Eminem was
huge ten years ago and enough critics have written enough about him that I don't know what else I can add except that it's clear the reason Eminem is a great rapper isn't his lyrics, it's his delivery. If we consider Eminem just a vocalist, then he's certainly one of the greatest to ever live: he changes his voice every five seconds, acts out little dialogues in almost every other line, and just basically pulls every trick in the book to make his lyrics more interesting. The beats are little more than a backdrop for Eminem's rants: all Dr. Dre does is put down a simple nursery-rhymey melody and that's it. The problem with this thing is that it's way too long. "Amityville", "Bitch Please II", "Under the Influence" and "Criminal" could have all been dropped, and whose idea was it
not to end the record with "Kim", an incredible bit of playacting that decimates everything that comes after it? Too many reviews of Eminem's music (like Kanye West after him) are little more than crappy bits of sub-psychology in which the reviewer tries to figure out what it all "means" for our society that something so violent and antagonistic could be such a huge hit. What's
really in Eminem's head, etc. It doesn't surprise me at all: Eminem's delivery is so above and beyond what any other rapper was attempting at the time that (to me) it was almost a foregone conclusion he'd be successful. This is his magnum opus, I suppose, although one wonders exactly how much of a masterpiece it is when nearly a half hour of it should have been chopped.
MY RATING:
7.8
Eminem - "Kill You"
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