I hate eminem.

Ditto.

me too

and a Guns 'n Roses performance featuring Axl Rose -- but apparently none of the other original members such as guitarist Slash.

Somebody didn't do their homework...

So do I. But he's better than GNR.

What? Sweet Child O Mine is one of the greatest 80s songs ever . But yeah, I hate most of their songs.

> I hate eminem.

Hehe, you are in for a rough life then. Yeah, he's a dick, but his latest album is his catchiest and most inovative yet; expect a lot more singles from it. He's going to be around for a while longer yet.

I hate eminem.

"Hate" is a little to harsh for me. I don't particularly care for him, but I don't hate him.

What I find despicable, and laughable, is his whole persona. And what is even more laughable, and sad, is all the wanna-beez who imitate him.

But then, there's always going to be those people who imitate the famous. People who don't have any sense of individuality, so instead they try to look and act like whoever is popular. Like lemmings.

So sad.

I think "hate" is a little too harsh for him. A person that I don't know, but know of or even a little bit about (because he happens to be famous), is not someone I can hate. Hate is such a strong thing that I reserve it for those special people who have attempted to ruin my life.

As for the music side of the argument: I will take any band ever, so long as they actually wrote a lyric or played a melody themselves on an instrument in their own song, over Eminem. Any fool can come up with a catchy 4-note tune and talk over a synthesized beat.

P.S. -- And Sweet Child O Mine IS one of the best songs of the 80's.

It takes skill to come up with those lyrics and rap them. Sure I think the whole rap attitude gets ridiculous, but I like an artist like Eminem who comes up with original and innovative stuff and makes it sound good. Eminem is one of the few rappers who talks about things other than his cars and hoes. I'd say Eminem is like the Nirvana of rap.

And I love GNR.

And I think the Hives suck. But the vines were good.

Eminem is one of the few rappers who talks about things other than his cars and hoes.

After that comment, this quote is obligatory:

"You know why Dre's record was so successful? He's rappin' about big screen TV's, blunts, 40's, and bitches. You're rappin' about homosexuals and vicodin. I can't sell this [censored]!"

Skill is not the word I would use. Sure, there is something to be said for that ability; the lung capacity to go on like that. Good singers have that same gift. But many of them also go through training to extend the limits of their voice as well as their lungs.

Imagination is definitely something that would come in handy. And a good vocabulary in order to rhyme. But rapping is talking. Nothing more than a good ear for the beat is necessary, in order to make the paragraph you wrote fit where you want it to.

I would concede that he is imaginitive, but not skilled. And the punk-ass, self-centered I-am-so-great-and-no-one-helped-me-get-here attitude is pretentious bullshit. No one gets a record deal without a lucky break.

I think I'll stick to my music, played with instruments by musicians, with talent and skill, that work with each other to make it all come together and sound amazing.

Edit: I think you like him simply for his "music's" shock value and because he says stuff no one dared to before.

When all that an artist ever talks about and writes about is how the press and everyone is so stupid for what he says, eventually the press will have nothing to bitch about anymore, thereby ruining his career. You get boring if all you do is complain all the time.

And the Hives are awesome. At least they're funny when they're full of themselves.

And I was pissed that the reruns of the VMA's cut out all the eminem/Moby stuff. I wish I'd seen that.

> Skill is not the word I would use.

What you do not appreciate does not require skill? I would daresay that there are few people who could even imitate him, much less come up with the kind of rhymes that he does.

Look, you don't appreciate rap music. That is fine, each of us likes what he likes. But not anyone can rap well, and few can rap really well. It does require skill, maybe not the same kind of skill as playing a guitar or drums, but skill nonetheless. You don't like the music, so you don't appreciate that skill, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. For instance, you imply there is no song-writing here; like he doesn't create melodies as well as create lyrics, but if you listened to it you would see that some of his melodies are quite good as well. You sound like all those old fogeys throught the the history of rock music who dismissed it as untalented noise merely because they didn't understand it.

I can see I'm going to start a flame war right here.

In my opinion Rap is missing a C.

I agree that it takes some imagination and 'craft' to rhythmically recite spken work to a backing track. But IMHO it's like golf. /me- ducks into bomb shelter
I agree that there is practice required to do it well, it's just something I don't see any merit in. Sort of like synchronised swimming or the 'world championship wrestling' /me- ducks again
Rappers and golfers get paid FAR tooooo much for the actual amount of effort required. I don't see how making lyrics about how evil you're going to be if anyone does anything wrong by you is particularly creative. Especially if the best word you can use is fuck. Re-arrange your threats into Elizabethan English and rap that and I'll give you credit.

I used to think rap was all crap. Then I discovered that it's only about 95% crap, just like every other music or general entertainment form out there. It seems to me that the difference is that most rap listeners don't seem to employ any sort of discernment at all. They'll like anything as long as if fits into a general category, regardless of its quality or whether it's already been done a thousand times before. (BTW, I see this same paradigm in the anime category as well.)

There are a number of rap artists out there that are/were phenomenal. While I dislike Eminem, I'm starting to recognize that he might be one of them. The Beastie Boys were, too, not because of their rapping abilities, but because of the other stuff they brought to it -- the punk and the balls-to-the-wall sampling. Run-DMC were very cool, too (despite the fact that I blame them for Aerosmith's renewed career). Digital Underground, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest are all worth listening to, even if you don't otherwise like rap (I'm sure you rap-liking folks can see right through my bias). And even some of the acts that ended up spawning todays' mostly-crap ``gangsta'' rap were good, especially Public Enemy. Not to mention uber-classics like Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash, if you like funk, like I do.

Which brings me to why I really hate rap. There is no space left for the rest of the (traditionally) black music community. The only other black music out there is what one of my (black) friends refers to as SBM (Sentimental Black Music) -- you know, the Luther Vandross/Barry White-type acts. Where's the funk? For god's sake, George Clinton hasn't released an album in six years. And the rest of the more standard R&B-type acts? Nowhere to be seen.

I don't really hate rap. But I hate the fact that it destroyed everything else.

There's hardly any respectable rap anymore. All the good rappers (2pac, Biggie, Big Pun, Eazy E,.... ) are dead. It's too bad, because all the people in rap now just care about how thick their wallets are.

Good point by the way, Bitt.

"Edit: I think you like him simply for his "music's" shock value and because he says stuff no one dared to before."

Yeah, that's part of it.


"And I was pissed that the reruns of the VMA's cut out all the eminem/Moby stuff. I wish I'd seen that."

Yeah, I was pissed, too. Did anyone see what actually happened?




Music is something you usually have to relate to to enjoy. If you can't relate to the lyrics then you tend not to enjoy it. That is why a lot of people don't like rap, and many of the rappers do make themselves sound stupid by some of the things they say. But if you can get past that and listen to Eminem or Snoop Dogg, you can see the talent that they have, and if you give it a chance you'll probably learn to appreciate it. The good rappers don't just 'talk' fast but it's more like singing fast - kind of like a guitar solo compared to guitar chords. Try singing along to any rapper just to see if you can.

I think it would be more fair to bash the attitude and subject matter of rap, rather than rap itself, because when someone says they don't like rap, it's usually not the singing style or music they have a problem with but it's just the whole 'gangsta' part of it that they don't like.

If you can't relate to the lyrics then you tend not to enjoy it.

One of my friends (the same one as before, actually) is a reasonably big car nut and likes to keep on top of black culture (he's in his early fifties, but he's still pretty hip, with an aged air). Anyway, he's always telling me about these rap lyrics that are based on incorrect (usually car-based) facts. The one I remember him telling me about is one where the rapper's referring to the Kumho runflats on his SUV, despite the fact that Kumho doesn't sell any. (I'm taking him at his word on both counts, here, but he's shown me proof of other similar things.)

It's just funny that these kinds of mistakes show that not only can I not relate to the lyrics, the rappers themselves often can't, either.

ninti, it looks like this area of the argument has been reduced to semantics. I define skill as something a person was once incapable of doing, at all, and then learned from someone else who was a master at it. The easiest analogy is going to college to learn a specialized field and then carving a successful career in that field after graduation.

A good vocabulary, imagination, and the physical ability to do what "talented" rappers do with words is what I think is necessary. The only thing that gets them to be famous is the attitude, in my opinion. Record producers want something similar to the attitudes of previous phenom rappers that made millions, but with a new twist. Eminem definitely has that twist.

I used to listen to some rap when I was little. When it didn't all suck. But now things have changed, and rap, in my opinion, has become the poster child for the collapse of commercial music. That would lead me into other topics, though.

Please don't think I'm judging the people who listen to Eminem or any other rapper, or judging the rappers themselves. I'm simply trying to explain why I don't like that particular form of "artistic expression."

Edit: And in the interest of fairness, why don't you list a few of his songs that have these wonderful melodies you claim he has written? I sincerely hope it's nothing akin to what Puff Daddy did with Jimmy Page. Puffy fans actually told me that Puffy wrote Jimmy's instrumental part.

> ninti, it looks like this area of the argument has been reduced to semantics.

Perhaps, but you seem to think that what he does is easy and anyone can do it. I do not agree with the assessment.

> The only thing that gets them to be famous is the attitude, in my opinion.

I will not deny that Eminem's attitude is a big part of his success, and certainly it is what a lot of people outside the sphere of rap note about him, but any fan of the genre will tell you that he does it differently then anyone else. It is his style of rhyming that really sets him apart, not his attitude.

> I'm simply trying to explain why I don't like that particular form of "artistic expression."

Hey, that's cool. As I said, we like what we like, no one can be "wrong" or "right" about not liking something. But I hate country, and I don't say that it doesn't take skill ot talent to write it. It is just not to my taste, that's all.

But I hate country

Then you haven't heard the right thing.

Now, I don't like all of those, but I doubt that you'd hate all of them, either. Just like most anything else, you probably just haven't found the right thing yet.

On the other hand, there's not enough hatred available for Nashville pop.

You guys really need to expand your rap horizons man. I'm not the biggest Eminem fan either, but damn, the genre is not crap.

Blackalicious, Jurassic 5, The Visionaries, Swollen Members, Aceyalone, Kool Keith and whatnot.

By the way, i [censored] hate Ludicrous and all that bullshit, "flaunt-the-south" rap thats been big lately.

I deny that it's skill that is necessary to write the lyrics. Anyone who can speak quickly enough, or forcefully enough, and clearly, with a good vocabulary, can do it. But they have to fit the image or they won't get a record deal.

I'm sure he does something differently. I'm sure there's something special about him. Otherwise he wouldn't have made it to the top of that commercial pile of bull.

And as for saying all of rap sucks, I'm not. It's just not my thing. Every rapper who was named in this thread by people as one that doesn't suck, except Eminem himself, is a name I've never heard of.

I am really just very sick of a lot of the mainstream commercial pop music. And yes, I consider rap a very alternative form of pop. People will forever be naming mainstream bands and artists that I have never heard of because I no longer go near MTV, VH1, or play-what-they're-paid-to radio.

You call it skill. I call it a physical gift with a good vocabulary. The fact remains that anyone with a similar lung capacity and vocabulary can do exactly the same thing. Whether or not they get a deal depends on how well they would fit into mainstream. And if they have a new gimick, and rise to the top because of it, then good for them.

I no longer wish to argue about his "skills" or anything else he may possess that made him famous. The fact remains that he is on top of a chart I would never listen to, a situation similar to Blink-182 and all of their copycat bands. I don't like any of that, either.

"And yes, I consider rap a very alternative form of pop."

It appears as rap and pop are converging together to form hiphop.

> deny that it's skill that is necessary to write the lyrics.

So poetry requires no skill?

By semantics, no. Imagination and vocabulary. I am through repeating myself to you. I do not like it and you cannot convince me to. You don't see me posting bands for other people to go try out.

I don't distinguish rap from hip hop, sorry. I didn't mean to cause offense by using genre names incorrectly.

You don't see me posting bands for other people to go try out

Sorry