#Im slim shady album cover how to#

It acknowledged darkness, but the darkness was something to be overcome. Late-’90s pop-rap was flashy, aspirational music. And he became a star by undermining what rap was supposed to do. Then Eminem came along, flaunting his whiteness and his fakeness and his fucked-up sense of humor and his near-peerless technical dexterity, and he instantly became a star. When the Beasties became career stars, they did so by veering away from the rap mainstream, cultivating their own record-nerd pocket universe.) When rap reached maturity as a commercially dominant force in the late ’90s, white rappers were not a part of the mainstream conversation anymore. But before The Slim Shady LP, white rap successes were mostly short-lived novelties. Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” was the first rap single ever to get to #1. The Beastie Boys’ License To Ill was the first rap album ever to get to #1. And The Slim Shady LP was, as I was just learning to say, a rich text.Įminem was obviously not the first white rapper.

#Im slim shady album cover how to#

Being an English major mostly involves learning how to bullshit, an ability that has served me well in my chosen profession. Most of the papers I wrote in college were bullshit. Those term papers were, in retrospect, largely bullshit. That’s what you did when you were a college English major when The Slim Shady Album came out. “How the fuck can I be white? I don’t even exist.” I could write a term paper about a line like that.