The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

by Serrano, Shea

  Dawson gave her list very dramatically, and each time she paused that same lady shouted. Dawson said a name. “Eminem!” Dawson gave another one. “Say Eminem!” Dawson gave her fourth. “EM! EH! NEM!” Dawson gave her fifth. It wasn’t Eminem. The woman was flabbergasted. “What?!”

  When the movie ended, I waited for the woman who’d been shouting to get up and leave because I wanted to see what she looked like, because, I mean, how could I not? I thought maybe she was going to be actually sitting with Eminem or at least be wearing an Eminem T-shirt or have the Detroit Tigers logo tattooed on her neck or have short, peroxide-blond hair or whatever. She didn’t have any of that, though. She was just an average-sized, average-faced, non-neck-tattooed woman.

  Sometimes L.A. can be boring.

  ♦

  Eminem is white and that’s a thing that everyone knows, but it’s still a part of any Eminem discussion because that’s just how things are, particularly when you consider that he is the most successful artist in rap, a genre that is largely non-white. Here are three things that have to do with his whiteness:

  1. Talent: His whiteness is almost always brought up as a positive aside to his skill level as a rapper.5 The only other act that received a similar sort of praise was the Beastie Boys, though they were always more likably sincere than lyrically deft.6 But that’s why “My Name Is” proved to be critical: It established the validity of the white rapper. The clever part is, he did so without attempting to peddle immersion (“Look how many black people I know!”) or imitation (“Listen to how much I sound like a famous black rapper you already know!”), as those who’d come before him had.

  2. Authenticity: With “My Name Is,” Eminem presented a new kind of whiteness in rap by parodying the normative version of it. To wit: In the video, he very clearly shows different versions of white that have been derided by rap (trailer-park white, famous white, nerdy white, powerful white, weirdo white, etc.), then very deliberately places himself opposite them. The effect is/was startling: By doing so, he created a new faction, one that could exist within the largely non-white rap world as an ally and contemporary instead of a novelty.

  3. Threat: I’m going to reuse an Ice-T quote from the N.W.A chapter where he was talking about one of the ways gangsta rap was being viewed as a problem. “The real problem here with the one side versus the other is not that my homeboys are hearing [this music]. If only my friends were hearing these records, nobody’d care. It’s that [affluent] kids are buying more rap records than our kids. And the white kids now from suburbia are listening to N.W.A and the parents don’t know what to do about it. If only the brothers in the neighborhood listened to it, nobody’d care.” I mention it again as a supplement to this quote, which is what Carson Daly said about Eminem in 2011: “Here’s a white kid saying stuff that rappers had said for years before. But they looked at it as a problem that was happening over there. And now you’ve got this guy who looks like your son—you have suburban white American kids who are buying the records. He’s the new spokesman for a generation saying these controversial things. And I think all of a sudden it’s a problem.”

  Eminem is not a gangsta rapper. But he is a philosophical extension of gangsta rap, especially with regard to the existential conundrum that white people consider white youth experiencing offensive music to be.

  ♦

  TRUE THINGS ABOUT “MY NAME IS”

  A lot of people remember it as Eminem’s first song, but that’s not a true thing. Eminem had an entire album that came out before “My Name Is.” The album, Infinite, was not a major-label release, though, and it also wasn’t very good, so it gets either lost or disregarded during discussion, which is for the best either way.

  Slim Shady is the alter ego of Eminem. The idea for an alter ego came out of the premise of D12, the rap group Eminem is a part of. Each member had to come up with one. Eminem came up with his while he was using the restroom, which probably makes a lot of sense.

  “My Name Is” won the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. It beat out “Gimme Some More” by Busta Rhymes, “Vivrant Thing” by Q-Tip, “Changes” by Tupac, and “Wild Wild West” by Will Smith. The album it was on, The Slim Shady LP, won the Grammy for Best Rap Album.7

  Eminem and Dr. Dre recorded “My Name Is” during their inaugural studio stint. It was one of a handful of songs they recorded that evening. According to them, it took somewhere near an hour. AN HOUR. It took Jean-Claude Van Damme more time to win the Kumite than it did for “My Name Is” to be made.

  In addition to producing “My Name Is,” Dr. Dre also codirected the video for it. The song and the video were built solely to serve as an introduction to, and the trademarking of, Eminem. (Slim Shady is said eighteen times during the song.) Dr. Dre did the exact same thing six years earlier with Snoop Dogg on his first single. That song, which also employed name recognition, was called “Who Am I (What’s My Name).” (“Slim Shady” was said twenty-five times in it.) Dr. Dre is smart.

  “My Name Is” samples a piece of “I Got the (Blues)” by a man named Labi Siffre. Siffre, an openly gay man, let them use it, but only after they’d made changes to a few of the lyrics that Siffre felt were offensive. Example: “My English teacher wanted to have sex in junior high. / The only problem was, my English teacher was a guy” became “My English teacher wanted to flunk me in junior high / Thanks a lot. Next semester, I’ll be thirty-five.”

  “My Name Is” was the B side to a song called “Guilty Conscience,” where Dr. Dre and Eminem were presented with three different scenarios (a potential robbery, a potential date rape, and a potential murder) and each argued a side, Dr. Dre the good conscience and Eminem the bad. “Guilty Conscience” is masterfully done, and the third verse on it was probably the single most captivating music moment of 1999.8

  Women have served as Eminem’s rage source material for the entirety of his career (mom, daughter, girlfriend then wife then ex-wife then wife again then ex-wife again).9 It’s one of the overarching themes in his music. We get traces of that in “My Name Is.” There’s the bit about Pamela Anderson (tearing off her breast implants and then smacking her), and also . . .

  Eminem’s mother, Debbie, took a real beating in the song. Em accused her of being a druggie, not providing for him, and being incapable of breastfeeding him because she didn’t have breasts. In response, she sued him for $10 million. She was awarded $25,000. Legal fees ate up most of it. She ended up getting $1,600. That’s .00016 percent of what she was hoping for. That’s the highest percentage of disappointment I’ve ever heard of.

  To extend the point, some: Eminem’s rage, while often aimed at women, is not exclusively so. He is equally fond of lampooning celebrities, be it men, women, clowns, cripples, rappers, reality TV stars, civil rights figures, or any variation or combination of either of those. There’s a direct relationship between how funny or clever or insightful his barbs are and the dates he delivered them (they were enjoyable in 1999 and have gotten only more and more tiresome since then), and there’s also a whole infographic with examples of some of his more pointed barbs right on the next page. You should look at it.

  ♦

  Eminem is, on regular occasion, rated the most powerful rap tactician, and a seamless example of the intricacy and brilliance with which he stitches his rhymes together happened on the TV show 60 Minutes when they ran a segment on him in 2010. During the interview, he and Anderson Cooper were sitting in a studio talking about how Eminem bends words to get them to do what he wants. The word “orange” came up. “What rhymes with ‘orange’?” Cooper asked. “I’m trying to think of some and I can’t figure out any.” Eminem explained that nothing rhymes with “orange” exactly, but that you can mold it into a two-syllable word—oh-range—and all of a sudden, “I put my oh-range, four-inch door hinge in storage and ate porridge with George.” I don’t even know.

  REBUTTAL: “WHO DAT” JT MONEY

  One-hit wonder JT Money’s “Who Dat” is one of the initial bread crumb
s on the path to mainstreaming southern rap. Number one on the Billboard rap chart for eight weeks—the longest-running hold at the top that year—and reaching number five on the Hot 100 (which is eleven places higher than where “My Name Is” peaked) gave evidence to the region’s potential for dominance. It belongs in a category with Master P’s No Limit posse cut “Make ’Em Say Uhh” (1997) and the Hot Boys’ collaboration with the Big Tymers, “I Need a Hot Girl” (1998), as part of the fabric. But not only did “Who Dat” bring Miami booty, bass–informed rap into homes dominated by East Coast and West Coast sounds, it brought Tricky Stewart into the fold for the very first time. Stewart has since become a wizard of production, helming things like Rihanna’s star-making “Umbrella” and Beyoncé’s iconic “Single Ladies.” Without “Who Dat,” who knows?

  —CLAIRE LOBENFELD

  Eminem Picks On People

  • “Won’t Back Down” — “Girl, forget remorse, I’mma hit you broads with Chris’s paws”

  • “Welcome 2 Hell” — “Bruce Willis on his death bed / Last breath with an infection / Fighting it while he’s watching Internet porn / About to meet his death with an erection”

  • “The Real Slim Shady” — “Will Smith gon’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records / Well, I do / So fuck him and fuck you, too”

  • “Stir Crazy” — “I’m sicker than Boy George picturing Michael Jordan in little boys’ drawers shopping at toy stores”

  • “Role Model” — “My mind won’t work if my spine don’t jerk / I slapped Garth Brooks out of his rhinestone shirt”

  • “Rap Game” — “I’m all for America, fuck the government / Tell that C. Delorer Tucker slut to suck a dick”

  • “Purple Pills” — “Its Mr. Mischief with a trick up his sleeve / Roll up on you like Christopher Reeves”

  • “Psycho” — “Beat the Octomom to death with a Cabbage Patch Kid”

  • “No Apologies” — “I am not failing, you fuckers are not ready / ‘Cause I got jelly, like Beyoncé’s pot belly”

  • “It Ain’t Nothin’ But Music” — If Affleck can get his licked how come I can’t / Shit, goddamn, bitch, I’m rich, I can’t understand this”

  • “Chemical Warfare” — “ . . . While I watch Whoopi Goldberg scissor with Oprah”

  • “Berzerk” — “All I know is I fell asleep and woke up in that Monte Carlo / With the ugly Kardashian, Lamar, oh sorry, yo”

  1. Top-five Chris Rock acting roles: 5. Detective Lee Butters in Lethal Weapon 4; 4. Marty in Madagascar; 3. MC Gusto in CB4; 2. A rib joint customer in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka; 1. Pookie in New Jack City.

  2. All of the pieces that led up to this moment are too complex to relay, inasmuch as romantic comedy can be complex.

  3. Kanye has won four over a seven-year stretch. Nobody else has more than two (Outkast).

  4. The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000 (1.76 million); The Eminem Show, 2002 (1.31 million). Only ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys have sold more during their first week in America.

  5. In 2010, Scarface, considered one of the very best rappers on earth, was asked if he’d do a song with Eminem. His response: a laugh. Then: “I’m not fixin’ to go in there fuckin’ with that white boy, man.”

  6. “You know why I could fuck with them? They don’t try to be black. They know they are white, trying to do this rap shit, and they’re fans of it.” —Q-Tip, August 1994 issue of Vibe

  7. Grammys are good to use when you want to argue something is good, but they’re also good to use when you want to argue something is bad. For example, right here, I’m using it to say that “My Name Is” is good. The year prior, though, Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” beat Busta’s “Dangerous,” Wyclef’s “Gone till November,” Jay Z’s “Hard Knock Life,” and Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones.” Bad.

  8. Other contenders: Elton John appears on The Simpsons; Britney Spears releases . . . Baby, One More Time; Sisqó makes “Thong Song.”

  9. The best example (and worst example, too) of the kind of reactionary existence in which Slim Shady lives came via a song called “Just the Two of Us,” which is a take on Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us,” a song he delivers to his son about how he will always love him even though Smith and his son’s mother divorced. In Eminem’s version, he delivers it to his daughter, and it’s about them taking a trip out to a lake late at night to dispose of her mom’s body because Eminem murdered her.

  WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT

  Impulsive living.

  WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

  Jay Z was, by then, a certified star. UGK, while heralded in rap, was still largely unknown outside of their core fan base. Their pairing here, and the success that came from it, helped rearticulate the northern and southern rap conversation.

  The very first thing we see in the video for “Big Pimpin’” is a very big yacht, and all through the video the party that happens on it and away from it is a very big spectacle, and the very last thing we see in the video for “Big Pimpin’” is the very big yacht, and that was all a deliberate move to relay the following:

  Jay wrote “Big Pimpin’” shortly after he’d been charged with assault for stabbing record producer Lance Rivera in the stomach during an altercation at a nightclub.1 Had he been convicted, he might have seen upward of fifteen years in prison. That possible reality served as the impetus for the world he built in “Big Pimpin’”: “The contrast between the million-dollar extravagance of the ‘Big Pimpin’’ video and the potential of being behind bars for years behind a mindless assault wasn’t lost on me. Both were about losing control.” Jay Z wrote that in his 2010 book, Decoded. He further explained: “It’s a song that seems to be about the purity of the hustler’s thrill—pleasure cooked down to a crystal.” And even further: “If the price is life, then you better get what you paid for. There’s an equal and opposite relationship between balling and falling.” He anticipated a catastrophic fall, so he balled stratospherically. His pimpin’ was the biggest it ever was, and ever got, really.

  When the actual trial date neared, though, Jay hedged his bet. Nervous he’d catch the violent reflex of a justice system that’d attempted and failed to lock up Puff Daddy the winter before for a shootout he was involved in at a separate New York nightclub, Jay settled (“No way was I going to allow myself to be a sideshow for the state”). He pled guilty to the charge and received three years probation,2 and that is 100 percent a fair trade.3

  It’s a weird thing to be thankful that someone was stabbed, but I am grateful to Rivera for taking that L, as we all should be.4 Without that happening, (maybe) Jay isn’t motivated to live through the “most paranoid and hedonistic” period of his life, and so we (maybe) don’t get “Big Pimpin’.” That would’ve been a real tragedy. He should’ve stabbed five or six more people. He might’ve written the most transcendent rap album of all.5

  ♦

  Jay Z had twenty career singles before “Big Pimpin’.” Of those, only three were RIAA certified gold (“Dead Presidents,” “Can I Get a . . . ,” and “Hard Knock Life”). “Big Pimpin’” was his first platinum single.6 “Big Pimpin’” was also UGK’s first career platinum single. The song was produced by Timbaland (a true hero), and the video, which became the first rap video featured on MTV’s Making the Video, which carries with it its own knot of supplemental offshoots, was directed by Hype Williams (also a true hero). The song was included in Rolling Stone’s countdown of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (number 467) as well as their countdown of the 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time (number 16). It was nominated for a Grammy (Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group) and an MTV VMA (Best Rap Video). In totality, it was the most successful pairing of a rapper from the North with rappers from the South7 that had occurred up to that moment, and its brilliance lent itself as inspiration for others to try, even if they never could quite match the glow.

  ♦

  Quick aside: Rap videos with less impressive boats.

  2nd Place:
The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize,” featuring Puff Daddy (1997) The boat here is the second most impressive rap video boat. Biggie’s bowler hat is the first best bowler hat, though.

  3rd: Young Bleed’s “How Ya Do Dat,” featuring C-Loc and Master P (1997) Young Bleed put nine hundred people on this boat, and that’s way too high a population density. I figure this boat capsized about fifteen minutes after Master P’s verse.

  4th: Big Tymers’ “Oh Yeah!,” featuring Boo and Gotti (2002) They were on a boat that cost a few hundred thousand dollars to rent per week, and they brought a portable basketball goal on board with them. I miss the Big Tymers so much.

  5th: B.G.’s “Bling Bling,” featuring Hot Boys and Big Tymers (1999) I MISS THE BIG TYMERS SO MUCH.

  6th: 2 Chainz’s “I’m Different” (2012) This boat never even made it to the water. 2 Chainz just hung out in it while it was being carted around on the streets. What royalty.

  7th: The Fugees’ “Ready or Not” (1996) Lauryn Hill. . But also .

  8th: Pusha T’s “Can I Live” (2011) This was a total misplay. He was just on a boat rapping, not doing anything else. Pusha T is a drug-dealer rapper. His name is literally “Pusha.” Give this man the yayo and let’s make a proper drug-transporting video, please.