Fast forward to 2024, and hip-hop has just passed its 50th year, while many of its most well-known acts are hitting a similar age. Eminem is the latest to release new music, and The Death of Slim Shady seems to suggest that he’s finally recognising that his best days are well behind him too.
How are the other big stars coping with middle age? Many have moved from rap to Hollywood and while we might get the odd album from Ice T or Ice Cube or Will Smith, they are all much more comfortable growing older on the big screen. Queen Latifah was another rapper turned actor who had even more success on the big screen, while others, such as Jay Z and Dr Dre, simply don’t need to be in the studio as they count their billions.
Snoop is still doing his thing, as is 50 Cent, but again, these two are making more bank elsewhere. Nas is in one of the busiest moments of his 30-plus-year career and is more prolific than ever when it comes to releases, while Common and Pete Rock have just dropped a well-received album together.
LL Cool J and Q Tip are teaming up for one soon, while the always active DJ Premier is still busy too, with a Nas collab apparently in the works. Pusha T is making moves in the fashion game, but will drop more new music soon with the Clipse, while Kanye West takes a rare moment out of the limelight this summer, but he too will surely be back sooner rather than later. Andre 3000 took a left turn and went jazz.
There’s plenty more who are active. Last October, one of the highlights of the Cork jazz weekend was a show in the Cork Opera House where the Pharcyde and Souls of Mischief performed with the energy of teenagers.
Method Man and Redman are still out there, too, but were not too impressed with the lukewarm reception they received at Hot97’s Summer Jam recently, and have vowed to not play it in future. Freddie Gibbs, Bahamadia, Black Thought, Lil Wayne, Ghostface Killer, El-P and many more are rocking the mic at 40-plus, but a lot of these MCs are playing in a different ballpark than Eminem. He’s basically a mainstream pop star, so the stakes are high when he releases music.
It has to do with numbers. And big numbers.
I’ll lay my cards on the table. I was never a big fan. I love how he respects hip-hop culture and I’ll admit he’s a very capable MC, but it’s just not for me. I found the music pretty tacky at the time, and I feel the same now.
There were some interesting moments, when he displayed a more vulnerable side, but much of his recorded output always felt too gimmicky to me.
He matured over time, but I also always felt he generally punched down, and he chose rivalries with the likes of Mariah Carey and Britney Spears rather than his rap peers, taking sexist cheap shots at women who his fanbase predictably dismissed.
Ironically, this new album is a return to the Eminem of old, where he hopes to shock and even offend. A few lame attempts at criticising ‘woke culture’ are hardly gonna make the world stand up in 2024, and while his rapping abilities remain strong, the material is fairly mundane.
I used to feel like this when he was releasing his best albums, so I’m definitely not gonna like his new stuff. For me, many of his fans were the type of people who were never really into hip-hop before him, and Eminem was an important gateway.
I could excuse this with young people of any generation, and he is still streamed loads now. Most of the kids I work with love Eminem and sometimes they love him more than popular current young rappers.
But to my ear, it always sounded too gimmicky, and the new album offers no big counterargument to his own decision to possibly end this side of his career sooner rather than later.
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