Eminem’s been at this rap thing for a very long time — and unfortunately, over the past few years, he’s started to show his age. While still as technically proficient as ever, the battle rap veteran has also seen his musical output over the last half-decade or so stultify, with only his most loyal fans appreciating his efforts at being “the best rapper” and not making “the best albums,” as he once put it.
And so, his latest, The Death Of Slim Shady, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there is something interesting here. On the album’s opening track, “Renaissance,” Em does something that’s become rare for him, depending on who you ask: He makes a great point. In a diverting excursion “inside the mind of a hater,” the 51-year-old notes, “I don’t see no fans, all I see’s a bunch of complainers.” Over the course of the song, he expands on this concept, illustrating his true worry: That fans caught up in nitpicking their favorite rappers won’t appreciate what they’ve got ’til it’s gone.
Lord knows, rap fans love complaining about a perceived dearth of care and craftsmanship when it comes to the art of rhyme. It seems every decade, there’s a new subgenre of rap to rail against: When I was coming up, it was “ringtone rap.” More recently, “mumble rap” has been the target of so many criticisms, while elders of the rap game, from Kool Moe Dee to Joe Budden, have always decried the rise of each successive wave of youngsters who rejected tradition, rewrote the rules of rhyme, or otherwise broke from established norms of hip-hop.
Yet, while doing so, they seemingly overlook so many of the contemporary rappers who seemingly deliver exactly what they want. When rap critics deplored the culture’s slide into criminality in the ’90s in efforts to feed the hunger for “thug” imagery, so-called “conscious rappers” like Common, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest were ridiculed — if not outright ignored — by the mainstream. When “jiggy rap” ruled the airwaves, B-boy traditionalists like Mos Def and Talib Kweli toiled away on the underground circuit — the same circuit that spawned Eminem himself.
Even Kendrick Lamar, who Em name-checks in his “Renaissance” verse (“‘Kendrick’s album was cool, but it didn’t have any bangers’,” says the mind of the hater), has pointed this out in his own discography. On “Hood Politics,” from his 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick raps, “Everybody want to talk about who this and who that / Who the realest and who wack, or who white or who black / Critics want to mention that they miss when hip-hop was rappin’ / Motherf*cker, if you did, then Killer Mike’d be platinum,” acknowledging how the Atlanta rapper’s commercial reception rarely lived up to his critical acclaim.
On “Renaissance,” Em drives the point home, name-checking a slew of other alternative or underground ’90s rap acts, along with some of the better-known ones to illustrate how quickly time sweeps away artifacts that aren’t appreciated enough to be preserved. Wise Intelligent and Cella Dwellas are two acts with impeccable reputations for potent, well-crafted rhymes, but the height of either act’s commercial reception was Cella Dwellas’ 1996 debut Realms ‘n Reality, which only peaked at 160 on the Billboard 200. They haven’t put out anything since. Wise Intelligent’s last album was released in 2018, and truthfully, researching for this piece was my first time hearing about it.
Em also calls out Big Daddy Kane, who was once regarded one of the foremost lyricists in all of hip-hop, a pioneer who helped advance the technique used in rap by light years ahead of where it was when he first debuted in 1986. Yet, by 1994 — less than 10 years later — he was being treated as an also-ran, with the lukewarm reception of his sixth album Daddy’s Home prompting him to take a long break from releasing music. He still raps, making occasional guest appearances on projects from the long (long, long, long) list of rappers he’s inspired — including Little Brother, MF DOOM, Rapsody, The Roots, and more. But he hasn’t made a new album since 1998’s Veteranz’ Day, and he’s largely considered a relic of the Golden Era, not a titan of the culture like proteges Jay-Z, Eminem, and Black Thought.
Uproxx’s Elliott Wilson called 2024 the best year in hip-hop, hands down. Putting A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie at No. 5 on his best albums list and overlooking albums from LA County natives like Schoolboy Q and Vince Staples notwithstanding, I agree. So, apparently, does Eminem, who goes out of his way to give a nod to J. Cole’s Might Delete Later. But with all these great rappers making great albums, rap fans seem caught up in their disappointment about projects they don’t like or that fell short, or in the contextual circumstances of those albums, like dismissing J. Cole for bowing out of the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef.
Eminem harps on the past on his latest album to warn us what could happen in the future. Rap fans who’ve wanted lyrics to return to the spotlight have had a smorgasbord in 2024, but if they keep overlooking the good, they’ll only be left with the bad. At that point, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
