The Real Slim Shady, Stan… We are in the spring of 2000 and a young white rapper, produced by the golden egg hen Dr. Dre, releases his second album: The Marshall Mathers LP. The record sold 32 million copies worldwide. “It is inspired by everything that has been done since the 1980sanalyzes Raphaël Da Cruz, journalist at Mouv’. He has models, who are rappers like Nas, and he manages to surpass his models, to digest all his influences, to make the words rhyme, to twist them to make them sound like we want to make them. ring.”
Eminem makes his own life both his work and his main commercial object. “Increasingly, he addresses white bourgeois America as, precisely, the son of a white worker”, recalls the journalist. The rapper recounts his childhood without a father, in a Detroit trailer with an alcoholic mother, then his life as a young white-beak in an essentially black underground rap scene. Next, Eminem can rely on his technique: an extremely fast and playful way of rapping.
With The Eminem Showa much more pop and rock album, in 2002 and the film 8 mileswhich tells about his own life in the same year, the rapper is at the peak of his career.
But, after many personal problems, his attempts at a comeback – although correct in terms of sales – will never have the same impact again: “From the 2000s, we have new aesthetics that come in particular from the south of the United States. His new techniques are musical and affect the way of rapping, the way of writing…”decrypts Raphaël Da Cruz.
“Eminem, like others, is starting to get a little ‘cheesy’ in the way he does music in the 2010s.”
Raphaël Da Cruz, journalist at Mouv’at franceinfo
“With these new, slightly more pop specifications and his way of rapping quickly, with a furious flow, sometimes gives the impression of hearing a paper shredderexplains Raphaël Da Cruz. But there are always moments of grace, this feeling of naivety, just the pleasure of rapping.” Now half a century old, Eminem still leaves behind him a mountain of hits, including Lose Yourselfa kind of generational hymn and still champion, 20 years later, of playlists for playing sports.