Online Reporter
DETROIT. − To understand how Eminem came to define the early-2000s zeitgeist with The Marshall Mathers LP, you have to rewind a few years to his entry into the music business.
Having grown up with a single mother in a trailer park in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit, a young Marshall Mathers, who was bullied at school for being poor, found solace in the bulletproof raps of artists like Ice-T and LL Cool J.
“We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked. I’m not trying to give some sob story, like, ‘Oh, I’ve been broke all my life’, but people who know me know it’s true,” Eminem revealed in a 1999 interview with Spin magazine.
He also explained there were times when friends had to buy him shoes, declaring:
“I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour”.
This was a white rapper who was truly part of the US’s tragic inner-city struggle, and the antithesis to Vanilla Ice, who had come to the fore in the early-’90s and was criticised for embellishing his street ties.
Eminem wrote his first lyrics as a teenager, graduating to cult status within Detroit’s battle-rap scene, where the witty emcee would astound opponents with his jugular-aiming freestyles.
Eminem’s insouciance and darkness were the love languages of the ‘00s kid, who was just old or jaded enough to be embarrassed by respectable teen pop stars according to Craig Jenkins
This period was later immortalised in the 2003 Oscar-winning, semi-autobiographical film 8 Mile, which bagged Eminem a best song Oscar for Lose Yourself, and established him as hip hop’s Rocky Balboa.
He often flipped the slur of being “white trash” on its head in these early battles, turning his biggest weakness into a verbal dagger.
After achieving success in 1997 at the celebrated battle-rap competition, The Rap Olympics, in Los Angeles, Eminem caught the attention of Interscope Records intern Dean Geistlinge, who passed his demo tape over to an instantly impressed Dr Dre.
They quickly put out the 1999 debut, The Slim Shady LP, on Aftermath Records.
It was a commercial success, going on to sell 10 million copies worldwide.
However, with its follow-up a year later, it felt like Eminem was becoming more and more of a potent generational voice, with a clearer three-dimensional backstory.
The original artwork for The Marshall Mathers LP sees the rapper sitting on the porch of his down-at-heel childhood home, the windows all boarded up – a portrait that spoke of a fragile American Dream and an artist who represented hope to forgotten working classes, both black and white.
His songwriting had become much more ambitious too, finding more powerful ways to tap into the directionless anger of a lost generation of millennials.
Indeed, it felt like Eminem set the tone of a new phase for white rappers, where they could be respected for their talent within a black music culture which, bar a few notable exceptions (Beastie Boys, 3rd Bass), had previously tended to reject them as try-hards.
It’s fair to say a co-sign from Compton-raised Dr Dre, who had made anti-police anthems as a member of NWA, brought a different audience to Eminem.
“Eminem’s insouciance and darkness were the love languages of the ‘00s kid, who was just old or jaded enough to be embarrassed by respectable teen pop stars,” explains Jenkins of the initial period when The Marshall Mathers LP was released.
“Back then you saw a crassness for crassness’ sake everywhere, from radio shock-jock broadcasts [like the Howard Stern show] to antisocial pop chart sensations like Eminem,” he adds.
One of the album’s most prescient songs is The Way I Am, where Eminem raps over doomsday church bells with an astonishing level of precision despite all the heavy emotion underpinning his words.
Eminem poignantly complains about not being able to go to a public bathroom without being harassed by fans, and being strangled by commercial pressures from suits within the music industry:
“I’m so sick and tired of being admired / I wish I would die or be fired!”
In the music video to The Way I Am, he’s in literal freefall after jumping off a skyscraper.
Given the praise that modern pop star Chappell Roan recently received for criticising invasive paparazzi and fans who overstep the mark in public, this song feels ahead of its time in what it was diagnosing. − BBC
