan following, casually but cautiously bordering on being a “stalker” and a “fan”.

The fluency he shows with his lyrics though has been absent in many feuds and runs-in he has had with his contemporaries. Eminem’s struggles with drug abuse have frequently made their way into his music, creating a big draw with his fans as they have lapped up his willingness to be candid about a time that has seen him at his weakest. Eminem has through his rage, his rhyme and his rap, has created a hip-hop legacy that holds its own within the historically Black genre of music.

Not since the Beastie Boys had a white rapper captured our imagination worldwide with the genre having made inroads into places that reeked of white privilege. Eminem, a white man who sang so often of not having the same opportunities, made the genre more relatable and so much more inclusive.

Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles.

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