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The Streets - The Edge of a Cliff
The above video was released yesterday by Mike Skinner, a.k.a. The Streets, off of his 2008 album Everything is Borrowed. Compare that with Eminem's latest video, We Made You, which also came out yesterday:
Eminem - We Made You
Hard to believe that these songs came from the same two artists who had such an impact on rap at the turn of the millennium. Despite the fact that Mathers and Skinner hailed from different parts of the world - Detroit and Birmingham, England, respectively - they were often compared with each other and received similar praise and hype for what they were expected to bring to hip hop in the coming years. That is the reason, I suppose, why I'm unable to watch either of these videos without taking the other into consideration. The basis for their original comparisons, of course, was that they both happened to be white, but there was more to it than that. In the early parts of their careers, both pushed the boundaries of what their respective cultures were willing to allow; Eminem through his misogyny, homophobia and fart jokes, Skinner through his challenging of both the authority structure in the U.K. and the hooliganism that was running rampant at the time.
Fast forward a decade, and we're left with two artists putting out music that's a mere shadow of their original work, neutered versions of what made them so interesting to begin with. On the one hand, we have Eminem struggling to recapture his popularity through an apparently big budget video filled with out of date parodies that wouldn't have been funny even if they had been timely. The real failing of Em's comeback, though, is that he has chosen to appeal to the wrong demographic; this video is clearly aimed at the MTV audience of eight years ago, a generation of TRL viewers who might at one time have been receptive to all of the gimmicks of We Made You, but have grown up and moved on to other artists and other ways of consuming their music (further to that point, it's worth noting that Em's new video doesn't even allow embedding through youtube). Had Marshall spent more effort on his lyrics and delivery, returning to his Slim Shady form from the days before the mainstream discovered him rather than putting his efforts into this stale video, I think the hip hop world would have been quick to reembrace him.
On the other hand, Mike Skinner seems to have gone in the exact opposite direction, putting out a full album of songs that are filled with serious, introspective (and, quite frankly, often depressing) meditations on life, apparently targeting an older audience of listeners on the brink of their mid-life crises. A large part of this change in viewpoint stems from the birth of Skinner's child, an event that seems to have marked the turning point in his transformation into a far more mature artist. Of course, Original Pirate Material had its share of downers as well (for every Sharp Darts on the album, there was an It's Too Late) but the problem is that this maturation process has resulted in music that's just not as interesting. Perhaps I haven't grown up as fast as Skinner and thus can't appreciate the music that he's putting out now, but there must be a middle ground somewhere, as Eminem's contrasting descent into further immaturity in the face of such tragic events as Proof's death and his drawn out divorce and custody battle has shown us that the opposite path is, musically at least, no better an option.
In Skinner's defense, he does deserve some credit for choosing to continue his evolution as an artist. It may not be a particularly entertaining direction, replacing tales of rebellion with existential musings and swapping out energetic garage beats for adult contemporary soundtracks, but at least he hasn't become a caricature of his old self. The same, sadly, cannot be said of Marshall Mathers. It pains me to watch this unfold, because I would put Em's catalog from '98 to '02 up against that from any emcee not born Brooklyn, but he's become the very artist that he made a career out of mocking: past his prime, irrelevant and now more famous for his celebrity than for his music. Even his voice - that grating, cartoonish delivery that he insists on using for much of his recent work - seems to be an over-the-top mimicry of his old delivery. Hard to believe that, after waiting this long for a new album, We Made You is the song and video that Eminem has chosen for his reintroduction to the world. Here's hoping that Premier knows something about the album that the rest of us don't.
04/08/2009 04:30:01 PM posted by Fresh