There is one thing I particularly admire in Eminem’s artistic expression: his creative mastering of the English language. He’s a genius at work.
Since he began rapping, Eminem understood the power of words. Words can be strong weapons that will knock you right in the face. Words also have the power to make you laugh or cry.
Eminem’s style makes him unique in the world of hip hop.
Several lines of the ‘Love Me’ song from the 8 Mile soundtrack testify it very well:
‘There’s a certain mystique when I speak,
that you notice that it’s sorta unique,
cause you know it’s me, my poetry’s deep”’
His savant combination of syllables and the use of words that sound nearly the same make us feel the athmosphere of the song, whether it is stressful, funny, serious or sarcastic.
The combination of the [i] sound at the beginning of the 8 Mile song shows us that Rabbit is battling. You can feel the fight.
‘Sometimes I just feel like, quittin I still might
Why do I put up this fight, why do I still write
Sometimes it’s hard enough just dealin with real life
Sometimes I wanna jump on stage and just kill mics
And show these people what my level of skill’s like
But I’m still white, sometimes I just hate life
Somethin ain’t right, hit the brake lights
Case of the stage fright, drawin a blank like’
The listener will easily guess the doubts and the stress that surrounds Rabbit.
Rabbit wants to succeed, he knows he will have to fight hard.
The [i] sound words are so well choosen write/ life/mics/ white/ fright/ lights/ blank like
Rabbit knows that he cannot quit writing if he wants to succeed. Often he’s brought back to real life, to concrete problems, but he also has to face the stage battle and spit his words on the mic.
“I’m still white” sounds so sarcastic. Of course he is still white and he knows cannot change his skin color. He will have to face with his racial issue and fight even harder to reach his goal, knowing that he’s a white M.C.
Eminem exactly knows what kind of effects he wants to create in his songs. His art is poetry.
‘ Ayo, my pen and paper cause a chain reaction
To get your brain relaxin, cause they be actin maniac in action ‘
I particularly love the way those lines from the ‘ Infinite song ‘ from the Infinite album are composed. Can you imagine a pen and paper sheet having a chain reaction? It draws the picture of an inspired M.C whose brain is full of thoughts. His thoughts are so numerous that he cannot control the flooding of the words that he pendowns on his paper sheet. He writes so fast that the paper vanishes very fast.
‘ My rhyming skills got you climbing hills
I travel through your mind until you spine like siren drills ‘
The listener is being taken apart with a high level of rhymes. Eminem perfectly knows how to handle words. He also combines words that usually wouldn’t match. The listener will enjoy his wordplays if he pays attention to them. Eminem opens new universes of words, he uses his art to perfection.
With such a high level of skills, no wonder if he sometimes verbally kills.