From Kent Williams Sent Tue, Jul 27th 1999, 18:16
From Kent Williams Sent Tue, Jul 27th 1999, 18:16
On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, r. kidwell wrote: > > You have to distinguish between writing from an antisocial point of view, > > the better to hold it up for examination, and actually advocating those > > things. Dostoevsky didn't murder anyone, but he did write "Crime and > > Punishment." Not that Eminem is Dostoevsky. > > do the kids that listen to Eminem draw this distinction? > I seriously doubt many of them do. when they hear first-person > rapping about 40s and blunts and date rape and being hard, > they're not laughing at the absurdity of it all... > Do kids watch Wiley Coyote strap a rocket on his back and then go out and do it? Sheesh. Are people cheering him when he's killing his girlfriend? No! It's a chilling track. People, by and large DO get the difference between fantasy and reality. And the small minority that don't are pathological, and they're going to fuck shit up whether Eminem raps about it or not. That song is disturbing because it gets inside the head of a reprehensible but all too common character. It also takes direct aim at Will Smith's "Just The Two of Us." which is to me much more offensive in its platitudinous smarm. I never asked you to LIKE eminem, just to point out that from my point of view there is something there that you're missing. Oh, and I did notice that a few of the people piling on Eminem include factual errors about his music and raps, indicating to me that they've not really listened to his stuff very closely.