Eminem albüm
Of course, since this is Eminem, he’s also ready to diss himself. Of course, it might not be entirely successful - see Twitter’s skepticism that he’s just an old fogey trying to fit in with the cool kids - but we laud him for trying.Įminem is always best when he’s self-deprecating and confessional In working with Keith, Eminem is clearly trying to send a message: He’s not only on top of his game, but he’s working with the best and brightest in the industry.
So when Royce shouted it out on his collab with Eminem, “Not Alike,” fans turned heads because it was such an unexpected thing to hear on an Eminem album - and Keith, who did indeed produce the track, was such an unexpected collaborator. Keith’s tag of “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up” has become something of a meme since Drake released Scorpion. It’s also a great way to call attention to a producer’s specific style and aesthetic.
Including a producer’s signature tag on a song or album they contributed to is a longtime industry trend, recently on the rise, to shout out the creative collaborators working behind the scenes. This line is Keith’s producer tag - the verbal equivalent of an artist’s signature. That’s why Drake’s song “Nonstop,” from his recent album Scorpion, begins with the low-level introduction, “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up.” Keith is a wunderkind, a 21-year-old producer from Memphis who just graduated college but who’s already worked with major artists - including Drake. Notably, there’s one artist who briefly shared Em’s Kamikaze spotlight, despite not performing on the album: Tay Keith, who produced “Not Alike,” Eminem’s collaboration with Royce da 5’9. “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up,” explained By the time the album ends, pretty much everyone is dead: But “if you ain’t Joyner, Kendrick or Cole or Sean then you’re a goner,” he promises. Dre, who co-produced, is safe, as are his album collaborators. Lyrically, so many people get dissed on Kamikaze that it’s easier to talk about who doesn’t. By using duplicated clips and structural mimicry, he summons musical memories of Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Migos to ironically illustrate how overly copied their work has become, and how lazy it is to simply lay down a weak verse over someone else’s song structure. He does this musically, especially through the use of trap beats (“Not Alike”) and musical references to other artists.
In stellar tracks like “ Lucky You” (his utterly fire collab with Joyner), “Not Alike,” and “ Fall,” he asserts his confidence that he still has a place in rap - and that rap desperately needs him. Along with savaging a bunch of people (“Lil Pump, Lil Xan, imitate Lil Wayne,”) he devotes a whole verse to professing himself mystified by recent rap trends, à la “Gucci Gang,” with their “subpar bars” and “choppy flow.”Įm makes the point again and again that he’ll never stint us of a good rhyme or a well-crafted run-on lyric. Throughout Kamikaze, Eminem takes aim at the stagnant feel of recent rap and its purveyors.įrom the very first track, “ The Ringer” - which opens with a brutal litany of rap disses before seamlessly shifting to the rapper’s well-established anti-Trump rage - we get Eminem at his self-aggrandizing, self-deprecating, dizzyingly self-assured best. Kamikaze takes aim at the unoriginality of recent rap - and it has plenty to say But on Kamikaze, Eminem is clearly back on his bullshit, and so much better for it. This might sound surprising after the negative reception to Revival, which drew the worst critical response of Eminem’s career despite sporting flashy collabs with the likes of Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran.