I have a love/hate relationship with Marshall Mathers. As a hip-hop head, I have to give the man respect for his talent. At a time when most now-school rappers can’t even freestyle properly, Eminem is almost a throwback emcee. The dude has skills that name-your-favorite-current-rapper can’t touch with a ten-foot pole. That said, there are also plenty of things that trouble me about Eminem. Like most people who were bullied as kids, he himself takes pleasure in bullying others less […]
Posts tagged "Dr. Dre"
Don’t Judge Me: The Party
If you’re of a certain age, you remember the original Mickey Mouse Club, the show that gave us future peanut butter saleswoman Annette Funicello, right? If you’re a little younger than me, you might have fond memories of the mid-Nineties version of the Mickey Mouse Club-a show that basically served as a breeding ground for modern-day celebrities, giving us Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell, Ryan Gosling and Matt Morris. In between those two, there was the late-Eighties/early […]
Saturday Backspin: "Fuck Compton"
Just so you know, the East/West Coast rap wars didn’t start with Tupac and Biggie. Actually, that beef always kind of made me laugh. ‘Pac was born in New York. Anyway, the animosity between rappers from New York and rappers from California started almost as soon as West Coast rappers began making noise. Growing up in Brooklyn, no one in my neighborhood was walking around with Ice-T tapes. Cali cats were corny. They wore jheri curls or perms. New York […]
Blerd Premiere: Eminem's "Not Afraid"
I remember writing somewhere (might have been a Facebook status update) that Eminem is like an “A” student who continually turns in “C” papers. As an emcee, Em is flawless. The guy’s got a great vocabulary, a fantastic sense of rhythm (A.K.A. flow) and a unique voice. However, for the past five or six years, he’s been squandering his gifts and pandering to his pop fanbase by a) using that obnoxious Triumph the Insult Comic Dog accent, b) reveling in […]
Saturday Backspin: "Room to Breathe" by Downtown Science
While I have always loved and will always love just about every type of music in existence, I will always have a soft spot for hip-hop; specifically the hip-hop of my youth. For my money, nothing beats the “golden age” (roughly 1987-1993), a period when the creativity in the genre was limitless (plus, you didn’t have to worry about sample clearances). Downtown Science was a duo that released one album on Def Jam back in 1991. They were notable from […]