In the past few hours the winners were released for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, and already a lot of disagreement is surrounding some of the picks. While music is subjective in many ways, you of course can never make everyone happy. However, this year seems to be especially bad. Personally, I did not agree with almost all albums that were given a Grammy this year, so I was curious to see what the top critics in music thought.
There was a lot of uncertainty as to who would take home the award for the “Best Rap Album” at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards today, especially since the disappointment in the rap community when white rapper Macklemore beat out Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West’s critically acclaimed albums. Would it be the talented veteran Eminem (who has won a number of Grammys in the past)? Would it be Iggy Azalea (who like Macklemore, is white and considered more pop than rap by many)? Or would it be one of the Grammy’s newcomers, like Childish Gambino’s Because the Internet or SchoolBoy Q’s Oxymoron. Well now we know, as this year Eminem’s album Marshall Mathers LP 2 took home the Grammy.
Here at The Early Registration we like to pride ourselves on our music knowledge, to stay polished on our musical expertise our new feature is a little game of musical “6 Degrees”. For those who are unfamiliar, six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone in the world is connected by six or fewer steps, so we are now taking the liberty of connecting musicians by songs and features, who you would never think could be connected. This week our 6˚ piece is in honor of the upcoming 57th Annual Grammy Awards, where we will connect the two most opposite nominees for this year’s “Best Rap Performance” category, Christian rapper Lecrae and of course the always controversial Eminem. To spice things up, we will also include the other rappers in the category (Childish Gambino, Drake, Kendrick Lamar), all in just six steps.
Watch the new video for Shady Record’s stand out track from ShadyXV, ‘Detroit Vs. Everybody’ track. This one features almost every rapper in Detroit (including Eminem, Big Sean, Danny Brown and more!). Stream the video now, below.
Throughout television and cinema we are constantly introduced to singers, bands and rappers whom we desperately wish were real, but usually the best we can hope for is a sequel. Most recently we have Fox and Terrance Howard’s new series Empire, which follows rapper turned label head Lucious Lyon. Next up we will have Donald Glover’s (Childish Gambino) upcoming FX comedy Atlanta, which will follow two cousins who have very different views on how to rise up in the Atlanta rap scene. To help build the anticipation to these two series, and to get nostalgic on past fictional artists, have comprised a list of the best, most swagged out, and absolutely awesome musicians whom we wish were real (and even one who kind of is).
In 2014, we at The Early Registration have been able to cover and send our photographers to a lot of great shows throughout the country. Check out our list below (in no particular order) to see some of our favorite shows and best shots of the year.
We weren’t fans of Eminem’s new Shady Records album, ShadyXV, and neither is Odd Future’s Tyler the Creator. Taking to Twitter to share his thoughts, Tyler the Creator sent out a message to Eminem that his music isn’t quite up to par.
Modern day Eminem will always have the unfortunate (and perhaps impossible) task of trying to live up to the Eminem of the late 1990s through the early 2000s. From The Slim Shady LP to The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show, Em was untouchable. Not only did all three of those albums win the Grammy‘s ‘Rap Album of the Year’ award, but everyone at the time knew that this guy wasn’t going anywhere (and they were right). Although taking brief hiatuses throughout the years, Eminem has consistently dropped successful solo albums, four more since The Eminem Show in 2002. While the sales, and even some of the critical acclaim, has survived throughout the years, the issue of whether the quality of Eminem’s latter music is highly polarizing. In his 2010 album Recovery, Eminem even admitted his previous album was “ehhh…”. However many argued that Recovery and The Marshall Mathers LP 2 were not any better. Pitchfork gave Recovery a 2.8 out of 10, stating that “the more (Eminem) motors on about having reclaimed his passion for hip-hop and finally figured out who he is, the more draining the album becomes.” Entertainment Weekly gave Em’s previous album a C+ score, noting the obvious content changes in his music. “At this point, though, his ultimate obsessions are with his disappointing mother and absent father — and those, he uses to abuse himself.” Lately Eminem seems to be having an eternal battle, deciding the best route for his music. At times it seems like he is trying to go back to the ‘old Eminem’, through making a sequel to MMLP and forcing homophobic language and shock value insults towards women and celebrities, something Eminem made a career off of. However it also appears that he is trying to shed the coat of his controversial ‘Slim Shady’ persona, making mends with his mother and cleaning up his content at times, rapping “I’d rather make ‘Not Afraid 2’ than make another motherf*cking ‘We Made You”, which showed his preference over more emotionally mature tracks over the tracks with shock value and shots at pop culture. While ShadyXV is not a solo Eminem LP, it is certainly his project, of which he will be judged on. Producing many of the tracks, appearing on all but two of the album’s exclusive songs and being the head of Shady Records, ShadyXV is an Eminem album in many ways, we just didn’t know what kind of Eminem we would get.
After Eminem’s rape comments towards Iggy Azalea in his new track ‘Vegas’ (suggesting that he wants to rape her), Iggy has responded via her Twitter. This already marks the second time in the past month that Iggy has had to defend herself against a legendary rapper who sent unwarranted insults her way.
With all the classic albums Eminem has delivered in the past couple decades, perhaps his biggest hit to date is from the soundtrack for his 2002 bio-pic 8 Mile. The film’s original track ‘Lose Yourself’ changed the way we look at ‘Mom’s spaghetti’ and was Eminem’s first #1 single and the first rap song to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Now, with the upcoming release of ShadyXV, we have the original demo version for ‘Lose Yourself’, that Eminem doesn’t even remember recording.
The Early Registration 