Before we get into things, I should mention that this video is part of a collaboration
with Medium D Speaks, so I recommend going and checking out his video after this one
as it provides a lot of context for the premise of this video.
That said, let's talk Eminem.
Em is regarded by some as the greatest rapper of all time in terms of technical skill.
But despite his reputation and the respect for his craft that's pretty much global, for
years his music has been received, well….
Not well.
Since The Marshall Mathers LP 2, all of Eminem's albums and projects have failed to hold the
same positive reception his early and middle career albums achieved, despite him arguably
improving at the actual art of rhyming words together in clever ways.
Even some lifelong fans were losing interest.
I'll let Medium D Speaks give you the details on that, but what I'd like to talk about is
the absolute firestorm that was Kamikaze.
Kamikaze dropped out of nowhere, and all at once, Eminem became relevant again.
YouTube blew up with videos about him, hell I even made some, every hip hop radio show
and podcast was talking about him, and Genius and XXL couldn't stop writing articles about
him.
The biggest talking point that probably came from it was the beef that came out between
himself and MGK.
Everyone made videos on this subject, whether it was me, BlackySpeakz, or this slug in a
suit.
Everyone was talking about it.
So why, after flops like Revival, was Kamikaze so successful and impactful?
Well, there are a bunch of different reasons but I think that the biggest one is that this
album is a RETURN TO FORM for Eminem.
As has been stated, Eminem was popular not just for his lyrical ability, but for the
content of his music and the drama of his life which he never shied away from showing
in his lyrics, giving us an incredibly raw inside look at his failures, his successes,
his insecurities, traumas and triumphs.
Even something as personal the lengthy hiatus brought on by his drug addiction was a topic
of discussion in his music for a long time.Kamikaze fed into the underlying narrative of his life,
whereas after Relapse and Recovery, and arguably Rap God, he cleaned himself up and let go
of a lot of the resentments and anger that fuelled a good amount of his music.
It felt like we'd heard everything at that point.
His lyrics were still clever of course, but at that point the weight of what he was saying
was just diminishing.
Kamikaze showed that the spark and passion found in his earlier work still existed, it
just needed to be provoked for it to reach its full potential.
Of course the second reason and likely a larger part of how Kamikaze made Eminem relevant
again is the ridiculous amount of disses it included.
According to this graph someone over on Reddit decided was worth their time making, over
150 bars out of a total thousand were dedicated to disses, with a sizeable percentage of them
being directed at the man we mentioned previously, MGK, who had thrown some jabs at Eminem a
couple times before.
He provoked Em, and Em fired back hard on Kamikaze.
And there was a reason why this was so effective at creating discussions.
Eminem was famous for his disses and calling out anyone and everyone who had an issue with
him, in or out of the rap game, and in the early 2000s this sort of thing made a huge
splash given Em's status so pop culture reporters and talk shows ate it up and loved
it.
By dropping so many disses in this album which were largely fueled by a similar anger and
a well earned pride, Eminem caught that kind of attention again.
Another part of this is his approach to mumble rap and the state of the rap game.
As a sort of living legend of rap, comparable to Jay Z or Snoop Dogg at this point, what
Eminem has to say about the game is taken seriously, unlike some other people, and Em
actually addresses this in the album.
15 separate times apparently.
So, Em makes it clear that he understands the appeal of rappers like Lil Yachty and
such, but that he is disappointed that this is the legacy of the genre of music he grew
up with and was so inspired by and later partially molded.
Yachty wasn't even offended by this, on the contrary as a kid who grew up on Eminem he
had a pretty positive reaction, as did Hopsin, who Eminem nodded to as one of the artists
he is happy to have inspired.
Em's passion mixed with his platform led not just fans, but the rap community to take
this album seriously.
He not only made explicitly clear what and who he was not happy with in the rap game,
but who he was happy with through certain features on the album which of course included
Joyner Lucas, who has sometimes been compared to Eminem and is obviously hugely inspired
by him.
By promoting artists like this who haven't fully broke through to mainstream audiences
yet, he was also creating a platform for who he would like to see become his eventual successors
to carry his specific legacy going forward.
Then, the media circus was for once embraced and handled expertly by Em, who has often
admitted that he is terrible at all things technology, internet and social media related.
He did a 4 part interview with Sway that garnered millions of views and gave us that intimate
inside look into his mind and thought process that was missing from his more recent projects,
and the album itself was dropped with no warning which of course caused the internet to absolutely
break as no media outlet was prepared for it and had to race to create reviews and content
surrounding it.
Really , this is a brilliant play on Em's part, as these days everything from movies
to TV shows to albums and video games have trailers for their trailers and crazy amounts
of hype built around them that costs millions of advertising and marketing dollars, but
that gives media outlets a chance to be ready and have content made that they basically
just need to fill in the blanks for after they've heard, played or watched the product
the second it comes out.
By giving no warning, Eminem forced everyone and anyone who reports on music or pop culture
to have to listen to the album to be able to be the first to have the most appealing
title and thumbnail on the fly for when people Google "Kamikaze".
So, basically by returning to stylistic form in being vulnerable and passionate, as well
as having anger and pride as fuel for raw, modern, and relevant disses mixed with the
forced media frenzy nobody was ready for created the perfect storm for endless buzz which was
exactly the "Revival" Eminem needed.
And this project's impact wasn't fleeting.
The feud that followed with MGK and him making diss tracks back and forth had the world on
the edge of their seats, as people fantasized about how hard Eminem would tear this kid
apart, and lead to even more media coverage which was all free advertising and publicity
for the album.
Of course, if the album hadn't have been good in and of it's own merit, I don't think any
of this would have happened, but truly Eminem made the stars align for him, and now we have
Em's name back in our discussions about the rap game.
Kamikaze would go on to have significantly better first week numbers than Revival, and
higher first week consumption than artists like Cardi B, Kanye West, Migos & J. Cole
did with their 2018 albums, and that is all we really need to see that Kamikaze was what
Eminem needed to place himself directly back
into
the spotlight.
(Outro)
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