Son of JayJamJah

12. The Eminem

Most Overrated Album: The Slim Shady LP
Most Overrated song: Stan

His meteoric rise to the top of the popular music industry began in 1998 as MTV at first tentatively began it's transition into a hip-hop lead style over substance outpost. It all began with the hyper-annoying and (self admitted) gimmick of a sensation "My name is" which was an introduction into the scatter brained at times creative but often angry world of Marshall Mathers. The song mad him a superstar and along with the credibility that comes from being pared with producer Dr. Dre allowed Em to catapult almost instantly to the top of the mainstream hip-hop mountain. The album "The Slim Shady" Lp was hailed as inspired and unique but when revisited already sounds dated and stale.

Following up the success of the album however, the great white homophobe released his seminal number, the undeniably enjoyable and lyrically sensational (for creativity not content) Marshall Mathers LP. Still as his popularity continued to climb, as an artist and performer Eminem left fringe fans cold, with lackluster performances and lyrics that grow old very quickly. The third major release album 2002's Eminem Show, while a major step down was still a well received album and remains a fan favorite of many. And Encore from 2004 despite being garbage was well reviewed also.

So Eminem has a partially deserved impressive resume, so why is he over rated? Because it's undeserved, the lyrics are meaningless and the bombastic nature of his twisted nursery rhyme prose wears on a thoughtful listener very quickly as does his wet noodle personality and narrow minded cynicism. Not to mention for such a phenom and a rising star, he is anything but prolific. As Jay-Z put it when talking about Nas "Four albums in 10 years, I can divide...that's a one hot album every ten year average" Eminem is unquestionable a creation of an MTV culture that has dumbed down popular music especially hip-hop\rap music. For all of these reasons he is the 12th most over rated artist of all-time.

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