Eminem + artist of the decade. Really?
I really didn’t want to write about Eminem at all after my initial reaction to Relapse, which has also turned into a few random listening sessions with my friends who, for some reason, actually like the album. I figure the dude gets enough shine, enough love, and quite frankly, I’d much rather spend my time writing about someone who has remained consistently fresh or consistently ridiculous for their entire career without a few gimmacky ass singles and sans Paris Hilton/Jennifer Aniston/Mama Em references.
Really though, something pretty incredible happened, this week, in my opinion. Em has done what I never thought was possible in his career – he sold 225k albums in the past week. In 2009, this is pretty similar to watching hell freeze over. While sipping on iced tea in hell, Eminem continues to surprise the shit out of me, becoming the Artist of the Decade, pushing more music in the past 10 years than anyone else. What surprises me even more is that Nelly is #2 on the list, selling 21.2 million albums in the 00s, falling short of Em‘s stats by a mere 10k albums.
Artist of the decade, eh? Really? At least it’s not Nelly. Tragically, I can only think of maybe 50 acts who have produced and released much better music than either of them. The argument I always get about Em is his flow & rhyme schemes, which seems to be crying out some sort of lost hip hop element that no one noticed. Sure, you can rap…. but as a 20-something female, I’m not really trying to be at the club and hear a song about some old white dude crying about his life, especially when dude’s house is probably the size of my entire block.
Props to Borat… er… not Borat for putting some ass in his face last night at the MTV Music Awards. Mr. Mathers looks like he needs a hug.
Video is below:
