I was Eminem’s audience, a teen from Middle America, one of millions. Long before I ever started thinking critically about music, I sat watching Eminem’s VMA performance from my rural Wisconsin couch, a 10th grader with no social media, no cell phone. This was 18 years ago, two or three epochs in music-industry time, back when “Total Request Live” held sway while boy bands and newly crowned pop stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera filled the airwaves. He knew it before many: People like the stuff they recognize. As reality TV gained traction, Eminem’s dressing-down of celebrities endeared him to a generation who would soon find “drama” to be the coin of the entertainment realm. It was an echo-chamber of MTV-watchers, a real-time “Beavis and Butt-Head” for those who would be later be crowned millennials. Specifically, what was on television at that very moment. ”The Real Slim Shady” wasn’t rap about what was happening on the streets of Brooklyn or Compton or Atlanta or even Detroit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |