Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Eminem's songs are written by manatees

You know when you have a moment of clarity and for the first time, you see a situation for what it really is?

I had one of those moments late last week.

What did I suddenly realize?

Eminem is the white rapper equivalent of Seth MacFarlane. There I said it.

Think about it. Both men built careers on trying to be shocking while making random pop cultural references... and when you compare how random the humor is on Family Guy with the randomness of the videos/songs of Eminem, I think it is an apt comparison.

I mean, look at his current video for We Made You. Oh look, it is a Sarah Palin lookalike... and there is Eminem dressed up like Spock from Star Trek, and there's a Kim Kardashian clone with a computer enhanced ass and so many other references in the song and video which have no logical connection to each other. And the purpose of the references is to mock rather than just as a simple metaphorical or allegorical device, which again is like the work of another creative force these days.

Looking back, the majority of Eminem's work is like this as well. I thought it was funny at first, but in the end, it is much of ado about nothing. It has no substance, it is merely a fuzzy and not terribly accurate mirror of the pop cultural environment at the time he wrote those particular songs (much like those terrible *Blank* Movies have been lately).

Given this premise, I guess that makes the Beastie Boys Matt Groening or Mike Judge, and Paul's Boutique, I don't know, Futurama or King of the Hill.

Or I might just be stretching things.


3 comments:

Arjan said...

right on point.
I just hope he's made some decent tracks too..

Music Online said...

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MC said...

Arjan: Personally, I think Seth Macfarlane writes better songs, but that's just me.