# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
This is how I found out (mostly) what an M.C is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Hip hop music - Wikipedia . This is also how I found out what rap is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hip hop or hip-hop, also known as rap, and formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the early 1970s by African Americans in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. It existed for several years prior to mainstream discovery. Hip-hop music originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre consisting of stylized rhythmic music (usually built around drum beats) that often accompanies , a rhythmic delivery of poetic speech. According to the professor Asante of African American studies at Temple University, "hip hop is something that blacks can unequivocally claim as their own". The music developed as part of the broader hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/ scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti art. While often used to refer solely to rapping and rap music, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of the culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

Hip hop as both a musical genre and a culture was formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York City, particularly among African American youth residing in the Bronx. At block parties, DJs played percussive breaks of popular songs using two turntables and a DJ mixer to be able to play breaks from two copies of the same record, alternating from one to the other and extending the "break". Hip hop's early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum machines became widely available and affordable. Turntablist techniques such as scratching and beatmatching developed along with the breaks. Rapping developed as a vocal style in which the artist speaks or chants along rhythmically with an instrumental or synthesized beat.

Hip hop music was not officially recorded for play on radio or television until 1979, largely due to poverty during the genre's birth and lack of acceptance outside ghetto neighborhoods. Old-school hip hop was the first mainstream wave of the genre, marked by its disco influence and party-oriented lyrics. The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles and spread around the world. New-school hip hop was the genre's second wave, marked by its electro sound, and led into golden age hip hop, an innovative period between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s that also developed hip hop's own album era. The gangsta rap subgenre, focused on the violent lifestyles and impoverished conditions of inner-city African American youth, gained popularity at this time. West Coast hip hop was dominated by G-funk in the early-mid 1990s, while East Coast hip hop was dominated by jazz rap, alternative hip hop, and hardcore hip hop. Hip hop continued to diversify at this time with other regional styles emerging, such as Southern rap and Atlanta hip hop. Hip hop became a best-selling genre in the mid-1990s and the top-selling music genre by 1999.

The popularity of hip hop music continued through the late 1990s to early-2000s "bling era" with hip hop influences increasingly finding their way into other genres of popular music, such as neo soul, nu metal, and R&B. The United States also saw the success of regional styles such as crunk, a Southern genre that emphasized the beats and music more than the lyrics, and alternative hip hop began to secure a place in the mainstream, due in part to the crossover success of its artists. During the late 2000s and early 2010s "blog era", rappers were able to build up a following through online methods of music distribution, such as social media and blogs, and mainstream hip hop took on a more melodic, sensitive direction following the commercial decline of gangsta rap. The trap and mumble rap subgenres have become the most popular form of hip hop during the mid-late 2010s and early 2020s. In 2017, rock music was usurped by hip hop as the most popular genre in the United States.

The words "hip" and "hop" in combination have a long history. In the 1950s, older folks referred to teen house parties as "hippity hops". The creation of the term hip hop is often credited to Keef Cowboy, rapper with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. However, Lovebug Starski, Keef Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was still known as . It is believed that Cowboy created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance. For example, he would say something along the lines of "I said a hip-hop, a hibbit, hibby-dibby, hip-hip-hop and you don't stop." which was quickly used by other artists such as The Sugarhill Gang in " Rapper's Delight". Universal Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa, also known as "the Godfather", is credited with first using the term to describe the subculture in which the music belonged; although it is also suggested that it was a derogatory term to describe the type of music. The term was first used in print to refer to the music by reporter Robert Flipping, Jr. in a February 1979 article in the New Pittsburgh Courier, and to refer to the culture in a January 1982 interview of Afrika Bambaataa by Michael Holman in the East Village Eye. The term gained further currency in September of that year in another Bambaataa interview in The Village Voice, by Steven Hager, later author of a 1984 history of hip hop.

There are disagreements about whether or not the terms "hip hop" and "rap" can be used interchangeably, even amongst its most knowledgeable proponents. The most common view is that hip-hop is a cultural movement that emerged in the South Bronx in New York City during the 1970s, with MCing (or rapping) being one of the primary four elements. Hip hop's other three essential elements are graffiti art (or aerosol art), break dancing, and DJing. Rap music has become by far the most celebrated expression of hip hop culture, due to being the easiest to market to a mass audience.

Precursors

Musical genres from which hip hop developed include funk, blues, jazz and rhythm and blues recordings from the 60s, 50s, and earlier, including several records by Bo Diddley.[citation needed ]Muhammad Ali's 1963 spoken-word album I Am the Greatest is regarded by some writers as an early example of hip hop.[better source needed ] Pigmeat Markham's 1968 single " Here Comes the Judge" is one of several songs said to be the earliest hip hop record. Leading up to hip hop, there were spoken-word artists such as the Last Poets who released their debut album in 1970, and Gil Scott-Heron, who gained a wide audience with his 1971 track " The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". These artists combined spoken word and music to create a kind of "proto-rap" vibe.

1973-1979: early years

Hip hop as music and culture formed during the 1970s in New York City from the multicultural exchange between African Americans and children of immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, most notably Jamaica. Hip hop music in its infancy has been described as an outlet and a voice for the disenfranchised youth of marginalized backgrounds and low-income areas, as the hip hop culture reflected the social, economic and political realities of their lives. Many of the people who helped establish hip hop culture, including DJ Kool Herc, DJ Disco Wiz, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were of Latin American or Caribbean origin.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact musical influences that most affected the sound and culture of early hip hop because of the multicultural nature of New York City. Hip hop's early pioneers were influenced by a mix of cultures due to the diversity of New York City. New York City experienced a heavy Jamaican hip hop influence during the 1990s. This influence was brought on by cultural shifts particularly because of the heightened immigration of Jamaicans to New York City and the American-born Jamaican youth who were coming of age during the 1990s.

DJ Kool Herc, of Jamaican background, is recognized as one of the earliest hip hop DJs and artists. Some credit him with officially originating hip hop music through his 1973 "Back to School Jam".[51]

In the 1970s, block parties were increasingly popular in New York City, particularly among African American, Caribbean and Latino youth residing in the Bronx. Block parties incorporated DJs, who played popular genres of music, especially funk and soul music. Due to the positive reception, DJs began isolating the percussive breaks of popular songs. This technique was common in Jamaican dub music, and was largely introduced into New York by immigrants from the Caribbean, including DJ Kool Herc, one of the pioneers of hip hop. Herc has repeatedly denied any direct connections between Jamaican musical traditions and early hip hop, stating that his own biggest influence was James Brown, from whom he says rap originated. Even before moving to the U.S., Herc says his biggest influences came from American music:

I was listening to American music in Jamaica and my favorite artist was James Brown. That's who inspired me. A lot of the records I played were by James Brown.

Herc also says that he was not influenced by Jamaican sound system parties, as he was too young to experience them when he was in Jamaica.

Later in a 2020 interview, Herc stated that he wanted Jamaica to reclaim Hip Hop "because we are the ones who bought the style and the technique to America, which [later] became hip-hop."

Because the percussive breaks in funk, soul and disco records were generally short, Herc and other DJs began using two turntables to extend the breaks. On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was the DJ at his sister's back-to-school party. He extended the beat of a record by using two record players, isolating the percussion "breaks" by using a mixer to switch between the two records. Herc's experiments with making music with record players became what we now know as breaking or " scratching".

A second key musical element in hip hop music is emceeing (also called MCing or rapping). Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered at first without accompaniment and later done over a beat. This spoken style was influenced by the African American style of "capping", a performance where men tried to outdo each other in originality of their language and tried to gain the favor of the listeners. The basic elements of hip hop-boasting raps, rival "posses" (groups), uptown "throw-downs", and political and social commentary-were all long present in African American music. MCing and rapping performers moved back and forth between the predominance of songs packed with a mix of boasting, 'slackness' and sexual innuendo and a more topical, political, socially conscious style. The role of the MC originally was as a Master of Ceremonies for a DJ dance event. The MC would introduce the DJ and try to pump up the audience. The MC spoke between the DJ's songs, urging everyone to get up and dance. MCs would also tell jokes and use their energetic language and enthusiasm to rev up the crowd. Eventually, this introducing role developed into longer sessions of spoken, rhythmic wordplay, and rhyming, which became rapping.

By 1979 hip hop music had become a mainstream genre. Herc also developed upon break-beat deejaying, where the breaks of funk songs-the part most suited to dance, usually percussion-based-were isolated and repeated for the purpose of all-night dance parties. This form of music playback, using hard funk and rock, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He dubbed his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply "b-boys" and "b-girls". According to Herc, "breaking" was also street slang for "getting excited" and "acting energetically".

1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the Bronx, a venue used by Kool Herc that is often considered the birthplace of hip hop on August 11, 1973[51][63]

DJs such as Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching. As turntable manipulation continued to evolve a new technique that came from it was needle dropping. Needle dropping was created by Grandmaster Flash, it is prolonged short drum breaks by playing two copies of a record simultaneously and moving the needle on one turntable back to the start of the break while the other played. The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s, DJs were releasing 12-inch records where they would rap to the beat. Popular tunes included Kurtis Blow's " The Breaks" and the Sugarhill Gang's " Rapper's Delight". Herc and other DJs would connect their equipment to power lines and perform at venues such as public basketball courts and at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York, now officially a historic building. The equipment consisted of numerous speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones. By using this technique, DJs could create a variety of music, but according to Rap Attack by David Toop "At its worst the technique could turn the night into one endless and inevitably boring song". KC the Prince of Soul, a rapper-lyricist with Pete DJ Jones, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".

Street gangs were prevalent in the poverty of the South Bronx, and much of the graffiti, rapping, and b-boying at these parties were all artistic variations on the competition and one-upmanship of street gangs. Sensing that gang members' often violent urges could be turned into creative ones, Afrika Bambaataa founded the Zulu Nation, a loose confederation of street-dance crews, graffiti artists, and rap musicians. By the late 1970s, the culture had gained media attention, with Billboard magazine printing an article titled "B Beats Bombarding Bronx", commenting on the local phenomenon and mentioning influential figures such as Kool Herc. The New York City blackout of 1977 saw widespread looting, arson, and other citywide disorders especially in the Bronx where a number of looters stole DJ equipment from electronics stores. As a result, the hip hop genre, barely known outside of the Bronx at the time, grew at an astounding rate from 1977 onward.

DJ Kool Herc's house parties gained popularity and later moved to outdoor venues to accommodate more people. Hosted in parks, these outdoor parties became a means of expression and an outlet for teenagers, where "instead of getting into trouble on the streets, teens now had a place to expend their pent-up energy." Tony Tone, a member of the Cold Crush Brothers, stated that "hip hop saved a lot of lives". For inner-city youth, participating in hip hop culture became a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with the risk of violence and the rise of gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that "people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting". Inspired by DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa created a street organization called Universal Zulu Nation, centered around hip hop, as a means to draw teenagers out of gang life, drugs and violence.

The lyrical content of many early rap groups focused on social issues, most notably in the seminal track "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which discussed the realities of life in the housing projects. "Young black Americans coming out of the civil rights movement have used hip hop culture in the 1980s and 1990s to show the limitations of the Hip Hop Movement." Hip hop gave young African Americans a voice to let their issues be heard; "Like rock-and-roll, hip hop is vigorously opposed by conservatives because it romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs". It also gave people a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."

In late 1979, Debbie Harry of Blondie took Nile Rodgers of Chic to such an event, as the main backing track used was the break from Chic's " Good Times". The new style influenced Harry, and Blondie's later hit single from 1981 " Rapture" became the first single containing hip hop elements to hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100-the song itself is usually considered new wave and fuses heavy pop music elements, but there is an extended rap by Harry near the end.

Boxer Muhammad Ali, as an influential African American celebrity, was widely covered in the media. Ali influenced several elements of hip hop music. Both in the boxing ring and in media interviews, Ali became known in the 1960s for being "rhyming trickster". Ali used a "funky delivery" for his comments, which included "boasts, comical trash talk, [and] the endless quotabl[e]" lines. According to Rolling Stone, his " freestyle skills" (a reference to a type of vocal improvisation in which lyrics are recited with no particular subject or structure) and his "rhymes, flow, and braggadocio" would "one day become typical of old-school MCs" like Run-DMC and LL Cool J, the latter citing Ali as an influence. Hip hop music in its infancy has been described as an outlet and a "voice" for the disenfranchised youth of low-income and marginalized economic areas, as the hip hop culture reflected the social, economic and political realities of their lives.

Technology

Two hip hop DJs creating new music by mixing tracks from multiple record players. Pictured are DJ Hypnotize (left) and Baby Cee (right).

Hip hop's early evolution occurred around the time that sampling technology and drum-machines became widely available to the general public at a cost that was affordable to the average consumer-not just professional studios. Drum-machines and samplers were combined in machines that came to be known as MPC's or ' Music Production Centers', early examples of which would include the Linn 9000. The first sampler that was broadly adopted to create this new kind of music was the Mellotron used in combination with the TR-808 drum machine. Mellotrons and Linn's were succeeded by the AKAI, in the late 1980s.

Turntablist techniques - such as rhythmic " scratching" (pushing a record back and forth while the needle is in the groove to create new sounds and sound effects, an approach attributed to Grand Wizzard Theodore), beat mixing and/or beatmatching, and beat juggling - eventually developed along with the percussion breaks, creating a musical accompaniment or base that could be rapped over in a manner similar to signifying.

Introduction of rapping

The roots of rapping are found in African American music and bear similarities to traditional African music, particularly that of the griots of West African culture. The African American traditions of signifyin', the dozens, and jazz poetry all influence hip hop music, as well as the call and response patterns of African and African American religious ceremonies. Early popular radio disc jockeys of the Black-appeal radio period broke into broadcast announcing by using these techniques under the jive talk of the post WWII swing era in the late 1940s and the 1950s. DJ Nat D. was the M.C. at one of the most pitiless places for any aspiring musician trying to break into show business, Amateur Night at the Palace theatre on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. There he was master of ceremonies from 1935 until 1947 along with his sideman, D.J. Rufus Thomas. It was there he perfected the dozens, signifyin' and the personality jock jive patter that would become his schtick when he became the first black radio announcer on the air south of the Mason-Dixon line. Jive popularized black appeal radio, it was the language of the black youth, the double entendres and slightly obscene wordplay was a godsend to radio, re-invigorating ratings at flagging outlets that were losing audience share and flipping to the new format of R&B with black announcers. The 10% of African Americans who heard his broadcasts found that the music he promoted on radio in 1949 was also in the jukeboxes up north in the cities. They were also finding other D.J's like Chicago's Al Benson on WJJD, Austin's Doctor Hep Cat on KVET and Atlanta's Jockey Jack on WERD speaking the same rhyming, cadence laden rap style. Once the white owned stations realized the new upstarts were grabbing their black market share and that Big Band and swing jazz was no longer 'hip', some white DJ's emulated the southern 'mushmouth' and jive talk, letting their audience think they too were African American, playing the blues and Be-Bop. John R Richbourg had a southern drawl that listeners to Nashville's WLAC nighttime R&B programming were never informed belonged not to a black D.J., as were other white DJ's at the station. Dr. Hep Cat's rhymes were published in a dictionary of jive talk, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, in 1953. Jockey jack is the infamous Jack the Rapper of Family Affair fame, after his radio convention that was a must attend for every rap artist in the 1980s and 1990s These jive talking rappers of the 1950s black appeal radio format were the source and inspiration of Soul singer James Brown, and musical 'comedy' acts such as Rudy Ray Moore, Pigmeat Markham and Blowfly that are often considered "godfathers" of hip hop music. Within New York City, performances of spoken-word poetry and music by artists such as the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin had a significant impact on the post-civil rights era culture of the 1960s and '1970s, and thus the social environment in which hip hop music was created.

Jamaican origins of outdoor sound systems

AM radio at many stations were limited by the 'broadcast Day' as special licenses were required to transmit at night. Those that had such licenses were heard far out to sea and in the Caribbean, where Jocko Henderson and Jockey Jack were American DJs who were listened to at night from broadcast transmitters located in Miami, Florida. Jocko came to have an outsized influence on Jamaican Emcees during the '50s as the R&B music played on the Miami stations was different from that played on JBC, which re-broadcast BBC and local music styles. In Jamaica, DJs would set up large roadside sound systems in towns and villages, playing music for informal gatherings, mostly folks who wandered down from country hills looking for excitement at the end of the week. There the DJs would allow 'Toasts' by an Emcee, which copied the style of the American DJs listened to on AM transistor radios. It was by this method that Jive talk, rapping and rhyming was transposed to the island and locally the style was transformed by 'Jamaican lyricism', or the local patois.

Hip hop as music and culture formed during the 1970s in New York City from the multicultural exchange between African American youth from the United States and young immigrants and children of immigrants from countries in the Caribbean. Some were influenced by the vocal style of the earliest African American radio MCs (including Jocko Henderson's Rocket Ship Show of the 1950s, which rhymed and was influenced by scat singing), which could be heard over the radio in Jamaica.

The first records by Jamaican DJs, including Sir Lord Comic ( The Great Wuga Wuga, 1967) came as part of the local dance hall culture, which featured 'specials,' unique mixes or 'versions' pressed on soft discs or acetate discs, and rappers (called DJs) such as King Stitt, Count Machuki, U-Roy, I-Roy, Big Youth and many others. Recordings of talk-over, which is a different style from the dancehall's DJ style, were also made by Jamaican artists such as Prince Buster and Lee "Scratch" Perry ( Judge Dread) as early as 1967, somehow rooted in the 'talking blues' tradition. The first full-length Jamaican DJ record was a duet on a Rastafarian topic by Kingston ghetto dwellers U-Roy and Peter Tosh named Righteous Ruler (produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry in 1969). The first DJ hit record was Fire Corner by Coxsone's Downbeat sound system DJ, King Stitt that same year; 1970 saw a multitude of DJ hit records in the wake of U-Roy's early, massive hits, most famously Wake the Town and many others. As the tradition of remix (which also started in Jamaica where it was called 'version' and 'dub') developed, established young Jamaican DJ/rappers from that period, who had already been working for sound systems for years, were suddenly recorded and had many local hit records, widely contributing to the reggae craze triggered by Bob Marley's impact in the 1970s. The main Jamaican DJs of the early 1970s were King Stitt, Samuel the First, Count Machuki, Johnny Lover (who 'versioned' songs by Bob Marley and the Wailers as early as 1971), Dave Barker, Scotty, Lloyd Young, Charlie Ace and others, as well as soon-to-be reggae stars U-Roy, Dennis Alcapone, I-Roy, Prince Jazzbo, Prince Far I, Big Youth and Dillinger. Dillinger scored the first international rap hit record with Cocaine in my Brain in 1976 (based on the Do It Any Way You Wanna Do rhythm by the People's Choice as re-recorded by Sly and Robbie), where he even used a New York accent, consciously aiming at the new NYC rap market. The Jamaican DJ dance music was deeply rooted in the sound system tradition that made music available to poor people in a very poor country where live music was only played in clubs and hotels patronized by the middle and upper classes. By 1973 Jamaican sound system enthusiast DJ Kool Herc moved to the Bronx, taking with him Jamaica's sound system culture, and teamed up with another Jamaican, Coke La Rock, at the mike. Although other influences, most notably musical sequencer Grandmaster Flowers of Brooklyn and Grandwizard Theodore of the Bronx contributed to the birth of hip hop in New York, and although it was downplayed in most US books about hip hop, the main root of this sound system culture was Jamaican. The roots of rap in Jamaica are explained in detail in Bruno Blum's book, 'Le Rap'.

DJ Kool Herc and Coke La Rock provided an influence on the vocal style of rapping by delivering simple poetry verses over funk music breaks, after party-goers showed little interest in their previous attempts to integrate reggae-infused toasting into musical sets. DJs and MCs would often add call and response chants, often consisting of a basic chorus, to allow the performer to gather his thoughts (e.g. "one, two, three, y'all, to the beat"). Later, the MCs grew more varied in their vocal and rhythmic delivery, incorporating brief rhymes, often with a sexual or scatological theme, in an effort to differentiate themselves and to entertain the audience. These early raps incorporated the dozens, a product of African American culture. Kool Herc & the Herculoids were the first hip hop group to gain recognition in New York, but the number of MC teams increased over time.

Often these were collaborations between former gangs, such as Afrikaa Bambaataa's Universal Zulu Nation-now an international organization. Melle Mel, a rapper with the Furious Five is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC". During the early 1970s B-boying arose during block parties, as b-boys and b-girls got in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive and frenetic style. The style was documented for release to a worldwide audience for the first time in documentaries and movies such as , , and Beat Street. The term "B-boy" was coined by DJ Kool Herc to describe the people who would wait for the break section of the song, showing off athleticism, spinning on the stage to 'break-dance' in the distinctive, frenetic style.

Although there were some early MCs that recorded solo projects of note, such as DJ Hollywood, Kurtis Blow, and Spoonie Gee, the frequency of solo artists did not increase until later with the rise of soloists with stage presence and drama, such as LL Cool J. Most early hip hop was dominated by groups where collaboration between the members was integral to the show. An example would be the early hip hop group Funky Four Plus One, who performed in such a manner on Saturday Night Live in 1981.

1979-1983: old-school hip hop

Transition to recording

The Sugarhill Gang used disco band Chic's "Good Times" as the source of beats for their 1979 hip hop hit "Rapper's Delight". Pictured is the Sugarhill Gang at a 2016 concert.

The earliest hip hop music was performed live, at house parties and block party events, and it was not recorded. Prior to 1979, recorded hip hop music consisted mainly of PA system soundboard recordings of live party shows and early hip hop mixtapes by DJs. Puerto Rican DJ Disco Wiz is credited as the first hip hop DJ to create a "mixed plate," or mixed dub recording, when, in 1977, he combined sound bites, special effects and paused beats to technically produce a sound recording. The first hip hop record is widely regarded to be the Sugarhill Gang's " Rapper's Delight", from 1979. It was the first hip hop record to gain widespread popularity in the mainstream and was where hip hop music got its name from (from the opening bar). However, much controversy surrounds this assertion as some regard the March 1979 single " King Tim III (Personality Jock)" by the Fatback Band, as a rap record. There are various other claimants for the title of first hip hop record.

By the early 1980s, all the major elements and techniques of the hip hop genre were in place, and by 1982, the electronic (electro) sound had become the trend on the street and in dance clubs. New York City radio station WKTU featured Warp 9's " Nunk", in a commercial to promote the station's signature sound of emerging hip hop Though not yet mainstream, hip hop had begun to permeate the music scene outside of New York City; it could be found in cities as diverse as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, San Antonio, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, New Orleans, Houston, and Toronto. Indeed, " Funk You Up" (1979), the first hip hop record released by a female group, and the second single released by Sugar Hill Records, was performed by the Sequence, a group from Columbia, South Carolina which featured Angie Stone. Despite the genre's growing popularity, Philadelphia was, for many years, the only city whose contributions could be compared to New York City's. Hip hop music became popular in Philadelphia in the late 1970s. The first released record was titled "Rhythm Talk", by Jocko Henderson.

The New York Times had dubbed Philadelphia the "Graffiti Capital of the World" in 1971. Philadelphia native DJ Lady B recorded "To the Beat Y'All" in 1979, and became the first female solo hip hop artist to record music. Schoolly D, starting in 1984 and also from Philadelphia, began creating a style that would later be known as gangsta rap.

Influence of disco

Hip hop music was influenced by disco music, as disco also emphasized the key role of the DJ in creating tracks and mixes for dancers, and old school hip hop often used disco tracks as beats. At the same time however, hip hop music was also a backlash against certain subgenres of late 1970s disco. While the early disco was African American and Italian-American-created underground music developed by DJs and producers for the dance club subculture, by the late 1970s, disco airwaves were dominated by mainstream, expensively recorded music industry-produced disco songs. According to Kurtis Blow, the early days of hip hop were characterized by divisions between fans and detractors of disco music. Hip hop had largely emerged as "a direct response to the watered down, Europeanised, disco music that permeated the airwaves". The earliest hip hop was mainly based on hard funk loops sourced from vintage funk records. By 1979, disco instrumental loops/tracks had become the basis of much hip hop music. This genre was called "disco rap". Ironically, the rise of hip hop music also played a role in the eventual decline in disco's popularity.

DJ Pete Jones, Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood, and Love Bug Starski were disco-influenced hip hop DJs. Their styles differed from other hip hop musicians who focused on rapid-fire rhymes and more complex rhythmic schemes. Afrika Bambaataa, Paul Winley, Grandmaster Flash, and Bobby Robinson were all members of third s latter group. In Washington, D.C. go-go emerged as a reaction against disco and eventually incorporated characteristics of hip hop during the early 1980s. The DJ-based genre of electronic music behaved similarly, eventually evolving into underground styles known as house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit.

Diversification of styles

The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles. New York City became a veritable laboratory for the creation of new hip hop sounds. Early examples of the diversification process can be heard in tracks such as Grandmaster Flash's " The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (1981), a single consisting entirely of sampled tracks as well as Afrika Bambaataa's " Planet Rock" (1982), and Warp 9's " Nunk", (1982) which signified the fusion of hip hop music with electro. In addition, Rammellzee & K-Rob's "Beat Bop" (1983) was a 'slow jam' which had a dub influence with its use of reverb and echo as texture and playful sound effects. " Light Years Away", by Warp 9 (1983), (produced and written by Lotti Golden and Richard Scher) described as a "cornerstone of early 80s beatbox afrofuturism," by the UK paper, The Guardian, introduced social commentary from a sci-fi perspective. In the 1970s, hip hop music typically used samples from funk and later, from disco. The mid-1980s marked a paradigm shift in the development of hip hop, with the introduction of samples from rock music, as demonstrated in the albums King of Rock and Licensed to Ill. Hip hop prior to this shift is characterized as old school hip hop.

The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, a staple sound of hip hop

In 1980, the Roland Corporation launched the TR-808 Rhythm Composer. It was one of the earliest programmable drum machines, with which users could create their own rhythms rather than having to use preset patterns. Though it was a commercial failure, over the course of the decade the 808 attracted a cult following among underground musicians for its affordability on the used market, ease of use, and idiosyncratic sounds, particularly its deep, "booming" bass drum. It became a cornerstone of the emerging electronic, dance, and hip hop genres, popularized by early hits such as Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force's " Planet Rock". The 808 was eventually used on more hit records than any other drum machine; its popularity with hip hop in particular has made it one of the most influential inventions in popular music, comparable to the Fender Stratocaster's influence on rock.

Over time sampling technology became more advanced. However, earlier producers such as Marley Marl used drum machines to construct their beats from small excerpts of other beats in synchronisation, in his case, triggering three Korg sampling-delay units through a Roland 808. Later, samplers such as the E-mu SP-1200 allowed not only more memory but more flexibility for creative production. This allowed the filtration and layering different hits, and with a possibility of re-sequencing them into a single piece. With the emergence of a new generation of samplers such as the AKAI S900 in the late 1980s, producers did not have to create complex, time-consuming tape loops. Public Enemy's first album was created with the help of large tape loops. The process of looping a break into a breakbeat now became more commonly done with a sampler, now doing the job which so far had been done manually by the DJs using turntables. In 1989, DJ Mark James, under the moniker "45 King", released "The 900 Number", a breakbeat track created by synchronizing samplers and vinyl records.

The lyrical content and other instrumental accompaniment of hip hop developed as well. The early lyrical styles in the 1970, which tended to be boasts and clichéd chants, were replaced with metaphorical lyrics exploring a wider range of subjects. As well, the lyrics were performed over more complex, multi-layered instrumental accompaniment. Artists such as Melle Mel, Rakim, Chuck D, KRS-One and Warp 9 revolutionized hip hop by transforming it into a more mature art form, with sophisticated arrangements, often featuring "gorgeous textures and multiple layers" The influential single " The Message" (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is widely considered to be the pioneering force for conscious rap.

Independent record labels like Tommy Boy, Prism Records and Profile Records became successful in the early 1980s, releasing records at a furious pace in response to the demand generated by local radio stations and club DJs. Early 1980s electro music and rap were catalysts that sparked the hip hop movement, led by artists such as Cybotron, Hashim, Afrika Bambaataa, Planet Patrol, Newcleus and Warp 9. In the New York City recording scene, artists collaborated with producer/writers such as Arthur Baker, John Robie, Lotti Golden and Richard Scher, exchanging ideas that contributed to the development of hip hop. Some rappers eventually became mainstream pop performers. Kurtis Blow's appearance in a Sprite soda pop commercial marked the first hip hop musician to do a commercial for a major product. The 1981 songs " Rapture" by Blondie and " Christmas Wrapping" by the new wave band the Waitresses were among the first pop songs to use rap. In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa introduced hip hop to an international audience with " Planet Rock."

Prior to the 1980s, hip hop music was largely confined within the context of the United States. However, during the 1980s, it began its spread and became a part of the music scene in dozens of countries. Greg Wilson was the first DJ to introduce electro hip hop to UK club audiences in the early 1980s, opting for the dub or instrumental versions of Nunk by Warp 9, Extra T's "ET Boogie", Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop) by Man Parrish, Planet Rock and Dirty Talk.

In the early part of the decade, B-boying became the first aspect of hip hop culture to reach Japan, Australia and South Africa. In South Africa, the breakdance crew Black Noise established the practice before beginning to rap later in the decade. Musician and presenter Sidney became France's first black TV presenter with his show which screened on TF1 during 1984, a first for the genre worldwide. Sidney is considered the father of French hip hop. Radio Nova helped launch other French hip hop stars including Dee Nasty, whose 1984 album Paname City Rappin' along with compilations Rapattitude 1 and 2 contributed to a general awareness of hip hop in France.

Hip hop has always kept a very close relationship with the Latino community in New York. DJ Disco Wiz and the Rock Steady Crew were among early innovators from Puerto Rico, combining English and Spanish in their lyrics. the Mean Machine recorded their first song under the label "Disco Dreams" in 1981, while Kid Frost from Los Angeles began his career in 1982. Cypress Hill was formed in 1988 in the suburb of South Gate outside Los Angeles when Senen Reyes (born in Havana) and his younger brother Ulpiano Sergio ( Mellow Man Ace) moved from Cuba to South Gate with his family in 1971. They teamed up with DVX from Queens (New York), Lawrence Muggerud ( DJ Muggs) and Louis Freese ( B-Real), a Mexican/Cuban-American native of Los Angeles. After the departure of "Ace" to begin his solo career, the group adopted the name of Cypress Hill named after a street running through a neighborhood nearby in South Los Angeles.

Japanese hip hop is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop generally tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, taking the era's catchy beats, dance culture, and overall fun and carefree nature and incorporating it into their music. Hip hop became one of the most commercially viable mainstream music genres in Japan, and the line between it and pop music is frequently blurred.

1983-1986: new-school hip hop

Run-DMC, from left to right: Joseph "Run" Simmons, Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell, and Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels

The new school of hip hop was the second wave of hip hop music, originating in 1983-84 with the early records of Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J. As with the hip hop preceding it (which subsequently became known as old school hip hop), the new school came predominantly from New York City. The new school was initially characterized in form by drum machine-led minimalism, with influences from rock music, a hip hop "metal music for the 80s-a hard-edge ugly/beauty trance as desperate and stimulating as New York itself." It was notable for taunts and boasts about rapping, and socio-political commentary, both delivered in an aggressive, self-assertive style. In image as in song its artists projected a tough, cool, street b-boy attitude.

These elements contrasted sharply with much of the previous funk- and disco-influenced hip hop groups, whose music was often characterized by novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers, and "party rhymes" (not all artists prior to 1983-84 had these styles). New-school artists made shorter songs that could more easily gain radio play, and they produced more cohesive LP albums than their old-school counterparts. By 1986, their releases began to establish the hip-hop album as a fixture of mainstream music. Hip hop music became commercially successful, as exemplified by the Beastie Boys' 1986 album Licensed to Ill, which was the first rap album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

1986-1997: Golden age hip hop

Hip hop's "golden age" (or "golden era") is a name given to a period in mainstream hip hop, produced between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, which is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence. There were strong themes of Afrocentrism and political militancy in golden age hip hop lyrics. The music was experimental and the sampling drew on eclectic sources. There was often a strong jazz influence in the music. The artists and groups most often associated with this phase are Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, Big Daddy Kane and the Jungle Brothers.

The golden age is noted for its innovation - a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre" according to Rolling Stone. Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age", 's editor-in-chief Sia Michel says, "there were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time", and MTV's Sway Calloway adds: "The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived. Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new". Writer William Jelani Cobb says "what made the era they inaugurated worthy of the term golden was the sheer number of stylistic innovations that came into existence... in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time".

The golden age spans "from approximately 1986 to 1997", according to Carl Stoffers of New York Daily News. In their article "In Search of the Golden Age Hip-Hop Sound", music theorists Ben Duinker and Denis Martin of Empirical Musicology Review use "the 11 years between and including 1986 and 1996 as chronological boundaries" to define the golden age, beginning with the releases of Run-DMC's Raising Hell and the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill, and ending with the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. The Boombox writer Todd "Stereo" Williams also cites the May 1986 release of Raising Hell (which sold more than three million copies) as the start of the period and notes that over the next year other important albums were released to success, including Licensed to Ill, Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded (1987), Public Enemy's Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987), and Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full (1987). Williams views this development as the beginning of hip hop's own " album era" from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, during which hip hop albums earned an unprecedented critical recognition and "would be the measuring stick by which most of the genre's greats would be judged".

Gangsta rap and West Coast hip hop

Many black rappers-including Ice-T and Sister Souljah-contend that they are being unfairly singled out because their music reflects deep changes in society not being addressed anywhere else in the public forum. The white politicians, the artists complain, neither understand the music nor desire to hear what's going on in the devastated communities that gave birth to the art form.

Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop that reflects the violent lifestyles of inner-city American black youths. Gangsta is a non-rhotic pronunciation of the word . The genre was pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A. In 1985 Schoolly D released " P.S.K. What Does It Mean?", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song, which was followed by Ice-T's " 6 in the Mornin'" in 1986. After the national attention and controversy that Ice-T and N.W.A created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the mainstreaming of G-funk in the mid-1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially-lucrative subgenre of hip hop. Some gangsta rappers were known for mixing the political and social commentary of political rap with the criminal elements and crime stories found in gangsta rap.

N.W.A is the group most frequently associated with the founding of gangsta rap. Their lyrics were more violent, openly confrontational, and shocking than those of established rap acts, featuring incessant profanity and, controversially, use of the word " nigga". These lyrics were placed over rough, rock guitar-driven beats, contributing to the music's hard-edged feel. The first blockbuster gangsta rap album was N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton would establish West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and establish Los Angeles as a legitimate rival to hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song " Fuck tha Police" earned a letter from FBI Assistant Director, Milt Ahlerich, strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song.

Controversy surrounded Ice-T's album , in particular over its song " Cop Killer". The song was intended to speak from the viewpoint of a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops. Ice-T's rock song infuriated government officials, the National Rifle Association of America and various police advocacy groups. Consequently, Time Warner Music refused to release Ice-T's upcoming album Home Invasion because of the controversy surrounding "Cop Killer". Ice-T suggested that the furor over the song was an overreaction, telling journalist Chuck Philips "...they've done movies about nurse killers and teacher killers and student killers. [Actor] Arnold Schwarzenegger blew away dozens of cops as the Terminator. But I don't hear anybody complaining about that." In the same interview, Ice-T suggested to Philips that the misunderstanding of Cop Killer and the attempts to censor it had racial overtones: "The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer."

The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap more generally has caused controversy. The White House administrations of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton criticized the genre. "The reason why rap is under attack is because it exposes all the contradictions of American culture ...What started out as an underground art form has become a vehicle to expose a lot of critical issues that are not usually discussed in American politics. The problem here is that the White House and wanna-bes like Bill Clinton represent a political system that never intends to deal with inner city urban chaos," Sister Souljah told The Times. Due to the influence of Ice-T and N.W.A, gangsta rap is often viewed as a primarily West Coast phenomenon, despite the contributions of East Coast acts like Schoolly D and Boogie Down Productions in shaping the genre.

Mainstream breakthrough

In 1990, Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet was a significant success with music critics and consumers. The album played a key role in hip hop's mainstream emergence in 1990, dubbed by editor Paul Grein as "the year that rap exploded". In a 1990 article on its commercial breakthrough, Janice C. Thompson of wrote that hip hop "has grown into the most exciting development in American pop music in more than a decade." Thompson noted the impact of Public Enemy's 1989 single " Fight the Power", rapper Tone Lōc's single Wild Thing being the best-selling single of 1989, and that at the time of her article, nearly a third of the songs on the Hot 100 were hip hop songs. In a similar 1990 article, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times put hip hop music's commercial emergence into perspective:

It was 10 years ago that the Sugarhill Gang's " Rapper's Delight" became the first rap single to enter the national Top 20. Who ever figured then that the music would even be around in 1990, much less produce attractions that would command as much pop attention as Public Enemy and N.W.A? "Rapper's Delight" was a novelty record that was considered by much of the pop community simply as a lightweight offshoot of disco-and that image stuck for years. Occasional records-including Grandmaster Flash's " The Message" in 1982 and Run-DMC's " It's Like That" in 1984-won critical approval, but rap, mostly, was dismissed as a passing fancy-too repetitious, too one dimensional. Yet rap didn't go away, and an explosion of energy and imagination in the late 1980s leaves rap today as arguably the most vital new street-oriented sound in pop since the birth of rock in the 1950s.

Rap is the rock 'n' roll of the day. Rock 'n' roll was about attitude, rebellion, a big beat, sex and, sometimes, social comment. If that's what you're looking for now, you're going to find it here.

MC Hammer hit mainstream success with the multi platinum album Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. The record reached No. 1 and the first single, " U Can't Touch This" charted on the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. MC Hammer became one of the most successful rappers of the early nineties and one of the first household names in the genre. The album raised rap music to a new level of popularity. It was the first hip-hop album certified diamond by the RIAA for sales of over ten million. It remains one of the genre's all-time best-selling albums. To date, the album has sold as many as 18 million units. Released in 1990, " Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice was the first hip hop single to top the charts in the U.S. It also reached number one in the UK, Australia among others and has been credited for helping diversify hip hop by introducing it to a mainstream audience. In 1992, Dr. Dre released The Chronic. As well as helping to establish West Coast gangsta rap as more commercially viable than East Coast hip hop, this album founded a style called G Funk, which soon came to dominate West Coast hip hop. The style was further developed and popularized by Snoop Dogg's 1993 album Doggystyle. However, hip hop was still met with resistance from black radio, including urban contemporary radio stations. Russell Simmons said in 1990, "Black radio [stations] hated rap from the start and there's still a lot of resistance to it".

Despite the lack of support from some black radio stations, hip hop became a best-selling music genre in the mid-1990s and the top selling music genre by 1999 with 81 million CDs sold. By the late 1990s hip hop was artistically dominated by the Wu-Tang Clan, Diddy and the Fugees. The Beastie Boys continued their success throughout the decade crossing color lines and gaining respect from many different artists. Record labels based out of Atlanta, St. Louis, and New Orleans also gained fame for their local scenes. The midwest rap scene was known for fast vocal styles from artists such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Tech N9ne, and Twista. By the end of the decade, hip hop was an integral part of popular music, and many American pop songs had hip hop components.

Hip hop has been described as a "mainstream subculture". The main reasons why hip hop culture secured its subcultural authority despite becoming a part of the mass media and mainstream industries can be summarized as follows. First, hip hop artists promoted symbolic and conspicuous consumption in their music from a very early stage. Second, the continuing display of resistance in hip-hop has continuously attracted new generations of rebellious fans. Third, owing to the subcultural ideal of rising from the underground, the hip hop scene has remained committed to its urban roots. Fourth, the concept of battle rap has prevented hip-hop music from excessive cultural dilution. Finally, the solidarity within the African American community has shielded the subculture from erosion through mainstream commercialization.

East vs. West rivalry

The East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry was a feud from 1991 to 1997 between artists and fans of the East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop scenes in the United States, especially from 1994 to 1997. Focal points of the feud were East Coast-based rapper the Notorious B.I.G. (and his New York-based label, Bad Boy Records) and West Coast-based rapper Tupac Shakur (and his Los Angeles-based label, Death Row Records). This rivalry started before the rappers themselves hit the scene. Because New York is the birthplace of hip-hop, artists from the West Coast felt as if they were not receiving the same media coverage and public attention as the East Coast. As time went on both rappers began to grow in fame and as they both became more known the tensions continued to arise. Eventually both artists were fatally shot following drive-by shootings by unknown assailants in 1997 and 1996, respectively.

East Coast hip hop

In the early 1990s East Coast hip hop was dominated by the Native Tongues posse, which was loosely composed of De La Soul with producer Prince Paul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers, as well as their loose affiliates 3rd Bass, Main Source, and the less successful Black Sheep and KMD. Although originally a "daisy age" conception stressing the positive aspects of life, darker material (such as De La Soul's thought-provoking "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa") soon crept in. Artists such as Masta Ace (particularly for SlaughtaHouse), Brand Nubian, Public Enemy, Organized Konfusion, and Tragedy Khadafi had a more overtly-militant pose, both in sound and manner. In 1993, the Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) revitalized the New York hip hop scene by pioneering an East Coast hardcore rap equivalent in intensity to what was being produced on the West Coast. According to Allmusic, the production on two Mobb Deep albums, The Infamous (1995) and Hell on Earth (1996), are "indebted" to RZA's early production with the Wu-Tang Clan.

The success of albums such as Nas's and Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die in 1994 cemented the status of the East Coast during a time of West Coast dominance. In a March 2002 issue of The Source Magazine, Nas referred to 1994 as "a renaissance of New York [City] Hip-Hop." The productions of RZA, particularly for the Wu-Tang Clan, became influential with artists such as Mobb Deep due to the combination of somewhat detached instrumental loops, highly compressed and processed drums, and gangsta lyrical content. Wu-Tang solo albums such as Raekwon the Chef's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Ghostface Killah's , and GZA's Liquid Swords are now viewed as classics along with Wu-Tang "core" material. The clan's base extended into further groups called "Wu-affiliates". Producers such as DJ Premier (primarily for Gang Starr but also for other affiliated artists, such as Jeru the Damaja), Pete Rock (with CL Smooth, and supplying beats for many others), Buckwild, Large Professor, Diamond D, and Q-Tip supplied beats for numerous MCs at the time, regardless of location. Albums such as Nas's Illmatic, O.C.'s (1994), and Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt (1996) are made up of beats from this pool of producers.

The rivalry between the East Coast and the West Coast rappers eventually turned personal. Later in the decade the business acumen of the Bad Boy Records tested itself against Jay-Z and his Roc-A-Fella Records and, on the West Coast, Death Row Records. The mid to late 1990s saw a generation of rappers such as the members of D.I.T.C. such as the late Big L and Big Pun. On the East Coast, although the "big business" end of the market dominated matters commercially the late 1990s to early 2000s saw a number of relatively successful East Coast indie labels such as Rawkus Records (with whom Mos Def and Talib Kweli garnered success) and later Def Jux. The history of the two labels is intertwined, the latter having been started by EL-P of Company Flow in reaction to the former, and offered an outlet for more underground artists such as Mike Ladd, Aesop Rock, Mr Lif, RJD2, Cage and Cannibal Ox. Other acts such as the Hispanic Arsonists and slam poet turned MC Saul Williams met with differing degrees of success.

West Coast hip hop

After N.W.A. broke up, former member Dr. Dre released The Chronic in 1992, which peaked at No. 1 on the R&B/hip hop chart, No. 3 on the pop chart, and spawned a No. 2 pop single with " Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang". The Chronic took West Coast rap in a new direction, influenced strongly by P funk artists, melding smooth and easy funk beats with slowly-drawled lyrics. This came to be known as G-funk and dominated mainstream hip hop in the early-mid 1990s through a roster of artists on Suge Knight's Death Row Records, including Tupac Shakur, whose double disc album All Eyez on Me was a big hit with hit songs " Ambitionz az a Ridah" and " 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted";[citation needed ] and Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose Doggystyle included the top ten hits " What's My Name?" and " Gin and Juice". As the Los Angeles-based Death Row built an empire around Dre, Snoop, and Tupac, it also entered into a rivalry with New York City's Bad Boy Records, led by Puff Daddy and the Notorious B.I.G.

Detached from this scene were other artists such as Freestyle Fellowship and the Pharcyde, as well as more underground artists such as the Solesides collective ( DJ Shadow and Blackalicious amongst others), Jurassic 5, Ugly Duckling, People Under the Stairs, Tha Alkaholiks, and earlier Souls of Mischief, who represented a return to hip hop's roots of sampling and well-planned rhyme schemes.

Further diversification

In the 1990s, hip hop began to diversify with other regional styles emerging on the national scene. Southern rap became popular in the early 1990s. The first Southern rappers to gain national attention were the Geto Boys out of Houston, Texas. Southern rap's roots can be traced to the success of Geto Boy's Grip It! On That Other Level in 1989, the Rick Rubin produced The Geto Boys in 1990, and We Can't Be Stopped in 1991. The Houston area also produced other artists that pioneered the early southern rap sound such as UGK and the solo career of Scarface.

Atlanta hip hop artists were key in further expanding rap music and bringing southern hip hop into the mainstream. Releases such as Arrested Development's 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... in 1992, Goodie Mob's in 1995 and OutKast's in 1996 were all critically acclaimed. Other distinctive regional sounds from St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C., Detroit and others began to gain popularity.

What once was rap now is hip hop, an endlessly various mass phenomenon that continues to polarize older rock and rollers, although it's finally convinced some gatekeeping generalists that it may be of enduring artistic value-a discovery to which they were beaten by millions of young consumers black and white.

During the golden age, elements of hip hop continued to be assimilated into other genres of popular music. The first waves of rap rock, rapcore, and rap metal - respective fusions of hip hop and rock, hardcore punk, and heavy metal - became popular among mainstream audiences at this time; Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, and Rage Against the Machine were among the most well-known bands in these fields. In Hawaii, bands such as Sudden Rush combined hip hop elements with the local language and political issues to form a style called na mele paleoleo.

Digable Planets' 1993 release Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) was an influential jazz rap record sampling the likes of Don Cherry, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Herbie Mann, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. It spawned the hit single " Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" which reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1997-2006: bling era

Commercialization and new directions

During the late 1990s, in the wake of the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., a new commercial sound emerged in the hip hop scene, sometimes referred to as the "bling era" (derived from Lil Wayne's " Bling Bling"), "jiggy era" (derived from Will Smith's " Gettin' Jiggy wit It"), or "shiny suit era" (derived by metallic suits worn by some rappers in music videos at the time, such as in " Mo Money Mo Problems" by the Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy, and Mase). Before the late 1990s, gangsta rap, while a huge-selling genre, had been regarded as well outside of the pop mainstream, committed to representing the experience of the inner-city and not "selling out" to the pop charts. However, the rise of Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs's Bad Boy Records, propelled by the massive crossover success of Combs's 1997 ensemble album , signaled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (and mainstream hip hop in general), as it would become even more commercially successful and popularly accepted. Silky R&B-styled hooks and production, more materialist subject matter, and samples of hit soul and pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, which was showcased by producers such as Combs, Timbaland, the Trackmasters, the Neptunes, and Scott Storch. Also achieving similar levels of success at this time were Master P and his No Limit label in New Orleans; Master P built up a roster of artists (the No Limit posse) based out of New Orleans, and incorporated G funk and Miami bass influences in his music. The New Orleans upstart Cash Money label was also gaining popularity during this time, with emerging artists such as Birdman, Lil Wayne, B.G, and Juvenile.

Dr. Dre remained an important figure in this era, making his comeback in 1999 with the album . In 2000, he produced The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem, and also produced 50 Cent's 2003 album Get Rich or Die Tryin', which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts. Jay-Z represented the cultural triumph of hip hop in this era. As his career progressed, he went from performing artist to entrepreneur, label president, head of a clothing line, club owner, and market consultant-along the way breaking Elvis Presley's record for most number one albums on the Billboard magazine charts by a solo artist.

Rise of alternative hip hop

Alternative hip hop, which was introduced in the 1980s and then declined, resurged in the early-mid 2000s with the rejuvenated interest in indie music by the general public. The genre began to attain a place in the mainstream, due in part to the crossover success of artists such as OutKast, Kanye West, and Gnarls Barkley. OutKast's 2003 album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below received high acclaim from music critics, and appealed to a wide range of listeners, being that it spanned numerous musical genres - including rap, rock, R&B, punk, jazz, indie, country, pop, electronica, and gospel. The album also spawned two number-one hit singles, and has been certified diamond by selling 11 times platinum by the RIAA for shipping more than 11 million units, becoming one of the best selling hip-hop albums of all time. It also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, being only the second rap album to do so. Previously, alternative hip hop acts had attained much critical acclaim, but received relatively little exposure through radio and other media outlets; during this time, alternative hip hop artists such as MF Doom, the Roots, Dilated Peoples, Gnarls Barkley, Mos Def, and Aesop Rock began to achieve significant recognition.

Glitch hop and wonky music

Glitch hop is a fusion genre of hip hop and glitch music that originated in the early to mid-2000s in the United States and Europe. Musically, it is based on irregular, chaotic breakbeats, glitchy basslines and other typical sound effects used in glitch music, like skips. Glitch hop artists include Prefuse 73, Dabrye and Flying Lotus. Wonky is a subgenre of hip hop that originated around 2008, but most notably in the United States and United Kingdom, and among international artists of the Hyperdub music label, under the influence of glitch hop and dubstep. Wonky music is of the same glitchy style as glitch hop, but it was specifically noted for its melodies, rich with "mid-range unstable synths". Scotland has become one of the most prominent wonky scenes, with artists like Hudson Mohawke and Rustie.

Glitch hop and wonky are popular among a relatively smaller audience interested in alternative hip hop and electronic music (especially dubstep); neither glitch hop nor wonky have achieved mainstream popularity. However, artists like Flying Lotus, the Glitch Mob and Hudson Mohawke have seen success in other avenues. Flying Lotus's music has earned multiple positive reviews on the independent music review site Pitchfork.com as well as a prominent (yet uncredited) spot during Adult Swim commercial breaks. Hudson Mohawke is one of few glitch hop artists to play at major music festivals such as Sasquatch! Music Festival.

Crunk music

Crunk is a regional hip hop genre that originated in Tennessee in the southern United States in the 1990s, influenced by Miami bass. One of the pioneers of crunk, Lil Jon, said that it was a fusion of hip hop, electro, and electronic dance music. The style was pioneered and commercialized by artists from Memphis, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia, gaining considerable popularity in the mid-2000s via Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins. Looped, stripped-down drum machine rhythms are usually used. The Roland TR-808 and 909 are among the most popular. The drum machine loops are usually accompanied by simple, repeated synthesizer melodies and heavy bass "stabs". The tempo of the music is somewhat slower than hip-hop, around the speed of reggaeton. The focal point of crunk is more often the beats and instrumental music rather than the lyrics. Crunk rappers, however, often shout and scream their lyrics, creating an aggressive, almost heavy, style of hip-hop. While other subgenres of hip-hop address sociopolitical or personal concerns, crunk is almost exclusively "party music", favoring call and response hip-hop slogans in lieu of more substantive approaches. Crunk helped southern hip hop gain mainstream prominence during this period, as the classic East and West Coast styles of the 1990s gradually lost dominance.

2006-2014: blog era

Snap music and influence of the Internet

Snap rap (also known as ringtone rap) is a subgenre of crunk that emerged from Atlanta, Georgia in the late 1990s. The genre gained mainstream popularity in the mid-late 2000s, and artists from other Southern states such as Tennessee also began to emerge performing in this style. Tracks commonly consist of a Roland TR-808 bass drum, hi-hat, bass, finger snapping, a main groove, and a simplistic vocal hook. Hit snap songs include " Lean wit It, Rock wit It" by Dem Franchize Boyz, " Laffy Taffy" by D4L, " It's Goin' Down" by Yung Joc, and " Crank That (Soulja Boy)" by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em. In retrospect, Soulja Boy has been credited with setting trends in hip hop, such as self-publishing his songs through the Internet (which helped them go viral) and paving the way for a new wave of younger artists.

Decline in sales

Starting in 2005, sales of hip hop music in the United States began to severely wane, leading magazine to question if mainstream hip-hop was "dying." Billboard magazine found that, since 2000, rap sales dropped 44%, and declined to 10% of all music sales, which, while still a commanding figure when compared to other genres, is a significant drop from the 13% of all music sales where rap music regularly placed. According to Courtland Milloy of The Washington Post, for the first time on five years, no rap albums were among the top 10 sellers in 2006. NPR culture critic Elizabeth Blair noted that, "some industry experts say young people are fed up with the violence, degrading imagery and lyrics." However, the 2005 report Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds found that hip hop music is by far the most popular music genre for children and teenagers with 65 percent of 8- to-18-year-olds listening to it on a daily basis.

Other journalists say the music is just as popular as it ever was, but that fans have found other means to consume the music, such as illegally downloading music through P2P networks, instead of purchasing albums and singles from legitimate stores. For example, Flo Rida is known for his low album sales regardless of his singles being mainstream and having digital success. His second album sold only 200,000+ total units in the U.S., which could not line up to the sales of the album's lead single " Right Round". This also happened to him in 2008. Some put the blame on hip hop becoming less lyrical over time, such as Soulja Boy's 2007 debut album souljaboytellem.com which was met with negative reviews. Lack of sampling, a key element of early hip hop, has also been noted for the decrease in quality of modern albums. For example, there are only four samples used in 2008's Paper Trail by T.I., while there are 35 samples in 1998's Moment of Truth by Gang Starr. The decrease in sampling is in part due to it being too expensive for producers.

In Byron Hurt's documentary Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, he claims that hip hop had changed from "clever rhymes and dance beats" to "advocating personal, social and criminal corruption." Despite the fall in record sales throughout the music industry, hip-hop had remained a popular genre, with hip-hop artists still regularly topping the Billboard 200 Charts. In the first half of 2009 alone artists such as Eminem, Rick Ross, the Black Eyed Peas, and Fabolous all had albums that reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard 200 charts. Eminem's album was one of the fastest selling albums of 2009.

Innovation and revitalization

By the late 2000s, alternative hip hop had secured its place within the mainstream, due in part to the declining commercial viability of gangsta rap. Industry observers view the sales race between Kanye West's Graduation and 50 Cent's as a turning point for hip hop. West emerged the victor, selling nearly a million copies in the first week alone, proving that innovative rap music could be just as commercially viable as gangsta rap, if not more so. Although he designed it as a melancholic pop album rather than a rap album, Kanye's following 808s & Heartbreak would have a significant effect on hip hop music. While his decision to sing about love, loneliness, and heartache for the entirety of the album was at first heavily criticized by music audiences and the album was predicted to be a flop, its subsequent critical acclaim and commercial success encouraged other mainstream rappers to take greater creative risks with their music. During the release of The Blueprint 3, New York rap mogul Jay-Z revealed that next studio album would be an experimental effort, stating, "... it's not gonna be a #1 album. That's where I'm at right now. I wanna make the most experimental album I ever made." Jay-Z elaborated that like Kanye, he was unsatisfied with contemporary hip hop, was being inspired by indie-rockers like Grizzly Bear, and asserted his belief that the indie rock movement would play an important role in the continued evolution of hip-hop.

In 2009, Time magazine placed M.I.A. in the Time 100 list of "World's Most Influential People".

The alternative hip hop movement was not limited only to the United States, as rappers such as Somali-Canadian poet K'naan, Japanese rapper Shing02, and Sri Lankan British artist M.I.A. achieved considerable worldwide recognition. In 2009, Time magazine placed M.I.A in the Time 100 list of "World's Most Influential people" for having "global influence across many genres." Global-themed movements have also sprung out of the international hip-hop scene with microgenres like "Islamic Eco-Rap" addressing issues of worldwide importance through traditionally disenfranchised voices.

Due in part to the increasing use of music distribution through social media and blogging, many alternative and non-alternative rappers found acceptance by far-reaching audiences, hence why this era of hip hop is sometimes termed the "blog era". Several artists, such as Kid Cudi and Drake, managed to attain chart-topping hit songs, " Day 'n' Nite" and " Best I Ever Had" respectively, by releasing their music on free online mixtapes without the help of a major record label. Emerging artists at the time such as Wale, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Lupe Fiasco, the Cool Kids, Jay Electronica, and B.o.B were noted by critics as expressing eclectic sounds, sensitive life experiences, and vulnerable emotions that were rarely seen in the prior bling era.

Also at this time, the Auto-Tune vocal effect was bolstered in popularity by rapper T-Pain, who elaborated on the effect and made active use of Auto-Tune in his songs. He cites new jack swing producer Teddy Riley and funk artist Roger Troutman's use of the talk box as inspirations for his own use of Auto-Tune. T-Pain became so associated with Auto-Tune that he had an iPhone app named after him that simulated the effect, called "I Am T-Pain". Eventually dubbed the "T-Pain effect", the use of Auto-Tune became a popular fixture of late 2000s and early 2010s hip hop, examples being Snoop Dogg's " Sexual Eruption", Lil Wayne's " Lollipop", Kanye West's album 808s & Heartbreak, and the Black Eyed Peas' number-one hit " Boom Boom Pow".

2014-present: trap and the rise of the SoundCloud rap scene

Trap music is a subgenre of Southern rap that originated in the early 1990s. It grew in the 2000s to become a mainstream sensation, eventually reaching ubiquity in the mid-late 2010s and frequently having songs top the hip hop charts. It is typified by double or triple-time sub-divided hi-hats, heavy kick drums from the Roland TR-808 drum machine, layered synthesizers and an overall dark, ominous or bleak atmosphere. The strong influence of the sound led to other artists within the genre to move towards the trap sound, with a notable example being Jay-Z and Kanye West on their joint song, . Non-rappers have also experimented with trap, such as " 7/11" by Beyoncé and " Dark Horse" by Katy Perry (featuring rapper Juicy J).

Lil Nas X was one of the rappers to emerge in the 2010s. He garnered mainstream success in 2019.[244] He is also the first openly gay rapper to be heavily nominated at the Grammy Awards.[245]

Critics of the trap genre have used the term " mumble rap" to describe the heavily auto-tuned, and sometimes hard to understand- delivery of verses from a majority of the artists. Artists longstanding within the genre have had their own comments regarding the rise of mumble rap, such as Rick Rubin stating that Eminem was confused by it, and Snoop Dogg claiming that he can not differentiate between artists. Black Thought, lead rapper from the Roots, stated that the "game has changed. It's different. The standards are different, the criteria that's taken into consideration in determining validity is different. We're at a point in history where lyricism almost comes last in very many regards."

On July 17, 2017, reported that hip hop/ R&B (which Nielsen SoundScan classifies as being the same genre) had usurped rock as the most consumed musical genre, becoming the most popular genre in music for the first time in U.S. history.

In the 2010s, Atlanta hip hop dominated the mainstream.

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, Brooklyn drill became popular since Pop Smoke emerged before his death. The 2020s decade began with Roddy Ricch as the first rapper to have a Billboard Hot 100 number-one entry.

Age of streaming

Doja Cat was the most streamed rapper of 2021 on Spotify.[258]

The rise of streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music in the mid-late 2010s greatly impacted the entire music business as a whole. Despite being a free streaming-only mixtape with no commercial release, Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book won Best Rap Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards, being the first streaming album ever to win a Grammy Award. Kanye West has stated that his own album, , marked the death of CDs, and thus his subsequent release, The Life of Pablo was only released digitally. The Life of Pablo was also nominated for 2017 Best Rap Album. In 2017, Drake released a free streaming-only project titled , which he called a " playlist", insisting that it was neither a mixtape nor an album.

The most streamed hip hop album of all time on Spotify is XXXTentacion's second album, ? (2018).[272]

In 2021, the most streamed rappers were Doja Cat and Lil Nas X. Other rappers with high streams in 2021 were Drake, Eminem, Lil Baby, Polo G, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Moneybagg Yo, Masked Wolf, Pop Smoke, J. Cole, and Lil Durk. The most streamed rap album of all time on Spotify is XXXTentacion's second album, ? (2018).

World hip hop music

Hip-hop music has reached the cultural corridors of the globe and has been absorbed and reinvented around the world. Hip hop music expanded beyond the US, often blending local styles with hip hop. Hip hop has globalized into many cultures worldwide, as evident through the emergence of numerous regional scenes. It has emerged globally as a movement based upon the main tenets of hip hop culture. The music and the art continue to embrace, even celebrate, its transnational dimensions while staying true to the local cultures to which it is rooted. Hip-hop's impact differs depending on each culture. Still, the one thing virtually all hip hop artists worldwide have in common is that they acknowledge their debt to those African American people in New York who launched the global movement.

Latinos and people from the Caribbean played an integral role in the early development of hip hop in New York, and the style spread to almost every country in that region. Hip hop first developed in the South Bronx, which had a high Latino, particularly Puerto Rican, population in the 1970s. Some famous rappers from New York City of Puerto Rican origin are the late Big Pun, Fat Joe, and Angie Martinez. With Latino rap groups like Cypress Hill on the American charts, Mexican rap rock groups, such as Control Machete, rose to prominence in their native land.

In many Latin American countries, as in the U.S., hip hop has been a tool with which marginalized people can articulate their struggle. Hip hop grew steadily more popular in Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s through Cuba's Special Period that came with the fall of the Soviet Union. During this period of economic crisis, which the country's poor and black populations especially hard, hip hop became a way for the country's Afro-descended population to embrace their blackness and articulate a demand for racial equality for black people in Cuba. The idea of blackness and black liberation was not always compatible with the goals of the Cuban government, which was still operating under the idea that a raceless society was the correct realization of the Cuban Revolution. When hip-hop emerged, the Cuban government opposed the vulgar image that rappers portrayed, but later accepted that it might be better to have hip-hop under the influence of the Ministry of Culture as an authentic expression of Cuban Culture. Rappers who explicitly speak about race or racism in Cuba are still under scrutiny by the government. An annual Cuban hip hop concert, beginning in 1995, held at Alamar in Havana helped popularize Cuban hip hop. Famous Cuban rap groups include Krudas Cubensi and Supercrónica Obsesión.

Reggaeton, a Puerto Rican style of music, has a lot of similarities with U.S.-based hip hop. Both were influenced by Jamaican music, and both incorporate rapping and call and response. Dancehall music and hip from the United States are both popular music in Puerto Rico, and reggaeton is the cumulation of different musical traditions founded by Afro-descended people in the Caribbean and the United States. Some of reggaeton's most popular artists include Don Omar, Tego Calderón, and Daddy Yankee.

In Venezuela, social unrest at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s coincided with the rise of gangsta rap in the United States and led to the rise of that music in Venezuela as well. Venezuelan rappers in the 1990s generally modeled their music after gangsta rap, embracing and attempting to redefine negative stereotypes about poor and black youth as dangerous and materialistic and incorporating socially conscious critique of Venezuela's criminalization of young, poor, Afro-descended people into their music.

In Haiti, hip hop developed in the early 1980s. Master Dji and his songs "Vakans" and "Politik Pa m" are mostly credited with the rise of Haitian hip hop. What later became known as "Rap Kreyòl" grew in popularity in the late 1990s with King Posse and Original Rap Stuff. Due to cheaper recording technology and flows of equipment to Haiti, more Rap Kreyòl groups are recording songs, even after the January 12 earthquake. Haitian hip hop has recently become a way for artists of Haitian backgrounds in the Haiti and abroad to express their national identity and political opinions about their country of origin. Rappers have embraced the red and blue of the Flag of Haiti and rapping in Haitian Creole to display their national origin. In the Dominican Republic, a recording by Santi Y Sus Duendes and Lisa M became the first single of merenrap, a fusion of hip hop and merengue.

De La Soul at the Gorillaz tour, Demon Days Live in 2005

In Europe, Africa, and Asia, hip hop began to move from the underground to mainstream audiences. In Europe, hip hop was the domain of both ethnic nationals and immigrants. British hip hop, for example, became a genre of its own and spawned artists such as Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, the Streets and many more. Germany produced the well-known Die Fantastischen Vier as well as several Turkish performers like the controversial Cartel, Kool Savaş, and Azad. In France, hip hop music developed itself from the end of the 80s. It can be divided into three eras: The classical period, which extends from the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 2000s marked by a majority of black artists like Oxmo Puccino, Mc Solaar, Kery James (with IdealJ), IAM, NTM, the period of democratization from the 2000s, with groups and artists like Lunatic, Diam's, Sinik, Rim'K, Sefyu, Sniper, Rohff, La Fouine, which are beginning to affect the French population in general and to record the first significant commercial successes. Finally, from the 2010s, French-speaking rap experienced a rather paradoxical period of innovation, the logical start of new experiments that opened up French rap to new musical genres, such as trap, drill or "folk" rap. This period is distinguished by the great variety of French hip hop music, where several movements beginning to separate, artists like Booba, Kaaris, JuL, Gims, Freeze Corleone, Ziak or Soolking try to innovate and look for new tracks to explore. In the Netherlands, important nineties rappers include the Osdorp Posse, a crew from Amsterdam, Extince, from Oosterhout, and Postmen. Italy found its own rappers, including Jovanotti and Articolo 31, grow nationally renowned, while the Polish scene began in earnest early in the decade with the rise of PM Cool Lee. In Romania, B.U.G. Mafia came out of Bucharest's Pantelimon neighborhood, and their brand of gangsta rap underlines the parallels between life in Romania's Communist-era apartment blocks and in the housing projects of America's ghettos.

The annual Blockfest in Tampere, Finland is the largest hip hop music event in the Nordic countries[292] and also one of the best-selling festivals in advance.[293] Picture of Blockfest in 2017.

One of the countries outside the US where hip-hop is most popular is the United Kingdom. Grime, a genre of music derived from UK Garage and drum and bass and influenced by hip hop, emerged in the early 2000s with artists such as Dizzee Rascal becoming successful. Although it is immensely popular, many British politicians criticize the music for what they see as promoting theft and murder, similar to gangsta rap in America. These criticisms have been deemed racist by the mostly Black British grime industry. Despite its controversial nature, grime has had a major effect on British fashion and pop music, with many young working-class youth emulating the clothing worn by grime stars like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley. There are many subgenres of grime, including "Rhythm and Grime", a mix of R&B and grime, and grindie, a mix of indie rock and grime popularized by indie rock band Hadouken!

In Germany and France, gangsta rap has become popular among youths who like the violent and aggressive lyrics. Some German rappers openly or comically flirt with Nazism; for example, Bushido (born Anis Mohamed Youssef Ferchichi) raps "Salutiert, steht stramm, Ich bin der Leader wie A" (Salute, stand to attention, I am the leader like 'A') and Fler had a hit with the record Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) complete with the title written in Third Reich style Gothic print and advertised with an Adolf Hitler quote. These references also spawned great controversy in Germany. Meanwhile, in France, artists like Kery James' Idéal J maintained a radical, anti-authoritarian attitude and released songs like which attacked the growth of the French far right. In the Netherlands, MC Brainpower went from being an underground battle rapper to mainstream recognition in the Benelux, thus influencing numerous rap artists in the region. In Israel, rapper Subliminal reaches out to Israeli youth with political and religious-themed lyrics, usually with a Zionist message.

In Asia, mainstream stars rose to prominence in the Philippines, led by Francis Magalona, Rap Asia, MC Lara and Lady Diane. In Japan, where underground rappers had previously found a limited audience, and popular teen idols brought a style called J-rap to the top of the charts in the middle of the 1990s. Of particular importance is the influence on East Asian nations, where hip hop music has become fused with local popular music to form different styles such as K-pop, C-pop and J-pop.

In South Africa, the hip hop scene overlaps with kwaito, a music genre that emphasizes African culture and social issues. Prominent South African rappers include Cassper Nyovest and Big Zulu.

In Tanzania in the early 2000s, local hip hop artists became popular by infusing local styles of Afrobeat and arabesque melodies, dancehall and hip-hop beats with Swahili lyrics.

In the 2010s, hip hop became popular in Canada with Canadians rappers such as Drake, Nav, Belly and Tory Lanez. Drake was the most streamed artist of the decade.

References

David Toop (1984/1991). Rap Attack II: African Rap To Global Hip Hop. New York. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1-85242-243-2.

McLeod, Kembrew. Interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee. 2002. Stay Free Magazine.

Corvino, Daniel and Livernoche, Shawn (2000). A Brief History of Rhyme and Bass: Growing Up With Hip Hop. Tinicum, PA: Xlibris Corporation/The Lightning Source, Inc. ISBN 1-4010-2851-9[self-published source ]

Hess, Mickey (2009). Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide: Volume 1: East Coast and West Coast Greenwood. ISBN 0313343233

Rose, Tricia (1994). "Black Noise". Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6275-0

Potter, Russell (1995) Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-2626-2

Light, Alan (ed). (1999). The VIBE History of Hip-Hop. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80503-7

George, Nelson (2000, rev. 2005). Hip-Hop America. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-028022-7

Fricke, Jim and Ahearn, Charlie (eds). (2002). Yes Yes Y'All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip Hop's First Decade. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81184-7

Kitwana, Bakar (2004). The State of Hip-Hop Generation: how hip-hop's culture movement is evolving into political power. Retrieved December 4, 2006. From Ohio Link Database

Chang, Jeff (2005). Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. Picador, ISBN 0-312-42579-1.

Chang, Jeff (November-December 2007). "It's a Hip-hop World". Foreign Policy (163): 58-65. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017.

Diawara, Manthia (1998). In Search of Africa. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-44611-3.

Further reading

George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. Penguin, 2005.

Katz, Mark. Groove Music. The Art and Culture of the Hip Hop DJ. OUP, 2012.

External links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hip hop or hip-hop, also known as rap, and formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the early 1970s by African Americans in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. It existed for several years prior to mainstream discovery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Eminem - Wikipedia. This is how I found out about eminem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Eminem's global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music. While much of his transgressive work during the late 1990s and early 2000s made him widely controversial, he came to be a representation of popular angst of the American underclass and has been cited as an influence for many artists of various genres.

After the release of his debut album (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP. His next two releases, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002), were worldwide successes and were both nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. After the release of his next album, (2004), Eminem went on hiatus in 2005, largely due to a prescription drug addiction. He returned to the music industry four years later with the release of (2009) and was released the following year. Recovery was the best-selling album worldwide of 2010, making it Eminem's second album, after The Eminem Show in 2002, to be the best-selling album of the year worldwide. In the following years, he released the US number one albums The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013), (2017), (2018) and Music to Be Murdered By (2020).

Eminem made his debut in the film industry with the musical drama film (2002), playing a fictionalized version of himself, and his track " Lose Yourself" from its soundtrack won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making him the first hip hop artist ever to win the award. Eminem has made cameo appearances in the films (2001), Funny People (2009) and The Interview (2014) and the television series (2010). He has also developed other ventures, including Shady Records, a joint venture with manager Paul Rosenberg, which helped launch the careers of artists such as 50 Cent, D12 and Obie Trice, among others. He has also established his own channel, Shade 45, on Sirius XM Radio.

In addition to his solo career, Eminem was a member of the hip hop group D12. He is also known for collaborations with fellow Detroit-based rapper Royce da 5'9"; the two are collectively known as Bad Meets Evil.

Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated worldwide sales of over 220 million records. He was the best-selling music artist in the United States of the 2000s and the best-selling male music artist in the United States of the 2010s, third overall. named him the " Artist of the Decade (2000-2009)". He has had ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200-which all consecutively debuted at number one on the chart, making him the first artist to achieve this-and five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, Curtain Call: The Hits (2005), "Lose Yourself", " Love the Way You Lie" and " Not Afraid" have all been certified Diamond or higher by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Rolling Stone has included him in its lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. He has won numerous awards, including 15 Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards, 17 Billboard Music Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and an MTV Europe Music Global Icon Award. In November 2022, Eminem was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mathers was born on October 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the only child of Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. and Deborah Rae "Debbie" ( née Nelson). He is of English, Scottish, German, Swiss, Polish, and Luxembourgish ancestry. His mother nearly died during her 73-hour labor with him. Eminem's parents were in a band called Daddy Warbucks, playing in Ramada Inns along the Dakotas- Montana border before they separated. Eminem's father, Bruce Jr., left the family, moving to California after having two other children: Michael and Sarah. His mother, Debbie, later had a son named Nathan "Nate" Kane Samara. During his childhood, Eminem and his mother shuttled between Detroit and Missouri, rarely staying in one house for more than a year or two and living primarily with family members. In Missouri, they lived in several places, including St. Joseph, Savannah and Kansas City.

As a teenager, Eminem wrote letters to his father. Debbie said that they all came back marked "return to sender". When he was a child, a bully named D'Angelo Bailey severely injured Eminem's head in an assault, an incident which Eminem later recounted (with comic exaggeration) on the song "Brain Damage". Debbie filed a lawsuit against the public school for this in 1982. The suit was dismissed the following year by a Macomb County, Michigan judge, who said the schools were immune from lawsuits. For much of his youth, Eminem and his mother lived in a working-class, primarily black, Detroit neighborhood. He and Debbie were one of three white households on their block, and Eminem was beaten several times by black youths.

As a child, he was interested in storytelling, aspiring to be a comic book artist before discovering hip hop. Eminem heard his first rap song (" Reckless", featuring Ice-T) on the soundtrack, a gift from Debbie's half-brother Ronnie Polkingharn. His uncle was close to the boy and later became a musical mentor to him. When Polkingharn committed suicide in 1991, Eminem stopped speaking publicly for days and did not attend his funeral.

Eminem's home life was seldom stable; he frequently fought with his mother, whom a social worker described as having a "very suspicious, almost paranoid personality". When her son became famous, Debbie dismissed criticism, saying that she had sheltered him and was responsible for his success. In 1987, Debbie allowed runaway Kimberly Anne "Kim" Scott to stay at their home. Several years later, Eminem began an on-and-off relationship with Scott. After spending three years in ninth grade due to truancy and poor grades, he dropped out of Lincoln High School at age 17. Although interested in English, Eminem never explored literature (preferring comic books) and he disliked math and social studies. Eminem worked at several jobs to help his mother pay the bills. One of the jobs he had was with Little Caesar's Pizza in Warren, Michigan. He later said she often threw him out of the house anyway, often after taking most of his paycheck. When she left to play bingo, he would blast the stereo and write songs.

At age 14, Eminem began rapping with high-school friend Mike Ruby; they adopted the names "Manix" and "M&M", the latter evolving into "Eminem". Eminem sneaked into neighboring Osborn High School with friend and fellow rapper Proof for lunchroom freestyle rap battles. On Saturdays, they attended open mic contests at the Hip-Hop Shop on West 7 Mile Road, considered "ground zero" for the Detroit rap scene. Struggling to succeed in a predominantly black industry, Eminem was appreciated by underground hip hop audiences. When he wrote verses, he wanted most of the words to rhyme; he wrote long words or phrases on paper and, underneath, worked on rhymes for each syllable. Although the words often made little sense, the drill helped Eminem practice sounds and rhymes.

In 1988, he went by the stage name MC Double M and formed his first group New Jacks and made a self-titled demo tape with DJ Butter Fingers. In 1989, they later joined Bassmint Productions who later changed their name to Soul Intent in 1992 with rapper Proof and other childhood friends. They released a self-titled EP in 1995 featuring Proof. Eminem also made his first music video appearance in 1992 in a song titled, "Do-Da-Dippity", by Champtown. Later in 1996, Eminem and Proof teamed up with four other rappers to form The Dirty Dozen ( D12), who released their first album Devil's Night in 2001.

Eminem was soon signed to Jeff and Mark Bass's F.B.T. Productions and recorded his debut album for their independent Web Entertainment label. The album was a commercial failure upon its release in 1996. One lyrical subject of Infinite was his struggle to raise his newborn daughter, Hailie Jade Scott Mathers, on little money. During this period, Eminem's rhyming style, primarily inspired by rappers Nas, Esham and AZ, lacked the comically violent slant for which he later became known. Detroit disc jockeys largely ignored Infinite and the feedback Eminem did receive ("Why don't you go into rock and roll?") led him to craft angrier, moodier tracks. At this time Eminem and Kim Scott lived in a crime-ridden neighborhood and their house was robbed several times. Eminem cooked and washed dishes for minimum wage at Gilbert's Lodge, a family-style restaurant at St. Clair Shores. His former boss described him as becoming a model employee, as he worked 60 hours a week for six months after Hailie's birth. He was fired shortly before Christmas and later said, "It was, like, five days before Christmas, which is Hailie's birthday. I had, like, forty dollars to get her something." After the release of Infinite, his personal problems and substance abuse culminated in a suicide attempt. By March 1997 he was fired from Gilbert's Lodge for the last time and lived in his mother's mobile home with Kim and Hailie.

Eminem attracted more attention when he developed Slim Shady, a sadistic, violent alter ego. The character allowed him to express his anger with lyrics about drugs, rape and murder. In the spring of 1997 he recorded his debut EP, the Slim Shady EP, which was released that winter by Web Entertainment. The EP, with frequent references to drug use, sexual acts, mental instability and violence, also explored the more-serious themes of dealing with poverty and marital and family difficulties and revealed his direct, self-deprecating response to criticism. Hip hop magazine featured Eminem in its "Unsigned Hype" column in March 1998.

After he was fired from his job and evicted from his home, Eminem went to Los Angeles to compete in the 1997 Rap Olympics, an annual, nationwide battle rap competition. He placed second and an Interscope Records intern in attendance called Dean Geistlinger asked Eminem for a copy of the Slim Shady EP, which was then sent to company CEO Jimmy Iovine. Iovine played the tape for record producer Dr. Dre, founder of Aftermath Entertainment and founding member of hip hop group N.W.A. Dre recalled, "In my entire career in the music industry, I have never found anything from a demo tape or a CD. When Jimmy played this, I said, 'Find him. Now.'" He would later state on the fourth and last episode of The Defiant Ones, "I was like: what the fuck!?, and who the fuck is that?" expressing his shock towards Mathers' rapping talent. Although his associates criticized him for hiring a white rapper, he was confident in his decision: "I don't give a fuck if you're purple; if you can kick it, I'm working with you." Eminem had idolized Dre since listening to N.W.A. as a teenager and was nervous about working with him on an album: "I didn't want to be starstruck or kiss his ass too much ... I'm just a little white boy from Detroit. I had never seen stars let alone Dr. Dre." He became more comfortable working with Dre after a series of productive recording sessions.

Eminem released The Slim Shady LP in February 1999. Although it was one of the year's most popular albums ( certified triple platinum by the end of the year), he was accused of imitating the style and subject matter of underground rapper Cage. The album's popularity was accompanied by controversy over its lyrics; in "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" Eminem describes a trip with his infant daughter when he disposes of his wife's body and in " Guilty Conscience" which encourages a man to murder his wife and her lover. "Guilty Conscience" marked the beginning of a friendship and musical bond between Dr. Dre and Eminem. The label-mates later collaborated on a number of hit songs (" Forgot About Dre" and " What's the Difference" while also providing uncredited vocals on " The Watcher" from Dr. Dre's album , " Bitch Please II" from The Marshall Mathers LP, "Say What You Say" from The Eminem Show, " Encore/Curtains Down" from and " Old Time's Sake" and " Crack a Bottle" from ) and Dre made at least one guest appearance on each of Eminem's Aftermath albums. The Slim Shady LP has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA.

1999-2003: The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show

After Eminem released The Slim Shady LP, he started his own record label, Shady Records, in late 1999. Eminem looked for an avenue to release D12, and his manager Paul Rosenberg was keen to start a label, which led to the two teaming up to form Shady. Its A&R Marc Labelle has defined the record label as "a boutique label but [with] all the outlets of a major [and] Interscope backing up our every move."

Recorded from 1999 to 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP was released in May 2000. It sold 1.76 million copies in its first week, breaking US records held by Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle for fastest-selling hip hop album and Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time for fastest-selling solo album. The first single from the album, " The Real Slim Shady", was a success despite controversies about Eminem's insults and dubious claims about celebrities (for example, that Christina Aguilera had performed oral sex on Carson Daly and Fred Durst). In his second single, " The Way I Am", he reveals the pressure from his record company to top " My Name Is". Although Eminem parodied shock rocker Marilyn Manson in the music video for "My Name Is", they are reportedly on good terms; Manson is mentioned in "The Way I Am", appeared in its music video and has performed a live remix of the song with Eminem. In the third single, " Stan" (which samples Dido's " Thank You"), Eminem tries to deal with his new fame, assuming the persona of a deranged fan who kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend (mirroring "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" from The Slim Shady LP). called "Stan" the third-greatest rap song of all time, and it was ranked tenth in a Top40-Charts.com survey. The song has since been ranked 296th on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. In July 2000, Eminem was the first white artist to appear on the cover of The Source. The Marshall Mathers LP was certified Diamond by the RIAA in March 2011 and sold 21 million copies worldwide. In 2000 Eminem also appeared in the Up in Smoke Tour with rappers Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit and Ice Cube and the Family Values Tour with Limp Bizkit, headlining the Anger Management Tour with Papa Roach, Ludacris and Xzibit.

Eminem performed with Elton John at the 43rd Grammy Awards ceremony in 2001, with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD, an organization which considered Eminem's lyrics homophobic) condemning John's decision to perform with Eminem. Entertainment Weekly placed the appearance on its end-of-decade "best-of" list: "It was the hug heard 'round the world. Eminem, under fire for homophobic lyrics, shared the stage with a gay icon for a performance of 'Stan' that would have been memorable in any context." On February 21, the day of the awards ceremony, GLAAD held a protest outside the Staples Center (the ceremony's venue). Eminem was also the only guest artist to appear on fellow rapper Jay-Z's critically acclaimed album The Blueprint, producing and rapping on the song "Renegade".

The Eminem Show was released in May 2002. It was another success, reaching number one on the charts and selling over 1.332 million copies during its first full week. The album's single, " Without Me", denigrates boy bands, Limp Bizkit, Dick and Lynne Cheney, Moby and others. The Eminem Show, certified Diamond by the RIAA, examines the effects of Eminem's rise to fame, his relationship with his wife and daughter and his status in the hip hop community, addressing an assault charge brought by a bouncer he saw kissing his wife in 2000. Although several tracks are clearly angry, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic found The Eminem Show less inflammatory than The Marshall Mathers LP. L. Brent Bozell III, who had criticized The Marshall Mathers LP for misogynistic lyrics, noted The Eminem Show's extensive use of obscenity and called Eminem "Eminef" for the prevalence of the word " motherfucker" on the album. The Eminem Show sold 27 million copies worldwide and was the best-selling album of 2002.

In 2003, Eminem, a lifelong fan of Tupac, provided production work for three tracks on the Tupac Resurrection soundtrack. He would follow this up the next year by producing 12 of the 16 tracks on Tupac's Loyal to the Game album. On December 8, 2003, the United States Secret Service said that it was "looking into" allegations that Eminem had threatened the President of the United States. The cause for concern was the lyrics of "We As Americans" ("Fuck money / I don't rap for dead presidents / I'd rather see the president dead / It's never been said, but I set precedents"), which was later released on a bonus CD with the deluxe edition of .

, released in 2004, was another success, but not as successful as his previous albums. Its sales were partially driven by the first single, " Just Lose It", which contained slurs directed toward Michael Jackson. On October 12, 2004, a week after the release of "Just Lose It", Jackson phoned Steve Harvey's radio show to report his displeasure with its video (which parodies Jackson's child molestation trial, plastic surgery and the 1984 incident when Jackson's hair caught fire during the filming of a commercial). In the song, Eminem says, "That's not a stab at Michael / That's just a metaphor / I'm just psycho." Many of Jackson's friends and supporters spoke out against the video, including Stevie Wonder, who described it as "kicking a man while he's down" and "bullshit", and Steve Harvey (who said, "Eminem has lost his ghetto pass. We want the pass back"). The video also parodied Pee-wee Herman, MC Hammer and Madonna during her Blond Ambition period. "Weird Al" Yankovic, who parodied the Eminem song " Lose Yourself" on "Couch Potato" for his 2003 album , told the Chicago Sun-Times about Jackson's protest: "Last year, Eminem forced me to halt production on the video for my 'Lose Yourself' parody because he somehow thought that it would be harmful to his image or career. So the irony of this situation with Michael is not lost on me." Although Black Entertainment Television stopped playing the video, MTV announced that it would continue to air it. The Source, through CEO Raymond "Benzino" Scott, called for the video to be pulled, the song removed from the album and Eminem to apologize publicly to Jackson. In 2007, Jackson and Sony bought Famous Music from Viacom, giving him the rights to songs by Eminem, Shakira, Beck and others.

Despite its lead single's humorous theme, Encore explored serious subject matter with the anti-war song " Mosh", which criticized President George W. Bush as "This weapon of mass destruction that we call our president", with lyrics including "Fuck Bush." On October 25, 2004, a week before the 2004 US Presidential election, Eminem released the video for "Mosh" on the Internet. In it, Eminem gathers an army (including rapper Lloyd Banks) of Bush-administration victims and leads them to the White House. When they break in, it is learned that they are there to register to vote; the video ends with "VOTE Tuesday November 2." After Bush's reelection, the video's ending was changed to Eminem and the protesters invading the White House during a speech by the president. Also in 2004 Eminem launched a satellite music channel, Shade 45, on Sirius radio, which was described by his manager as "essentially a destination to get and hear things that other people aren't playing."

Eminem began his first US concert tour in three years in the summer of 2005 with the Anger Management 3 Tour, featuring 50 Cent, G-Unit, Lil Jon, D12, Obie Trice and the Alchemist, but in August he canceled the European leg of the tour, later announcing that he had entered drug rehabilitation for treatment of a "dependency on sleep medication". Meanwhile, industry insiders speculated that Eminem was considering retirement, while rumors circulated that a double album titled The Funeral would be released. In July, the Detroit Free Press reported a possible final bow for Eminem as a solo performer, quoting members of his inner circle as saying that he would embrace the roles of producer and label executive. A greatest hits album, Curtain Call: The Hits, was released on December 6, 2005, by Aftermath Entertainment, and sold nearly 441,000 copies in the US in its first week, marking Eminem's fourth consecutive number-one album on the Billboard Hot 200, and was certified double platinum by the RIAA. However, Eminem suggested that month on WKQI's "Mojo in the Morning" show that he would be taking a break as an artist: "I'm at a point in my life right now where I feel like I don't know where my career is going ... This is the reason that we called it 'Curtain Call' because this could be the final thing. We don't know."

In April 2006, Proof, who was Eminem's childhood friend, was murdered. Eight months later, Eminem released a compilation album titled Eminem Presents: The Re-Up that featured Proof and other Shady Records artists.

In September 2007, Eminem called New York radio station WQHT during an interview with 50 Cent, saying that he was "in limbo" and "debating" about when (or if) he would release another album: "I'm always working - I'm always in the studio. It feels good right now, the energy of the label. For a while, I didn't want to go back to the studio ... I went through some personal things. I'm coming out of those personal things [and] it feels good."

Eminem appeared on his Shade 45 Sirius channel in September 2008, saying: "Right now I'm kinda just concentrating on my own stuff, for right now and just banging out tracks and producing a lot of stuff. You know, the more I keep producing the better it seems like I get 'cause I just start knowing stuff." Interscope confirmed that a new album would be released in spring 2009. In December 2008, Eminem provided more details about the album, entitled : "Me and Dre are back in the lab like the old days, man. Dre will end up producing the majority of the tracks on 'Relapse'. We are up to our old mischievous ways ... let's just leave it at that."

According to a March 5, 2009, press release, Eminem would release two new albums that year. Relapse, the first, was released on May 19; its first single and music video, " We Made You", had been released on April 7. Although Relapse did not sell as well as Eminem's previous albums and received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and re-established his presence in the hip hop world. It sold more than five million copies worldwide. During the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Sacha Baron Cohen descended on the audience in an angel costume. He landed buttocks-first on Eminem, who stormed out of the ceremony; three days later, Eminem said that the stunt had been staged. On October 30 he headlined at the Voodoo Experience in New Orleans, his first full performance of the year. Eminem's act included several songs from Relapse, many of his older hits and an appearance by D12. On November 19, he announced on his website that Relapse: Refill would be released on December 21. The album was a re-release of Relapse with seven bonus tracks, including " Forever" and "Taking My Ball". Eminem described the CD:

I want to deliver more material for the fans this year like I originally planned ... Hopefully, these tracks on The Refill will tide the fans over until we put out next year ... I got back in with Dre and then a few more producers, including Just Blaze, and went in a completely different direction which made me start from scratch. The new tracks started to sound very different than the tracks I originally intended to be on Relapse 2, but I still want the other stuff to be heard.

On April 14, 2010, Eminem tweeted: "There is no Relapse 2". Although his followers thought he was not releasing an album, he had changed its title to and confirmed this by tweeting "Recovery" with a link to his website. He said:

I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year. But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves its own title.

Recorded from 2009 to 2010, Recovery was released on June 18. In the US, Recovery sold 741,000 copies during its first week, topping the Billboard 200 chart. Eminem's sixth consecutive US number-one album also topped the charts in several other countries. Recovery remained atop the Billboard 200 chart for five consecutive weeks of a seven-week total.

Billboard reported that it was the best-selling album of 2010, making Eminem the first artist in Nielsen SoundScan history with two year-end best-selling albums. Recovery is the best-selling digital album in history. Its first single, " Not Afraid", was released on April 29 and debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100; its music video was released on June 4. "Not Afraid" was followed by " Love the Way You Lie", which debuted at number two before rising to the top. Although "Love the Way You Lie" was the best-selling 2010 single in the United Kingdom, it did not reach number one (the first time this has happened in the UK since 1969). Despite criticism of its inconsistency, Recovery received positive reviews from most critics. As of November 21, 2010, the album had US sales of three million copies. was the best-selling album worldwide in 2010, joining 2002's best-seller The Eminem Show to give Eminem two worldwide year-end number-one albums. With Recovery, Eminem broke the record for the most successive US number-one albums by a solo artist.

He appeared at the 2010 BET Awards, performing "Not Afraid" and " Airplanes, Part II" with B.o.B and Keyshia Cole. Later that year, he performed at the Activison E3 concert. In June, Eminem and Jay-Z announced they would perform together in Detroit and New York City, at concerts called The Home & Home Tour. The first two concerts quickly sold out, prompting an additional show in each city. BET called Eminem the number-one rapper of the 21st century. He opened the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, performing "Not Afraid" and "Love the Way You Lie" with Rihanna singing the choruses. Due to the success of Recovery and the Home & Home Tour, Eminem was named the 2010 Hottest MC in the Game by MTV and Emcee of the Year by the online magazine . He and Rihanna again collaborated on " Love the Way You Lie (Part II)", the sequel of their hit single. Unlike the original, Rihanna is the lead vocalist and it is sung from the female perspective. In December 2010, the "Great Eminem Recovery" was number one on Billboard's Top 25 Music Moments of 2010. He appeared at the 2011 Grammy Awards on February 13, performing "Love the Way You Lie (Part II)" with Rihanna and Adam Levine and " I Need a Doctor" with Dr. Dre and Skylar Grey. That month it was announced that " Space Bound" would be the fourth single from Recovery, with a music video featuring former porn actress Sasha Grey; the video was released June 24 on the iTunes Store.

In 2010, Eminem again began collaborating with Royce da 5'9" on their first EP as Bad Meets Evil; the duo formed in 1998. The EP, Hell: The Sequel, was released on June 14, 2011. Eminem was featured on Royce da 5'9"'s " Writer's Block", released on April 8, 2011. On May 3 they released the lead single " Fast Lane" from their upcoming EP and a music video was filmed. In March 2011, within days of each other, The Eminem Show and The Marshall Mathers LP were certified diamond by the RIAA; Eminem is the only rapper with two diamond-certified albums. With more than 60 million "likes" he was the most-followed person on Facebook, outscoring Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Michael Jackson. Eminem was the first artist in five years with two number-one albums ( Recovery and Hell: The Sequel) in a 12-month period. Early in 2011 he leaked "2.0 Boys", on which Yelawolf and Slaughterhouse collaborated when they signed with Shady Records in January and performed it in April. Bad Meets Evil released their next single, " Lighters", on July 6 and its music video in late August. On August 6, Eminem performed several songs from throughout his career at Lollapalooza with the artists who had been featured on each song.

Eminem announced on May 24, 2012, that he was working on his next album, scheduled for release the following year. Without a title or release date, it was included on a number of "Most Anticipated Albums of 2013" lists (including MTV); ranked it sixth and fifth.

On August 14, " Survival", featuring Liz Rodrigues and produced by DJ Khalil, premiered in the multi-player trailer for the video game Call of Duty: Ghosts. According to a press release, the first single from Eminem's eighth album would be released soon. During the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, it was announced that the album would be entitled The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (following The Marshall Mathers LP) and was scheduled for release on November 5. Its lead single, " Berzerk", was released on August 25 and debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Three more singles followed: " Survival" (appearing on the Call of Duty: Ghosts trailer), " Rap God" and " The Monster" (with Rihanna).

The album was released on November 5, by Aftermath Entertainment, Shady Records and Interscope Records. Its standard version had 16 tracks and the deluxe version included a second disc with five additional tracks. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was Eminem's seventh album to debut atop the Billboard 200 and had the year's second-largest first-week sales. He was the first artist since the Beatles to have four singles in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. In the United Kingdom, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. The first American artist with seven consecutive UK number-one albums, he is tied with the Beatles for second place for the most consecutive chart-topping UK albums. The album secured Eminem's position as Canada's best-selling artist and was 2013's best-selling album.

On November 3, Eminem was named the first YouTube Music Awards Artist of the Year, and a week later he received the Global Icon Award at the 2013 MTV EMA Music Awards. On June 10, it was announced that Eminem was the first artist to receive two digital diamond certifications - sales and streams of 10 million and above - by the RIAA (for " Not Afraid" and " Love the Way You Lie"). On July 11 and 12, Eminem played two concerts in Wembley Stadium. At the 57th Grammy Awards, he received Best Rap Album award for The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (with Rihanna) for " The Monster".

In the summer of 2014, Eminem and Rosenberg began using the hashtag #SHADYXV on social networking sites and Eminem wore a T-shirt with the hashtag onstage. This was later revealed to be the name of an upcoming Shady Records compilation. Shortly afterwards the first single from the album (" Guts Over Fear", featuring singer-songwriter Sia) was released and the album's track list was released on October 29. Shady Records released a cypher to promote the album, in which Eminem did a seven-minute freestyle. " Detroit vs. Everybody" (the album's second single), with Eminem, Dej Loaf, Royce da 5'9", Danny Brown, Big Sean and Trick-Trick, was released on November 11. , released on November 24 during Black Friday week, consists of one greatest-hits disc and one disc of new material by Shady Records artists such as D12, Slaughterhouse, Bad Meets Evil and Yelawolf. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 138,000 copies in the United States.

The Official Eminem Box Set, a career-spanning, 10-disc vinyl box set, was released on March 12, 2015. The set includes seven of Eminem's eight studio albums (excluding Infinite), the 8 Mile soundtrack, the compilation Eminem Presents: The Re-Up and the greatest hits collection Curtain Call: The Hits. Early in the year, it was announced that he would appear on Tech N9ne's "Speedom (Worldwide Choppers 2)". The song, also featuring Krizz Kaliko, was released on April 20. Eminem also appeared on Yelawolf's "Best Friend", the single from .

Eminem is the executive producer of the soundtrack on the sports drama , with Shady Records. The first single from the soundtrack called ' Phenomenal' was released on June 2, 2015. Another single, " Kings Never Die" by Eminem featuring Gwen Stefani, was released on July 10, 2015, on YouTube via Eminem's Vevo account. Eminem was the first interview of Zane Lowe in Beats 1. The interview streamed online on the Beats 1 radio on July 1, 2015.

Eminem appeared on the public access show Only in Monroe, produced in Monroe, Michigan and was interviewed by guest host Stephen Colbert for an episode that aired July 1, 2015. In the episode Eminem sang snippets of Bob Seger songs at Colbert's prompting and briefly discussed Southpaw. In June 2015, it was revealed that he will serve as the executive producer and music supervisor on the TV series Motor City whose premise will be based upon the 2002 film .

In September 2016, Eminem was featured on Skylar Grey's song, "Kill For You", which appears on her album, Natural Causes. On October 19, 2016, Eminem released a new song called " Campaign Speech", a political hip hop song and announced he was working on a new album. On November 17, 2016, Eminem released a remastered version of 'Infinite' on his YouTube VEVO channel. On November 22, 2016, Eminem released a trailer for a 10-minute short documentary called Partners in Rhyme: The True Story of Infinite.

In February 2017, Eminem appeared on " No Favors", a track from Big Sean's album . In the song, Eminem calls the newly elected President Donald Trump a "bitch" and also raps about raping conservative social and political commentator Ann Coulter, who is a Trump supporter, with a variety of foreign objects. Coulter responded to the lyrics, stating, "I think it's unfortunate that the left, from Berkeley to Eminem with his rap songs, has normalized violence against women, as Eminem has done." Eminem participated in the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards' annual cypher, using his verse, a freestyle rap called "The Storm", to further criticize Trump and the administration for, among other things, Trump's focus on National Football League players' protests during "The Star Spangled Banner" over Hurricane Maria recovery efforts and lack of gun control reform in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Eminem ended the cypher by giving an ultimatum saying that Trump supporters cannot be his fans. The verse received wide praise among other rappers following its release. In October 2017, Eminem appeared on " Revenge", a track from Pink's album Beautiful Trauma. It was reported that the Secret Service interviewed Eminem in 2018-2019, regarding threatening lyrics towards President Trump and daughter Ivanka.

Starting in late October 2017, Eminem and Paul Rosenberg began teasing what fans speculated was the title of a new album titled , in the form of advertisements for a fake medication of the same name. Later in November, the first single " Walk on Water" was released, which featured Beyoncé. The song was first performed, by Eminem, at the 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards on November 12, featuring Skylar Grey. He appeared on Saturday Night Live on November 18, performing "Walk on Water", "Stan" and "Love the Way You Lie" with Skylar Grey. On November 28, Dr. Dre posted a video confirming the album's release date as December 15, 2017. On December 8, Eminem released a promotional single titled " Untouchable", which featured a sample from the duo Cheech & Chong. Despite an online leak of the album two days prior, Revival was released as planned on December 15. On January 5, 2018, the second single " River" was released, which featured Ed Sheeran. It became Eminem's eighth consecutive album to top the US Billboard 200 upon release with 197,000 copies sold in its first week. As a result, he became the first musical act to have eight entries in a row debut atop the chart. The album was met with mixed reviews from music critics and is generally considered his worst album. In 2018, an extended edition of "Nowhere Fast" with Kehlani and a remix of "Chloraseptic" featuring 2 Chainz and Phresher were released from Revival.

On August 31, 2018, Eminem released his tenth studio album and first surprise album , making it his second full-length studio album in 8 months. The album topped the Billboard 200, making it his ninth album in a row to do so, after selling 434,000 units in the first week. The album was released as a response to criticism of Revival, his worst rated album. The album was promoted with three singles: " Fall", " Venom", from the 2018 film of the same name and " Lucky You". During the October 15, 2018, episode of the late-night television show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Eminem performed the song " Venom" at the 103rd floor of the Empire State Building in New York City as a promotion of the album.

On December 1, Eminem released an 11 minute freestyle to his YouTube channel titled 'Kick off'. Eminem collaborated with several artists throughout early 2019, including Boogie, Logic, Ed Sheeran, 50 Cent and Conway the Machine. On February 23, 2019, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Eminem released a re-issue of The Slim Shady LP, including acapellas, instrumentals and radio edited versions of tracks from the album.

2020-present: Music to Be Murdered By, Super Bowl LVI, Curtain Call 2, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction

On January 17, 2020, Eminem released another surprise album Music to Be Murdered By. Recorded from 2019 to 2020, the album features guest appearances by Young M.A., Royce da 5'9", Q-Tip, Denaun Porter, White Gold, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, Skylar Grey, Anderson .Paak, Don Toliver, Kxng Crooked, Joell Ortiz and Black Thought. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 279,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. Subsequently, Eminem became the first artist to have ten consecutive albums debut at number one in the US and one of six artists to have released at least ten US number-one albums. Music critics praised Eminem's lyrical abilities and the improved production after Kamikaze, while criticism directed towards the album's formulaic song structure, lack of innovation and shock value.

The lyrics of "Unaccommodating", in which Eminem referenced the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, drew significant criticism, with many critics finding the lyrics objectionable. The mayor of Manchester denounced the song's lyrics, describing them as "unnecessarily hurtful and deeply disrespectful". The lyrics also drew widespread criticism from victims' relatives and others involved in the attack. On February 9, 2020, Mathers performed " Lose Yourself" at the 92nd Academy Awards. On March 9, 2020, the music video for the song " Godzilla" was released on YouTube through Lyrical Lemonade's channel. The video features Mike Tyson and Dr. Dre. As of October 8, 2022, the music video has over 520.9 million views. On March 11, 2020, Music to Be Murdered By was certified Gold. On July 9, 2020, Kid Cudi's daughter Vada announced via social media that he was releasing a song with Eminem called " The Adventures of Moon Man & Slim Shady" the coming Friday.

A deluxe edition of the album, titled Music to Be Murdered By - Side B, was released on December 18, 2020. Similar to Eminem's previous two albums, it was released without any prior announcement. It contains a bonus disc with sixteen new tracks, with guest appearances by Skylar Grey, DJ Premier, Ty Dolla Sign, Dr. Dre, Sly Pyper, MAJ and White Gold. The album's release was accompanied by a music video for "Gnat", directed by Cole Bennett. Music to Be Murdered By - Side B is projected to debut on the Billboard 200 at number 3, with 70,000-80,000 album-equivalent units, including 25,000-30,000 in pure album sales. In the track "Zeus", he apologizes to Rihanna over a leaked song from his Relapse studio sessions in which he sided with Chris Brown, who pleaded guilty to felony assault involving her in 2009.

He announced on September 28, 2021, on his social media that he would be featured in a song with Polo G and Mozzy called "Last One Standing" by Skylar Grey for the soundtrack of the film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, released on September 30, 2021.

Eminem performed alongside LL Cool J at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony on October 30, 2021.

On February 13, 2022, Eminem performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige, with surprise appearances from 50 Cent and Anderson. Paak.

Eminem announced on May 23, 2022, on his Instagram that he and CeeLo Green will collaborate on a new track titled "The King and I" which will be produced by Dr. Dre and will appear on the Baz Luhrmann's movie soundtrack. It was released on June 16, 2022, a week prior to its announced date.

On June 24, 2022, Eminem and Snoop Dogg released a song entitled "From the D to the LBC" to squash their beef which started with an interview of Snoop Dogg with Breakfast Club and a subsequent diss by Eminem on the song "Zeus" from Music to be Murdered By - Side B. Eminem had previously confirmed on "Killer (Remix)" that Dr. Dre had stepped in to squash the beef, but Snoop announced a collaboration to squash it once and for all. The two had previously collaborated on the track "Bitch Please II" from Eminem's sophomore album The Marshall Mathers LP. The song's music video was also released the same day after the two unveiled it at Apefest.

Eminem announced his second greatest hits album on July 11, 2022, entitled Curtain Call 2, which is a sequel to his first compilation Curtain Call: The Hits. The album will cover his albums from Relapse to Music to Murdered By, as well as collaborations and songs from movie soundtracks. It was released on August 5, 2022, and also includes "The King and I", " From the D 2 the LBC", and an additional new track named Is This Love ('09) featuring 50 Cent.

On August 26, 2022, Eminem was featured alongside Kanye West on the remix of the song " Use This Gospel" on DJ Khaled's new album . The remix was originally set to be released on West's shelved album Jesus Is King Part II. The song features production from Dr. Dre and his production team called the ICU.

Eminem was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. He was presented by Dr. Dre and had special guest appearances by Aerosmith lead vocalist Steven Tyler and Ed Sheeran during his performance.

Influences, style and rapping technique

Eminem has cited several MCs as influencing his rapping style, including Esham, Kool G Rap, Masta Ace, Big Daddy Kane, Newcleus, Ice-T, Mantronix, Melle Mel (on " The Message"), LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., Rakim and Boogie Down Productions. In , Guerilla Black notes that Eminem studied other MCs to hone his rapping technique: "Eminem listened to everything and that's what made him one of the greats". In the book, other MCs also praise aspects of his rapping technique: varied, humorous subject matter, connecting with his audience, carrying a concept over a series of albums, complex rhyme schemes, bending words so they rhyme, multisyllabic rhymes, many rhymes to a bar, complex rhythms, clear enunciation, and the use of melody and syncopation. Eminem is known to write most of his lyrics on paper (documented in ), taking several days or a week to craft lyrics, being a " workaholic" and " stacking" vocals. Examples of hip hop subgenres that Eminem's music has been described as include horrorcore, comedy hip hop, and hardcore hip hop. Eminem also incorporates rap rock into his music and has cited rock acts during the 1970s and 1980s, such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, as influences in his music.

Eminem uses alter egos in his songs for different rapping styles and subject matter. His best-known alter ego, Slim Shady, first appeared on the Slim Shady EP and was in The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, , , The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and Music to Be Murdered By. In this persona, his songs are violent and dark, with a comic twist. Eminem downplayed Slim Shady on because he felt it did not fit the album's theme. Another character is Ken Kaniff, a homosexual who pokes fun at Eminem's songs. Ken was created and originally played by fellow Detroit rapper Aristotle on the Slim Shady LP, where Kaniff makes a prank call to Eminem. An argument after the album's release prompted Eminem to use the Kaniff character on Marshall Mathers and later albums (except Encore and Recovery). Aristotle, angry with Eminem's use of his character, released a mixtape in his Kaniff persona ridiculing him.

Collaborations and productions

Although Eminem usually collaborates with Aftermath Entertainment and Shady Records rappers such as Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, D12, Obie Trice and Yelawolf, he has also worked with Redman, Kid Rock, DMX, Lil Wayne, Missy Elliott, Jay Z, Drake, Rihanna, Nas, Nicki Minaj, Xzibit, Method Man, Jadakiss, Fat Joe, Sticky Fingaz, T.I. and Young Jeezy. Eminem rapped a verse in a live performance of Busta Rhymes' " Touch It" remix at the 2006 BET Music Awards. He appeared on Akon's single " Smack That" from , Lil Wayne's hit " Drop the World" and " My Life" (the lead single from 50 Cent's Street King Immortal).

Eminem was the executive producer of D12's first two albums (Devil's Night and ), Obie Trice's and Second Round's on Me and 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and The Massacre. He has produced songs for other rappers such as Jadakiss' "Welcome To D-Block", Jay-Z's " Renegade" and "Moment of Clarity", Lloyd Banks' " On Fire", "Warrior Part 2" and " Hands Up", Tony Yayo's "Drama Setter", Trick-Trick's " Welcome 2 Detroit" and Xzibit's "My Name" and "Don't Approach Me". Most of The Eminem Show was produced by Eminem and his longtime collaborator, Jeff Bass, and Eminem co-produced Encore with Dr. Dre. In 2004, Eminem was co-executive producer of 2Pac's posthumous album Loyal to the Game with Shakur's mother, Afeni. He produced the UK number-one single " Ghetto Gospel", featuring Elton John; "The Cross", from the Nas album ; and eight tracks on Obie Trice's 2006 album Second Round's on Me (also appearing on "There They Go"). Eminem produced several tracks on Trick-Trick's The Villain (appearing on "Who Want It") and produced four tracks on Cashis' 2013 album The County Hound 2.

Eminem has only produced for and appeared on one track with former Aftermath/Interscope labelmate The Game; "We Ain't" (a track from Game's January 2005 debut album, The Documentary). In 2022, Game would later release a ten-minute diss track towards Eminem titled "The Black Slim Shady".

Eminem is considered unusual in structuring his songs around the lyrics, rather than writing to beats. One exception was "Stan", which came from an idea and scratch track produced by the 45 King. After doing little production on Relapse and Recovery, Eminem produced a significant portion of The Marshall Mathers LP 2. He said about producing his own music, "Sometimes, I may get something in my head, like an idea or the mood of something that I would want, and I'm not always gonna get that by going through different tracks that other people have made. They don't know what's in my head. I think maybe it helps, a little bit, with diversity, the sound of it, but also, I would get something in my head and want to be able to lay down that idea from scratch." In 1998 when his beef with rapper Cage was still happening, New York rapper Necro (who had previously produced three songs for Cage) met Eminem and gave him a CD with the beat to what eventually became the beat for the song "Black Helicopters" by rap group Non-Phixion. Despite Eminem never using it, Necro still said positive things about Eminem and would appear on Shade45 years later.

Comparisons with other artists

As a white performer prominent in a genre influenced by black artists, Eminem has been compared, much to his chagrin, to Elvis Presley, and has lyrically been compared to Bob Dylan. Rapper Asher Roth has been compared to Eminem and Roth devoted a song on his album ("As I Em") to him, which he took offense to. The accomplished trumpeter Nicholas Payton has called Eminem "the Bix Beiderbecke of hip hop".

Other ventures

Shady Records

Following Eminem's multiplatinum record sales, Interscope offered him his own label; he and Paul Rosenberg founded Shady Records in late 1999. Eminem signed his Detroit collective, D12 and rapper Obie Trice to the label and signed 50 Cent in a 2002 joint venture with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label. In 2003, Eminem and Dr. Dre added Atlanta rapper Stat Quo to the Shady-Aftermath roster. DJ Green Lantern, Eminem's former DJ, was with Shady Records until a dispute related to the 50 Cent- Jadakiss feud forced him to leave the label. The Alchemist is currently Eminem's tour DJ. In 2005 Eminem signed another Atlanta rapper, Bobby Creekwater and West Coast rapper Cashis to Shady Records.

On December 5, 2006, the compilation album Eminem Presents: The Re-Up was released on Shady Records. The project began as a mixtape, but when Eminem found the material better than expected he released it as an album. The Re-Up was intended to introduce Stat Quo, Cashis and Bobby Creekwater. While he was recording Infinite, Eminem, Proof and Kon Artis assembled a group of fellow rappers now known as D12, short for "Detroit Twelve" or "Dirty Dozen", who performed in a style similar to Wu-Tang Clan. In 2001 D12's debut album, Devil's Night, was released. The first single from the album was " Shit on You", followed by " Purple Pills" (an ode to recreational drug use) and " Fight Music". "Purple Pills" was rewritten for radio and television, removing many of the song's references to drugs and sex and renamed "Purple Hills".

After their debut, D12 took a three-year break from the studio. They reunited in 2004 for their second album, , which included the hit singles " My Band" and " How Come". "American Psycho 2" featuring Cypress Hill member, B-Real, was another popular hit. According to D12 member Bizarre, Eminem was not featured on his album Blue Cheese & Coney Island because "he's busy doing his thing".

In January 2014, Bass Brothers announced that D12 had returned to record at F.B.T. Studio and they were working on an album with Eminem on at least three songs. Bizarre reported that he was still part of the group and that the album was scheduled for a 2014 release.

Eminem established his own channel, Shade 45, that plays uncut hip hop. Eminem also established a new morning show, Sway in the Morning with Sway Calloway, a lively morning show that airs at 8:00 a.m., Monday-Friday.

Eminem promoted the station in a 2004 mock national convention (the "Shady National Convention") at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, in which Donald Trump endorsed him. On his album (2017), Eminem expressed his regret at having collaborated with Trump, rapping, "wish I would have spit on it before I went to shake his hand at the event".

Mom's Spaghetti Restaurant

On September 29, 2021, Eminem and Union Joints opened a spaghetti restaurant at 2131 Woodward Ave in Detroit. It is a reference to the lyrics "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy / There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti" from the song " Lose Yourself" which became an internet meme. Mom's Spaghetti was previously a pop-up in Detroit in 2017 and at Coachella in 2018.

Acting career

After small roles in the 2001 film and as an extra in the 1998 Korn music video for " Got the Life" (during which he gave the band a demo tape), Eminem made his Hollywood debut in the semi-autobiographical 2002 film . He said it was a representation of growing up in Detroit rather than an account of his life. He recorded several new songs for the soundtrack, including " Lose Yourself" (which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003 and became the longest-running No. 1 hip hop single in history). Eminem was absent from the ceremony and co-composer Luis Resto accepted the award.

Eminem voiced an aging, corrupt, Ebonics-speaking police officer in the video game 50 Cent: Bulletproof and guested on the Comedy Central television show Crank Yankers and a Web cartoon, The Slim Shady Show He was signed to star in an unmade film version of Have Gun - Will Travel, and was considered for the role of David Rice in the 2008 film . Eminem had a cameo appearance, arguing with Ray Romano, in the 2009 film Funny People. In a 2010 interview with Jonathan Ross, he stated "You know, I love music so much. This is my passion, this is what I want to do. Not saying that I won't do a movie ever again, but this is me."

He played himself in the season-seven finale " Lose Yourself" with Christina Aguilera. Although Eminem was offered the lead role in the 2013 science-fiction film , he turned it down because director Neill Blomkamp would not change its location from Los Angeles to Detroit. Eminem had a cameo appearance as himself in the 2014 film The Interview. During an interview with the main character, Dave Skylark ( James Franco), Eminem satirically comes out as gay.

Charity work

Eminem established the Marshall Mathers Foundation to aid disadvantaged youth. The foundation works in conjunction with a charity founded by Norman Yatooma, a Detroit attorney. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he donated a pair of Air Jordan 4 Retro Eminem Carhartt shoes, which are rare, to be raffled off with proceeds going to COVID-19 relief. That same year, he donated "mom's spaghetti", a reference to a line in his song "Lose Yourself", to healthcare workers at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

Advertising

Eminem appeared in two commercials which were shown during Super Bowl XLV. In the first, a one-minute spot for Lipton's Brisk iced tea, he is a claymation figure. In the second, a two-minute ad - the longest in Super Bowl history at the time - for the Chrysler 200, Eminem drives through Detroit (with "Lose Yourself" as the soundtrack) to his show at the Fox Theatre.

Books and memoirs

On November 21, 2000, Eminem published Angry Blonde, a non-fiction book featuring a commentary of several of his own songs, along with several previously unpublished photographs.

On October 21, 2008, his autobiography The Way I Am was published. The book was first published on October 21, 2008, by Dutton Adult. It is a collection of Eminem's personal stories, reflections, photographs, original artwork, and original lyric sheets from " Stan" and " The Real Slim Shady". It details his struggles with poverty, drugs, fame, heartbreak, family and depression, along with stories about his rise to fame and commentary on past controversies. The book is illustrated with never before published photos of Eminem's life. It also contains original drawings, previously unpublished lyric sheets, and other rare memorabilia. The autobiography is named after the song of the same name.

An autobiography of Eminem's mother (My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem) was published the following month, in which Debbie Nelson describes her childhood and adolescence, meeting Eminem's father and her son's rise to (and struggles with) fame.

Personal life

Family and relationships

Eminem has been scrutinized, both as a rapper and personality-wise. He was twice married to Kimberly Anne Scott; he met Scott in high school while he stood on a table with his shirt off rapping LL Cool J's " I'm Bad". Scott and her twin sister Dawn had run away from home; they moved in with Eminem and his mother when he was 15 and he began an on-and-off relationship with Scott in 1989.

Mathers and Scott were married in 1999 and divorced in 2001. Although Eminem told Rolling Stone in 2002, "I would rather have a baby through my penis than get married again", he and Scott briefly remarried in January 2006. He filed for divorce in early April, agreeing to joint custody of Hailie. Their daughter, Hailie Jade is a social media influencer, specifically for fashion and beauty.

Eminem was given custody of his ex-sister-in-law Dawn's daughter, Scott's child from another relationship, and his younger half-brother Nathan.

Eminem and actress Britanny Murphy dated in 2000s. He stated in 2002 that he had been dating singer Mariah Carey, though she later denied it. In 2005, he played alleged voicemails of her during the Anger Management Tour and stated in 2006 that he had dated her for six to seven months, but the two broke up due to the differences in their personalities.

In early 2010, Eminem denied tabloid reports that he and Scott had renewed their romantic relationship; however, in the same statement, his representative also confirmed that they now maintain a friendly relationship.

In his 2013 song " Headlights", Eminem apologized to and reiterated his love for his mother.

Health problems

Eminem has spoken publicly about his addiction to prescription drugs, including Vicodin, Ambien and Valium. According to friend and fellow D12 member Proof, Eminem first straightened out in 2002. During the production of , Eminem, working 16 hours a day, developed insomnia. An associate gave him an Ambien tablet which "knocked [him] out", encouraging him to obtain a prescription. This was Eminem's first experience of drug addiction, which would affect him for several years. Near the end of production on Encore, he would "just go into the studio and goof off [with] a pocketful of pills". Eminem began taking the drugs to "feel normal", taking a "ridiculous amount ... I could consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium [in a day]. Vicodin, maybe 30." The drugs would put him to sleep for no more than two hours, after which he would take more. Eminem's weight increased to 230 pounds (100 kg) and he was regularly eating fast food: "The kids behind the counter knew me - it wouldn't even faze them. Or I'd sit up at Denny's or Big Boy and just eat by myself. It was sad." Eminem became less recognizable due to his weight gain and once overheard two teenagers arguing about whether or not it was him: "Eminem ain't fat".

2007 overdose

In December 2007, Eminem was hospitalized after a methadone overdose. He had first bought from a dealer who had told him it was "just like Vicodin, and easier on [your] liver". He continued to buy more until he collapsed in his bathroom one night and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors there told him he had ingested the equivalent of four bags of heroin and was "about two hours from dying". After missing Christmas with his children, Eminem checked himself out of the facility, weak and not fully detoxed. He tore the meniscus in his knee after falling asleep on his sofa, requiring surgery; after he returned home, he had a seizure. His drug use "ramped right back to where it was before" within a month. Eminem began to attend church meetings to get clean, but after he was asked for autographs he sought help from a rehabilitation counselor. He began an exercise program that emphasized running. Elton John was a mentor during this period, calling Eminem once a week to check on him. Eminem has been sober since April 20, 2008.

2020 home invasion

On April 5, 2020, Matthew Hughes, a 26-year-old homeless man, broke into Eminem's house, breaking a kitchen window with a paving stone. Eminem woke up with Hughes standing behind him and he said that he was there to kill him. Hughes was on a $50,000 cash bond and was charged with first-degree home invasion and malicious destruction of property.

Eminem has expressed his political views in multiple songs; however, he has refrained from direct endorsements of politicians, focusing more on criticisms instead. The first was " Mosh", which was released in 2004, a few weeks before the 2004 United States presidential election, and heavily criticized then-president George W. Bush but did not directly endorse John Kerry either. He would not express political views again until the 2016 United States presidential election when he released " Campaign Speech", which criticized presidential candidate Donald Trump. The following year, he criticized Trump in a freestyle titled "The Storm". In the freestyle, he expressed support for former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the U.S. national anthem protests, and expressed his displeasure for any of his fans that support Trump. In his song " Darkness", he heavily references the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, and at the end of the music video expresses his support for gun control. The week before the 2020 United States presidential election, he approved his song " Lose Yourself" to be used in a campaign video for Joe Biden. After the United States Supreme Court overturned , Eminem posted a tweet to his Twitter expressing his displeasure for the decision saying "As a father it pisses me off that women have fewer rights 2day than just a few days ago... we r fuckin goin bckwards. Here's how 2 help in Michigan. []" and included a link to a pro-choice organization in Michigan.

Eminem has had lyrical feuds during his career with many recording artists, including Christina Aguilera, Machine Gun Kelly, Everlast, Cage, Insane Clown Posse, Will Smith, Miilkbone, Mariah Carey, Nick Cannon, Limp Bizkit, Benzino, Ja Rule, Vanilla Ice, Canibus, Jermaine Dupri, Joe Budden, Lord Jamar, and Charlamagne tha God.

Insane Clown Posse

The feud began in 1997 when Eminem was throwing a party to promote his debut EP, Slim Shady EP. He gave Joseph Bruce (Violent J from Insane Clown Posse) a flyer which stated "Featuring appearances by Esham, Kid Rock, and ICP (maybe)". Bruce asked why Eminem was promoting a possible Insane Clown Posse appearance without first contacting the group. Eminem explained, "It says 'maybe.' Maybe you will be there; I don't know. That's why I'm asking you right now. You guys comin' to my release party, or what?" Bruce, upset over not being consulted, responded, "Fuck no, I ain't coming to your party. We might have, if you would've asked us first, before putting us on the fuckin' flyer like this."

Eminem took Bruce's response as a personal offense, subsequently attacking the group in radio interviews. Bruce and Utsler responded with a parody of Eminem's " My Name Is" entitled " Slim Anus" and other tracks including " Nuttin' But a Bitch Thang" and " Please Don't Hate Me". Eminem insulted Insane Clown Posse on various tracks from his album The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), including "Marshall Mathers" and "Ken Kaniff". In 2002, Eminem briefly dissed them on his single " Business" from The Eminem Show.

Insane Clown Posse talked about the feud being squashed in an interview with MTV, saying that Proof squashed the conflict in 2005, which was followed by a bowling game between members of D12 and Psychopathic Records. Violent J stated that, "He contacted us and we had a bowling game - it was really cool. We're something different. They could have skipped over us and said forget them, but they included us and said let's squash it."

Everlast and Limp Bizkit

In the early 2000s, Eminem was notified while on the Anger Management Tour that former House Of Pain member Everlast had mocked him on a song. Everlast claimed that while passing by Mathers in a hotel lobby, Mathers gave him a "weird look". Everlast's verse from the Dilated Peoples all star track "Ear Drums Pop (Remix)" contained a thinly veiled reference to Eminem ("Cock my hammer, spit a comet like Haley/I buck a .380 on ones that act shady") and went on to warn "You might catch a beatdown out where I come from" in his recounting of the incident. Taking offense to this, Eminem and D12 quickly began work on a retaliatory song, "I Remember", which ripped Everlast several times in public and with the song.

Eminem & D12 responded with "Quitter", the second half of which is a take off on 2Pac's " Hit 'Em Up" (a diss song aimed at The Notorious B.I.G.). The track ends with the spoken words, "Fuck him, that's it, I'm done, I promise, I'm done, that's it." It was reported that long-time friends of Eminem, Limp Bizkit, were meant to be featured on the song, but Fred Durst canceled at the last moment. The record continued its release without featuring Limp Bizkit, causing the Everlast-Mathers dispute to continue. In a TRL interview, Limp Bizkit member, DJ Lethal, made a statement that if Mathers and Everlast were to fight in real life, Everlast would win. This angered Eminem to the point of rage and an insulting track aimed at both Everlast and Limp Bizkit (namely Durst and Lethal) appeared on D12's mainstream debut, Devil's Night, as the track "Girls". Recently, things seem to have settled and Eminem has no longer been heard insulting Everlast or Limp Bizkit. It is currently unknown if the dispute is resolved.

The animus between Canibus and Eminem started when Canibus and Wyclef Jean confronted Eminem and asked him if he ghost-wrote the track "The Ripper Strikes Back" by LL Cool J. Eminem denied that he wrote the track. After he was confronted, he said Canibus was "rude" to him. Two years later, Canibus went to see Eminem on the Warped Tour and apologized to him for his reactions and asked him if he still wanted the track. Eminem agreed, but when he heard the track "Phuck U" from Canibus' album , he thought the track was directed at him and LL Cool J. Shortly afterwards, Eminem released his 2nd album The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and Canibus decided to continue the "story" of Eminem's single " Stan". He titled the track "U Didn't Care" and it continued to take shots at Eminem. Eminem decided to take more shots at Canibus on his album The Eminem Show (2002) on tracks such as "Say What You Say", "When The Music Stops" and "Square Dance". Even though Canibus did not immediately respond to the tracks, Eminem continued to take shots at him, including a track Eminem was featured on with Xzibit, titled "My Name" from Xzibit's album Man vs. Machine. On November 19, 2002, Canibus responded with the track titled" Dr.C PhD". Over a year later Eminem released the track "Can-I-Bitch". He attacked Canibus in a humorous matter. Since then the hostilities have cooled down, but Canibus tried to provoke a re-ignition of it when he leaked a track titled "Air Strike (Pop Killer)", that featured vocal parts of D12, where Canibus takes shots at Eminem and his deceased friend Proof. D12 member Swift responded to the record publicly and had the following to say about DZK (another rapper featured on the track). "[He] asked us to do a track with him when he already was teamed up with Canibus without us knowing. They dissed Em, took our verses, and added them to the song, so they can bring traffic and make it seem like we were turning on Em ... as a desperate attempt to be heard after ducking and dodging Em for 7 years. It was a straight hoe move."

Michael Jackson

The music video for "Just Lose It" generated controversy by parodying singer Michael Jackson's child molestation trial, plastic surgery and an incident in which Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. It was banned on the BET channel, after complaints from Benzino and others (but was later reinstated, as critics of the ban argued that Nelly's " Tip Drill" video could be seen). Both were only seen on . However MTV did not drop it and the video became one of the most requested on the channel. A week after the release of "Just Lose It", Jackson called in to the radio show of Steve Harvey to report his displeasure with the video. "I am very angry at Eminem's depiction of me in his video", Jackson said in the interview. "I feel that it is outrageous and disrespectful. It is one thing to spoof, but it is another to be demeaning and insensitive." The singer continued: "I've admired Eminem as an artist, and was shocked by this. The video was inappropriate and disrespectful to me, my children, my family and the community at large." Many of Jackson's supporters and friends spoke out about the video, including Stevie Wonder, who called the video "kicking a man while he's down" and "bullshit", and Steve Harvey, who declared, "Eminem has lost his ghetto pass. We want the pass back."

Eminem's conflict with Ja Rule started after 50 Cent signed to Shady Records and Aftermath. Ja Rule stated that he had a problem with Eminem and Dr. Dre of signing someone he had conflict with. On November 19, Ja Rule and Irv Gotti were special guests on Star and Bucwild's morning show on Hot 97 NYC. Gotti claimed to have "legal documents" referring to an order of protection 50 Cent "has on him". Ja Rule threatened, that if 50 Cent released any diss track, he would take action towards his two producers. However, Dr. Dre was the one who produced 50 Cent's track "Back Down" in 2003 from the albumGet Rich Or Die Tryin', which included lyrics insulting not only Murder Inc., but also Ja Rule's mother, wife and children; in the song, he raps, "Your Mami, your Papi, that bitch you chasin' your lil dirty ass kids, I'll fuckin' erase them."

Busta Rhymes decided to join the conflict when he was featured on the track "Hail Mary 2003", with Eminem and 50 Cent.

The feud intensified when Ja Rule released a diss called "Loose Change" in which he took shots at 50 Cent as well as Eminem, calling the latter "Feminem" and Dr. Dre " bisexual" and rapping that Suge Knight knew of Dre "bringing transvestites home". It includes also the lyrics insulting Eminem's famously estranged mother Debbie Mathers, his ex-wife Kim and his then eight-year-old daughter Hailie: "Em you claim your mother's a crack head and Kim is a known slut, so what's Hailie gonna be when she grows up?" Eminem, along with D12 and Obie Trice, responded with the track "Doe Rae Me" (aka "Hailie's Revenge"). Since then, the rift has allegedly cooled down.

Benzino and The Source Magazine

In 2003, rapper Benzino, a silent co-owner of , released a diss single titled "Pull Your Skirt Up" which took aim at Eminem. The track attacked Eminem's "street cred" and accused him of being a tool of the music industry. Eminem had been discovered by The Source after writer Rigo Morales featured him in the magazine's famed monthly "Unsigned Hype" column.

In the same year, The Source released an article written by Kimberly Osorio which identified and researched the history of an old demo tape that the magazine discovered where Eminem insulted Black women and used the word "nigger". The demo featured a song called "Foolish Pride", recorded in the late 1980s when Eminem claimed to have been "dumped" by his African-American then-girlfriend. Eminem responded with two tracks titled "Nail in the Coffin" and "The Sauce". Benzino would later release more tracks. As a result of the conflict, Shady/Aftermath ads were pulled from the magazine. , which had featured negative coverage of Shady/Aftermath artists since Eminem mocked them in "Marshall Mathers" from the Marshall Mathers L.P., stepped in to fill the void, accepting Shady/Aftermath ads.

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon

Eminem has written several songs referring to a relationship with R&B singer Mariah Carey, although she denies that they were ever intimate. Eminem has referenced her on many songs, including "When the Music Stops", " Superman", "Jimmy Crack Corn", "Bagpipes from Baghdad" and " The Warning". While "Superman" was released in 2003, Carey released a song entitled "Clown" on her album Charmbracelet, released in 2002, which makes similar references in line with her 2009 hit " Obsessed".

Eminem's "Bagpipes from Baghdad" from his album disparages Carey and husband Nick Cannon's relationship. Cannon responded to Eminem by saying his career is based on "racist bigotry" and that he would get revenge on Eminem, joking that he may return to rapping. Eminem later stated that the couple misinterpreted the track and it was wishing the two the best. Cannon also stated that there were no hard feelings and that he just had to express his feelings about the song.

In 2009, Carey released "Obsessed", about an obsessed man who claims to have a relationship with her. Cannon claimed that the song was not an insult directed at Eminem. However, Eminem responded in late July 2009 by releasing a track titled " The Warning". It contained samples of voice mail recordings which Eminem claimed were left by Carey when the two were together. Eminem also hinted that he had other evidence of their relationship in his possession. A little over a year later in September 2010, Cannon responded with the song "I'm a Slick Rick", making fun of Eminem.

After the release of The Marshall Mathers LP, popular electronic music artist Moby began speaking out against the album's lyrics, citing references to misogyny and homophobia as unacceptable. Eminem responded back with insulting Moby in "Without Me", the lead single off his next album The Eminem Show.

In 2004, Moby praised Eminem for criticizing then-U.S. president George W. Bush in the song " Mosh", a track from . The feud has since ended.

Throughout the album, lyrics criticize other musicians, primarily mumble rappers, and several have responded publicly. Eminem and rapper Machine Gun Kelly have had an ongoing feud for several years, and Kelly released a diss track in response to "Not Alike" titled " Rap Devil" on September 3; both songs were produced by Ronny J. Kelly continued the feud at a concert, calling it "a battle between the past and the fucking future". The song's title refers to Eminem's " Rap God" and Eminem went into the studio days later to record his own response, as did former D12 associate Bizarre. Eminem responded with " Killshot" on September 14 and Bizarre's "Love Tap" was released on September 20. "Killshot" garnered 38.1 million streams on YouTube in its first 24 hours and over 80 million views in its first week, making it the most successful debut for a hip hop song and the third-biggest debut in the platform's history. The track also debuted at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Eminem's 20th top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Kelly has continued the feud publicly. Ja Rule responded on social media, re-igniting a feud the two had 15 years prior. 6ix9ine, Iggy Azalea, Joe Budden, Die Antwoord, Lupe Fiasco, and Lord Jamar have also responded publicly, with 6ix9ine releasing the skit "Legend" that raps over Eminem's " Lose Yourself".

Controversies

Legal issues

Eminem had his first run-in with the law at age 20, when he was arrested for his involvement in a drive-by shooting with a paintball gun. The case was dismissed when the victim did not appear in court.

On June 3, 2000, Eminem was arrested during an altercation with Douglas Dail at a car-audio store in Royal Oak, Michigan, when he pulled out an unloaded gun and pointed it at the ground. The next day, in Warren, Michigan, he was arrested again for assaulting John Guerra in the parking lot of the Hot Rock Café when he saw him kissing his wife. Eminem recreated the Guerra assault in "The Kiss (Skit)" on The Eminem Show. He pleaded guilty to possession of a concealed weapon and assault, receiving two years' probation; however, Guerra's assault charge was dropped as part of the plea agreement. On June 28, 2001, Eminem was sentenced to one year's probation and community service and was fined about $2,000 on weapon charges stemming from an argument with an employee of Psychopathic Records.

In 1999, Eminem's mother sued him for $10 million, claiming he was slandering her on The Slim Shady LP. Litigation concluded in 2001, resulting in an award of $1,600 for her damages.

On July 7, 2000, Kim attempted suicide by slitting her wrists, later suing Eminem for defamation after describing her violent death in " Kim".

Sanitation worker DeAngelo Bailey sued Eminem for $1 million in 2001, accusing him of invading his privacy by publicizing information placing him in a false light in "Brain Damage", a song that portrays him as a violent school bully. Although Bailey admitted picking on Eminem in school, he said he merely "bumped" him and gave him a "little shove". The lawsuit was dismissed on October 20, 2003; Judge Deborah Servitto, who wrote a portion of her opinion in rap-like rhyming verse, ruled that it was clear to the public that the lyrics were exaggerated.

On March 31, 2002, French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier filed a $10 million lawsuit against Eminem and Dr. Dre, claiming that the beat for "Kill You" was taken from his instrumental "Pulsion". Loussier demanded that sales of The Marshall Mathers LP be halted and any remaining copies destroyed. The case was later settled out of court.

In 2006, Eminem was accused of assaulting Miad Jarbou, a resident of Royal Oak, Michigan, in the bathroom of a Detroit strip club, but was never charged. Two years later, Jarbou sued Eminem for more than $25,000 in damages.

In 2007, Eminem's music-publishing company (Eight Mile Style) and Martin Affiliated sued Apple Inc. and Aftermath Entertainment, claiming that Aftermath was not authorized to negotiate a deal with Apple for digital downloads of 93 Eminem songs on Apple's iTunes. The case against Apple was settled shortly after the trial began, in late September 2009.

In July 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in F.B.T. Productions, LLC v. Aftermath Records that F.B.T. Productions and Eminem were owed a royalty of 50 percent of Aftermath's net revenue from licensing his recordings to companies such as Apple, Sprint Corporation, Nextel Communications, Cingular and T-Mobile. In March 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case.

In October 2013, Eminem sampled Chicago-based rap group Hotstylz's 2008 viral hit, "Lookin' Boy", for his 2013 hit single " Rap God". The group claims that Eminem did not receive permission to use the sample, nor did he credit or compensate them. In November 2013, Hotstylz released a diss track towards Eminem titled "Rap Fraud", where they sample several of his songs and criticize him for not crediting them. In January 2015, TMZ reported that Hotstylz was suing Eminem and his label, Shady Records, for $8 million, for using the 25-second sample of "Lookin' Boy" on his song "Rap God" without their permission.

United States Secret Service

On December 8, 2003, the United States Secret Service reported that it was "looking into" allegations that Eminem threatened U.S. president George W. Bush in "We As Americans" (an unreleased bootleg at the time), with the lyrics: "Fuck money, I don't rap for dead presidents. I'd rather see the president dead, it's never been said but I set precedents." The incident was included in the video for " Mosh", as a newspaper clipping on a wall with articles about unfortunate incidents in Bush's career. "We As Americans" eventually appeared on Encore's deluxe-edition bonus disc, with altered lyrics.

In 2018-2019, the Secret Service interviewed Eminem again regarding threatening lyrics towards president Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka.

Allegations of homophobia

Some of Eminem's lyrics have been considered homophobic and an Australian politician attempted to ban him from the country. Eminem denies the charge, saying that when he was growing up words such as "faggot" and "queer" were used generally in a derogatory manner and not specifically toward homosexuals. During a 2010 interview, journalist Anderson Cooper explored the issue:

Cooper: Some of the lyrics, like, you know, in the song "Criminal" you say "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge, That'll stab you in the head, whether you're a fag or lez, Or the homosex, hermaph or a trans-a-vest, Pants or dress-hate fags? The answer's 'yes'".
Eminem: Yeah, this scene I came up in. That word was thrown around so much, you know, "faggot" was like thrown around constantly to each other, like in battling.
Cooper: Do you not like gay people?
Eminem: No, I don't have any problem with nobody. You know what I mean? I'm just like whatever.

Eminem was accused yet again of using homophobic words in his lyrics in " Rap God" (2013) and explained "I don't know how to say this without saying it how I've said it a million times. But that word, those kind of words, when I came up battle-rappin' or whatever, I never really equated those words ... (to actually mean homosexual)".

Eminem is a friend of gay singer Elton John, and publicly supports gay rights. When asked in an interview with The New York Times about the subject of same-sex marriage being legalized in his home state of Michigan, Eminem responded, "I think if two people love each other, then what the hell? I think that everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want", explaining that his "overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be."

On October 26, 2000, Eminem was scheduled to perform at Toronto's SkyDome when Ontario Attorney General Jim Flaherty said that Eminem should not be allowed to enter the country. "I personally don't want anyone coming to Canada who will come here and advocate violence against women", he said. Flaherty also said that he was "disgusted" when he read the lyrics of "Kill You", which includes the lines "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore / Till the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more?" Although public reaction to Flaherty's position was generally negative, with barring Eminem from the country considered a free-speech issue, Liberal MPP Michael Bryant suggested that hate crime charges should be brought against Eminem for advocating violence against women in his lyrics. Robert Everett-Green wrote in a Globe and Mail editorial, "Being offensive is Eminem's job description". Eminem's Toronto concert went on as planned.

Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in music history, easily the biggest crossover success ever seen in rap. To call him hip-hop's Elvis is correct to a degree, but it's largely inaccurate. Certainly, he was the first white rapper since the Beastie Boys to garner both sales and critical respect, but his impact has exceeded this confining distinction.

Credited for popularizing hip hop to a Middle American audience, Eminem's unprecedented global commercial success and acclaimed works for a white rapper is widely recognized for breaking racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music. Rising from rags to riches, Eminem's anger-fueled music represented widespread angst and the reality of American underclass. He has been greatly influential for artists of various genres. Stephen Hill, the then vice president of African American-themed television network BET (Black Entertainment Television), said in 2002:

Eminem gets a pass in the same vein that back during segregation black folks had to be better than average, had to be the best, to be accepted ... he is better than the best. In his own way, he is the best lyricist, alliterator and enunciator out there in hip-hop music. In terms of rapping about the pain that other disenfranchised people feel, there is no one better at their game than Eminem.

In 2002, the BBC said that the perception of Eminem as a "modern-day William Shakespeare" was comparable to the reception of American singer Bob Dylan: "Not since Bob Dylan's heyday in the mid-1960s has an artist's output been subjected to such intense academic scrutiny as an exercise in contemporary soul-searching. US critics point to [Eminem's] vivid portraits of disenfranchised lives - using the stark, direct language of the street - as an accurate reflection of social injustice." In addition, the BBC highlighted that, "Where parents once recoiled in horror [to his music], there now seems a greater willingness to acknowledge a music that is striking such a chord among the American young, angry white underclass." Dan Ozzi of Vice highlighted that Eminem during the early 2000s was "the one artist high school kids seemed to unanimously connect with.... he represented everything high school years are about: blind rage, misguided rebellion, adolescent frustration. He was like a human middle finger. An X-rated Dennis the Menace for a dial-up modem generation."

Writing for in 2002, rock critic Alan Light compared Eminem to the Beatles' John Lennon:

Eminem is even starting to bear a resemblance to one of those rock icons ... Marshall Mathers is becoming something like this generation's John Lennon ... Lennon and Eminem were both subjects of pickets and protests; they both wrote songs about troubled relationships with their mothers; they both wrote about their strange public lives with their wives; they both wrote about how much they loved their kids. Lennon, of course, was able to find ways to use his voice to advocate for peace rather than just blasting away at litigious family members and various pop stars, but still, few other pop musicians since Lennon have found a way to render their private psychodramas into compelling art as effectively as Eminem.

Regarding his rehearsal with Eminem for the " Stan" duet at the 2001 Grammy Awards, English singer Elton John said, "[When] Eminem made his entrance, I got goose bumps, the likes of which I have not felt since I first saw Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. Eminem was that good. I just thought, 'Fuck, this man is amazing.' There are very few performers who can grab you like that the first time - only the greats." John further praised Eminem, saying, "Eminem is a true poet of his time, someone we'll be talking about for decades to come. He tells stories in such a powerful and distinctive way. As a lyricist, he's one of the best ever. Eminem does for his audience what [Bob] Dylan did for his: He writes how he feels. His anger, vulnerability and humor come out."

Concerning the controversy surrounding Eminem due to his transgressive music, American entertainer Madonna had said, "I like the fact that Eminem is brash and angry and politically incorrect ... He's stirring things up, he's provoking a discussion, he's making people's blood boil. He's reflecting what's going on in society right now. That is what art is supposed to do." American musician Stevie Wonder also said, "Rap to me is a modern blues - a statement of how and where people are at ... I think art is a reflection of our society, and people don't like to confront the realities in society ... But until we really confront the truth, we are going to have a Tupac or Eminem or Biggie Smalls to remind us about it - and thank God. They force people to look at realities in society."

Achievements and honors

With global sales of over 220 million records, Eminem is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has had thirteen number-one albums on the Billboard 200: nine solo, two with D12 and one with Bad Meets Evil. He was the best-selling music artist from 2000 to 2009 in the US according to Nielsen SoundScan. He was also the best-selling male music artist in the United States of the 2010s. He has sold 47.4 million albums in the country and 107.5 million singles in the US. The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, Curtain Call: The Hits, " Lose Yourself", " Love the Way You Lie" and " Not Afraid" have all been certified Diamond or higher by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Eminem has over ten billion views of his music videos on his YouTube Vevo page, and in 2014 Spotify named him the most-streamed music artist of all time.

Among Eminem's awards is 15 Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards and 17 Billboard Music Awards, named him the " Artist of the Decade (2000-2009)". In 2013, he received the Global Icon Award at that year's MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony. His success in 8 Mile saw him win the 2002 Academy Award for Best Original Song for his song " Lose Yourself", co-written with Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, making him the first rapper to receive the award. He also won the MTV Movie & TV Awards for Best Actor in a Movie and Best Breakthrough Performance and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Song for "Lose Yourself".

Eminem has also been included and ranked in several publications' lists. Rolling Stone included him in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. He was ranked 9th on MTV's Greatest MCs of All Time list. He was ranked 13th on MTV's 22 Greatest Voices in Music list and 79th on the VH1 100 Greatest Artists of All Time lists. He was ranked 82nd on Rolling Stone's "The Immortals" list. In 2010, MTV Portugal ranked Eminem the 7th biggest icon in popular music history. In 2012, ranked him 6th on their list of the Top 50 Lyricists of All Time, while About.com ranked him 7th on its list of the 50 Greatest MCs of Our Time (1987-2007). In 2015, Eminem was placed third on "The 10 Best Rappers of All Time" list by Billboard. In 2008, readers named Eminem the Best Rapper Alive. In 2011, Eminem was labelled the "King of Hip-Hop" by Rolling Stone based on an analysis of album sales, chart positions, YouTube views, social media following, concert grosses, industry awards and critical ratings of solo rappers who released music from 2009 to the first half of 2011. Eminem was also inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2022, alongside Duran Duran and Dolly Parton.

Discography

Studio albums

Collaborative albums

Concert tours

As a headliner

As a co-headliner

Bibliography

References

1. ^ Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 137. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.

2. ^ Westerfil, Jack. Biography of Eminem: The life and times of Eminem, in one convenient little book.

3. ^ (Mathers) Nelson, Debbie (2008). My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem. USA: Phoenix Books. pp. kindle location 246. ISBN 978-1-59777-596-0.

4. CBSNewsOnline (October 10, 2010). ^ "Eminem's Road to Stardom" Archived August 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Excerpt from 60 Minutes. YouTube.

5. "Eminem's criminal record Archived April 11, 2016, at the Wayback Machine", BBC News, April 11, 2001. Retrieved July 8, 2008.

6. Geier, Thom; Jensen, Jeff; Jordan, Tina; Lyons, Margaret; Markovitz, Adam; Nashawaty, Chris; Pastorek, Whitney; Rice, Lynette; Rottenberg, Josh; Schwartz, Missy; Slezak, Michael; Snierson, Dan; Stack, Tim; Stroup, Kate; Tucker, Ken; Vary, Adam B.; Vozick-Levinson, Simon; Ward, Kate (December 11, 2009), "The 100 greatest movies, TV shows, albums, books, characters, scenes, episodes, songs, dresses, music videos and trends that entertained us over the past 10 years". ^ Entertainment Weekly. (1079/1080):74-84

7. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2002). ""The Eminem Show" - Overview". AllMusic. Archived from the original on January 30, 2005.

8. ^ Bozell, L. Brent III (July 24, 2002). "Eminem - Tasteless, Incoherent, and Tired". MediaResearch.org. Creators Syndicate. Archived from the original on August 3, 2002.

9. ^ DeLuca, Dan (November 12, 2004). "Eminem's new album doesn't build on previous success". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on April 29, 2008.

10. ^ "Gold & Platinum: Searchable Database" Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved July 16, 2010.

11. ^ Bozza, Anthony (May 16, 2009). "Eminem talks to Anthony Bozza about why he's in a better place now than ever before". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712.

12. Robert Hilburn (September 23, 2007). ^ Dr. Dre, mix marathon man Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 22, 2007.

13. ^ The Top 25 Music Moments of 2010 Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Billboard.com. Retrieved December 20, 2010

14. ^ Joseph Kahn [@JosephKahn] (June 19, 2011). "It's finally done. Coming soon. RT @_BraveHeart mr. kahn, i really want to know what happened with "space bound" i'm still dying to see it" (Tweet) - via Twitter.

15. ^ "'Call of Duty: Ghosts' launch trailer: dogs, destruction, Eminem". Relaxnews. Yahoo! News. October 22, 2013. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013.

16. ^ "Eminem Scores Seventh Consecutive UK Number One Album With 'The Marshall Mathers LP 2'". EntertainmentWise.com. November 11, 2013. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013.

17. ^ "Eminem - Infinite (F.B.T. Remix) [Official Audio]". YouTube. November 17, 2016. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021.

18. ^ "Eminem - Partners In Rhyme: The True Story of Infinite (Official Trailer)". YouTube. November 22, 2016. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021.

19. ^ Coscarelli, Joe (October 7, 2017). "Pink Quietly Became Pop Royalty. Here's How She Made It Last". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 5, 2017.

20. Caramanica, Jon (December 18, 2017). "Hip-Hop Changes. Eminem Doesn't". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 19, 2017.

21. ^ Caulfield, Keith (September 3, 2018). "Eminem's Kamikaze Set for No. 1 Debut on Billboard 200 Albums Chart". Billboard.

22. ^ Caulfield, Keith (September 9, 2018). "Eminem Earns Ninth No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart with Kamikaze". Billboard.

23. ^ Garcia E., Sandra (January 17, 2020). "Eminem Faces Backlash Over Lyrics About Deadly Attack at Ariana Grande Concert". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 18, 2020.

24. ^ "Kid Cudi and Eminem Announce New Song "The Adventures of Moon Man and Slim Shady"". . July 8, 2020.

25. ^ "Eminem Speaks to God on Dr. Dre's Remix of Kanye West's 'Use This Gospel'". August 26, 2022.

26. ^ Hess, Mickey (2009). "Esham". Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide: Volume 1: East Coast and West Coast. ABC-CLIO. pp. 411-413. ISBN 978-0-313-34323-0.

27. ^ "Necro addresses Em's 'Rhyme and Reason' sharing the same sample as 'Who's Ya Daddy'". November 4, 2013.

28. ^ "Eminem To Star In 'Have Gun, Will Travel'". ustinet news. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007.

29. ^ Eminem, All Grown Up? Rapper to Release Tell-All Archived November 10, 2014, at the Wayback Machine" TV Guide. October 21, 2008. Retrieved October 22, 2008.

30. Eminem Says Nick Cannon Misinterpreted Mariah Carey Dis. MTV News.

31. ^ Stiernberg, Bonnie (September 3, 2018). "Machine Gun Kelly's Eminem Diss: Twitter Reacts to "Rap Devil"". .

32. ^ Cowen, Trace William (September 6, 2018). "Die Antwoord Respond to Eminem's Kamikaze Diss: 'You Used to Rap Better on Drugs'". .

33. ^ Finn, Robin (May 25, 2007). "A Defender of the Controversial, and Now of Imus". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 27, 2007.

34. ^ "Chicago Rappers Hotstylz To Sue Eminem For $8 Million Over Sample In 'Rap God'". January 6, 2015.

35. ^ Solomon, Deborah (June 16, 2010). "Questions for Eminem - The Real Marshall Mathers". The New York Times.

36. ^ Mackie, Richard; Nelson, Marissa (October 26, 2000). "Ontario wants rap star banned". Globe and Mail. Toronto. pp. A1, A4.

37. ^ Everett-Green, Robert (October 26, 2000). "Bad rap for a rapper". Globe and Mail (newspaper). Toronto. p. A25.

38. ^ Holloway, Lynette (October 28, 2002). "The Angry Appeal of Eminem Is Cutting Across Racial Lines". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 3, 2009.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest rappers of all time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
what is being famous like - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is it like to be extremely famous? What is your day-to ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Google: How do people act when they are famous

# data[].attributes.subject
Google: How do people act when they are famous

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How do people act when they are famous - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years." - Fox News Analyst Geraldo Rivera.

This sentiment appears to be a relatively popular one. According to a poll published by the Pew Research Center in 2008, more than 70 percent of Americans believed that rap had an overall negative impact on society. Some rap and hip-hop songs do indeed glamorize destructive behavior like substance abuse and violence.But artists like 21 Savage and Meek Mill, whose music sometimes lionizes illegal activity, also lament these very crimes, and the fact that they occur disproportionately in low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods. When rappers do decide to celebrate these crimes, it is often simply because that is the type of music that sells.

21 Savage's "Nothin New," which appeared on "Issa Album," his latest album and his first composition to reach number two on Billboard's Top 200 chart, explains this motive. In the lyrics, he says, "They thought I only rapped about murder and pistols / I'm tryna feed my family, I ain't being political." Sometimes, even for rappers like 21 Savage who are known for their thuggish lyrics, the only way to generate revenue is to produce what people want to hear. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, that often includes the lionization of violence. Rappers don't necessarily intend to set a poor example for America's youth-they are simply trying to do what it takes to earn money, just as any other professional does. Moreover, many rappers come from impoverished neighborhoods and realize that, if they don't seize the opportunity to make music that sells while they have the chance, they may never get another shot.

When rappers do indeed resort to "being political," they often receive a flurry of backlash. In his last album, "Revival," Eminem strongly chastised Donald Trump and was immediately rebuked by many listeners including prior fans, many of whom promised never to listen to his music again.

Nethertheless, rappers do continue to speak out about structural issues in American society that lead to the problems we still see today in black communities. In "Nothin New," 21 Savage says, "Shit gettin' outrageous / Treat us like slaves then they lock us up in cages / Young, black, poor, ain't had a father since a baby / Why you think we skip school and hang out on the pavement? / Why you think we ridin' 'round with choppers off safety?" With these lyrics, he addresses how disproportionate rates of African American incarceration spark other issues that plague poor black communities. In Meek Mill's "Wins and Losses," which reached its zenith at Billboard's number three spot, Meek Mill criticizes the low quality of education available to many poor African Americans. "My teacher always used to tell me you gon' lose n**** / That's why I never went to school n****," he raps. Kendrick Lamar also weighs in with his track, "m.A.A.d. city," on his platinum album "good kid m.A.A.d. city," saying, "They say the governor collect all of our taxes, except / When we in traffic and tragic happens, that shit ain't no threat," further rebuking institutionalized racism that leaves many black families without sufficient aid.

There are also many songs that directly condemn violence and drug abuse in poor black communities. In "Polo and Shell Tops" in his album "Dreams and Nightmares," which reached number one on Billboard's chart, Meek Mill says, "Homies murder other homies just to make a brick," criticizing both violence and the influence of illegal drugs. In Wale's "Ambition," in which Meek Mill is featured, he mourns this illicit lifestyle. Yet he also rationalizes it, saying, "Only hope I had was selling dope / Was on my grind cause times was harder than a cellar floor." He argues that lack of economic opportunity pushes many African Americans in impoverished communities toward illegal activity.

To argue that hip-hop has harmed black people more than modern racism is to ignore these messages, among many others. Though some songs do indeed glorify illegal activity that is disproportionately found at alarmingly high rates in low income black communities, plenty of songs lament these issues and critique their causes. Many songs that highlight issues in the black community are exceptionally popular, which indicates that these messages are heard, if not always widely understood. If opponents of rap music can listen to these pieces and still insist that rap only sends negative messages, they should listen closer.

-Contributing writer Uzochi P. Nwoko's column, "Where Rap Meets Race," explores how predominant motifs in rap impact the black community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Flawed Perception of Hip-Hop | Arts | The Harvard Crimson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years." - Fox News Analyst Geraldo Rivera. This sentiment appears to be a relatively popular one. According to a poll published by the Pew Research Center in 2008, more than 70 percent of Americans believed that rap had an overall negative impact on society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds.

Jun 21, 2023 · Teens react to 90s rap (they're CLUELESS!!) ... | React: Do They Know It? REACT*3.9M views ...
Duration: 26:12
Posted: Jun 21, 2023

Mar 6, 2023 · I grew up listening to Eminem songs but I had never had the opportunity to hear Rap God... until ...
Duration: 12:56
Posted: Mar 6, 2023

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
how do people react to rap - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Jun 21, 2023 · Teens react to 90s rap (they're CLUELESS!!) ... | React: Do They Know It? REACT*3.9M views ...Duration: 26:12 Posted: Jun 21, 2023 Mar 6, 2023 · I grew up listening to Eminem songs but I had never had the opportunity to hear Rap God...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
how did people react to rap - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
how does rap help people - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There’s also healing in what is now referred to as Hip-Hop TherapyHip-Hop TherapyHip Hop Therapy (HHT) is a contemporary approach in mental health treatment that takes into account the profound impact of Hip Hop culture and its capacity to promote individual and communal transformation. Dr. Edgar Tyson (1963-2018) coined the term and created the foundational model in 1996.https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Hip_ho... (HHT). Utilizing elements like rap, dance, graffiti, and beatboxing, hip-hop therapy provides a culturally relevant and expressive outlet for individuals dealing with trauma, mental health issues, or emotional challenges.Aug 25, 2023