Jimmy ValenTime
A really good Lawyer
http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/eminem-twenty-best-rap-verses.html
At this very moment, all eight of Eminem's albums, including his latest, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, are sitting on the Billboard 200 chart, leaving 192 slots for everyone else. It's fairly obvious why: On a technical level, the guy is a master of the dictionary and twists internal rhymes like a game of Tetris. And yes, the man can tell a helluva story — though so many of them end the same way: murder. (Surprisingly, there are a few that end with inspirational messages, if you can believe it.) Here are his top 20 verses: the ones that shocked, the ones that awed, the ones that knocked us out and held us in the trunk.
20. Nicki Minaj, “Roman's Revenge (feat. Eminem)” Pink Friday, Second Verse (2010)
Key Lines: "Twisted-ass mind, got a pretzel for a brain / An eraser for a head, fukking pencil for a frame"
This guest appearance on Minaj’s debut album proves there's no doubt Eminem knows how to hold a knife and swing a sword. This is Kill Bill–style wordplay, painting with blood spatter.
19. "Just Don't Give a fukk," The Slim Shady LP, First Verse (1997)
Key Lines: "You wacker than the motherfukker you bit your style from / You ain't gonna sell two copies if you press a double album"
In another life, Eminem could’ve been a stand-up comedian, the kind that peers over the edge of the stage and makes fun of your shirt. (Or, more pointedly, an American hero – he brazenly starts his song off by mocking Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan's aide who was shot and paralyzed in a 1981 assassination attempt, thereby putting truth to the title.)
18. “'97 Bonnie and Clyde,” The Slim Shady LP, First Verse (1999)
Key Lines: "Oh where's mama? She's taking a little nap in the trunk / Oh that smell? Da-da musta runned over a skunk"
By all reports, Eminem’s a good father. (Most recently, he was on hand as his daughter Hailie won homecoming queen at her high school this year.) How she turned out to be even close to well-adjusted is unclear, growing up in a household where inter-bedroom death threats were the norm. Here, the 4-year-old giggles and gurgles as she becomes an accessory to her mother’s death, helping to build a sand castle over the body before splashing in the surf.
17. Masta Ace, “Hellbound feat. Eminem and J-Black,” Game Over, First Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "fukk the planet, 'til it spins on a broken axis"
People could accuse Eminem of having no heart: Forcing someone to listen to any of his albums could qualify as a form of emotional abuse. But he does have an oddly inspirational side to him, one that he's relied on in recent years for poppy radio schlock. As for this song, it's a raw version of "Recovery," the same vein tapped for "Till I Collapse" and "Lose Yourself."
16. "Bully," Straight From the Lab EP, Third Verse (2003)
Key Lines: It's like a never-ending cycle / That just seems to come full circle / Everybody's gotta be so fukking hard / I'm not excluding myself / Cause I been stupid as well / I been known to lose it when someone says something smart"
Eminem's greatest strength is his ability to cut through bullshyt and noise with a chainsaw. His second-greatest strength? Acknowledging his own hypocrisy. In this verse, he tells Irv Gotti to stop feeding Ja Rule ecstasy, pleads for hip-hop to stop the violence, and notes how easily he could get his daughter to perpetuate a brutal cycle.
15. "8 Mile," 8 Mile Soundtrack, First Verse (2003)
Key Lines: "Sometimes I just feel like, quitting I still might / Why do I put up this fight, why do I still write / Sometimes it's hard enough just dealing with real life"
By the time 8 Mile had come out, Eminem was a cartoon character with a mallet, hitting his own head with his tongue dragging on the floor. In a crazy twist, Rabbit — his on-screen persona in the film — is what managed to give him authenticity and allowed us to sympathize with him.
14. “Cleanin' Out My Closet,” The Eminem Show, Third Verse (2002)
Key Lines: "Goin' through public housing systems, victim of Munchausen's Syndrome / My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't"
Eminem gave an interview to Complex recently where he said he’d no longer bleed out his old wounds for the public's amusement, as his words were damaging real-life relationships. Perhaps no verse of his is as dark as this one, where he reveals not just how he discovered the pills belonging to Debbie, his mother, but how she’d accuse him of stealing them from her. He gleefully ruminates on Debbie’s death and gloats that Hailie would never be at the funeral. (Somehow, on this year’s “Headlights,” Em buried the hatchet with — not in — his mother.)
13. “Déjà Vu,” Relapse, Third Verse (2009)
Key Lines: "Go in the room and shut the bedroom door and wake up in an ambulance / They said they found me on the bathroom floor, damn"
In 2009, Eminem wasn't exactly shocking anymore: There's not much further one can go than detailing the murders of everyone in one's family. (See later songs.) His fans had matured, while he kept making cartoons. But on "Déjà Vu," he paces through his very real drug problems — how the death of his best friend broke his world and how it led him to overdose. Awful.
12. “Stan,” The Marshall Mathers LP, Third Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "It's been six months and still no word, I don't deserve it? / I know you got my last two letters, I wrote the addresses on 'em perfect"
Whether as a moralist or as a bully, Eminem has often gone after easy marks: celebrities, women, the LGBT community, hypocrites, and politicians. But here, he goes after his superfans, condemning them for taking his lyrics too literally. It requires a perfect dismount, and he does exactly that.
11. “Kim,” The Marshall Mathers LP, First Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "(Why are you doing this?) Shut the fukk up! (You're drunk / You're never gonna get away with this) You think I give a fukk?"
There’s “easy listening,” and then — far down the spectrum — there’s this. Eminem starts with a jolt: “Don’t make me wake this baby, she don’t need to see what I’m about to do / Quit crying, bytch, why do you always make me shout at you?” The whole thing is a nightmare blasted through the speakers as Eminem screams at Kim for bringing another man into their bed, and then screams some more for her to look at her new guy now, look at him, existing somewhere between dead and alive. Eminem then puts Kim in the trunk of their car, a familiar image that — while repeated ad nauseam — never grows less frightening.
- Yesterday at 4:15 PM
- 6Comments
At this very moment, all eight of Eminem's albums, including his latest, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, are sitting on the Billboard 200 chart, leaving 192 slots for everyone else. It's fairly obvious why: On a technical level, the guy is a master of the dictionary and twists internal rhymes like a game of Tetris. And yes, the man can tell a helluva story — though so many of them end the same way: murder. (Surprisingly, there are a few that end with inspirational messages, if you can believe it.) Here are his top 20 verses: the ones that shocked, the ones that awed, the ones that knocked us out and held us in the trunk.
20. Nicki Minaj, “Roman's Revenge (feat. Eminem)” Pink Friday, Second Verse (2010)
Key Lines: "Twisted-ass mind, got a pretzel for a brain / An eraser for a head, fukking pencil for a frame"
This guest appearance on Minaj’s debut album proves there's no doubt Eminem knows how to hold a knife and swing a sword. This is Kill Bill–style wordplay, painting with blood spatter.
19. "Just Don't Give a fukk," The Slim Shady LP, First Verse (1997)
Key Lines: "You wacker than the motherfukker you bit your style from / You ain't gonna sell two copies if you press a double album"
In another life, Eminem could’ve been a stand-up comedian, the kind that peers over the edge of the stage and makes fun of your shirt. (Or, more pointedly, an American hero – he brazenly starts his song off by mocking Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan's aide who was shot and paralyzed in a 1981 assassination attempt, thereby putting truth to the title.)
18. “'97 Bonnie and Clyde,” The Slim Shady LP, First Verse (1999)
Key Lines: "Oh where's mama? She's taking a little nap in the trunk / Oh that smell? Da-da musta runned over a skunk"
By all reports, Eminem’s a good father. (Most recently, he was on hand as his daughter Hailie won homecoming queen at her high school this year.) How she turned out to be even close to well-adjusted is unclear, growing up in a household where inter-bedroom death threats were the norm. Here, the 4-year-old giggles and gurgles as she becomes an accessory to her mother’s death, helping to build a sand castle over the body before splashing in the surf.
17. Masta Ace, “Hellbound feat. Eminem and J-Black,” Game Over, First Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "fukk the planet, 'til it spins on a broken axis"
People could accuse Eminem of having no heart: Forcing someone to listen to any of his albums could qualify as a form of emotional abuse. But he does have an oddly inspirational side to him, one that he's relied on in recent years for poppy radio schlock. As for this song, it's a raw version of "Recovery," the same vein tapped for "Till I Collapse" and "Lose Yourself."
16. "Bully," Straight From the Lab EP, Third Verse (2003)
Key Lines: It's like a never-ending cycle / That just seems to come full circle / Everybody's gotta be so fukking hard / I'm not excluding myself / Cause I been stupid as well / I been known to lose it when someone says something smart"
Eminem's greatest strength is his ability to cut through bullshyt and noise with a chainsaw. His second-greatest strength? Acknowledging his own hypocrisy. In this verse, he tells Irv Gotti to stop feeding Ja Rule ecstasy, pleads for hip-hop to stop the violence, and notes how easily he could get his daughter to perpetuate a brutal cycle.
15. "8 Mile," 8 Mile Soundtrack, First Verse (2003)
Key Lines: "Sometimes I just feel like, quitting I still might / Why do I put up this fight, why do I still write / Sometimes it's hard enough just dealing with real life"
By the time 8 Mile had come out, Eminem was a cartoon character with a mallet, hitting his own head with his tongue dragging on the floor. In a crazy twist, Rabbit — his on-screen persona in the film — is what managed to give him authenticity and allowed us to sympathize with him.
14. “Cleanin' Out My Closet,” The Eminem Show, Third Verse (2002)
Key Lines: "Goin' through public housing systems, victim of Munchausen's Syndrome / My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't"
Eminem gave an interview to Complex recently where he said he’d no longer bleed out his old wounds for the public's amusement, as his words were damaging real-life relationships. Perhaps no verse of his is as dark as this one, where he reveals not just how he discovered the pills belonging to Debbie, his mother, but how she’d accuse him of stealing them from her. He gleefully ruminates on Debbie’s death and gloats that Hailie would never be at the funeral. (Somehow, on this year’s “Headlights,” Em buried the hatchet with — not in — his mother.)
13. “Déjà Vu,” Relapse, Third Verse (2009)
Key Lines: "Go in the room and shut the bedroom door and wake up in an ambulance / They said they found me on the bathroom floor, damn"
In 2009, Eminem wasn't exactly shocking anymore: There's not much further one can go than detailing the murders of everyone in one's family. (See later songs.) His fans had matured, while he kept making cartoons. But on "Déjà Vu," he paces through his very real drug problems — how the death of his best friend broke his world and how it led him to overdose. Awful.
12. “Stan,” The Marshall Mathers LP, Third Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "It's been six months and still no word, I don't deserve it? / I know you got my last two letters, I wrote the addresses on 'em perfect"
Whether as a moralist or as a bully, Eminem has often gone after easy marks: celebrities, women, the LGBT community, hypocrites, and politicians. But here, he goes after his superfans, condemning them for taking his lyrics too literally. It requires a perfect dismount, and he does exactly that.
11. “Kim,” The Marshall Mathers LP, First Verse (2000)
Key Lines: "(Why are you doing this?) Shut the fukk up! (You're drunk / You're never gonna get away with this) You think I give a fukk?"
There’s “easy listening,” and then — far down the spectrum — there’s this. Eminem starts with a jolt: “Don’t make me wake this baby, she don’t need to see what I’m about to do / Quit crying, bytch, why do you always make me shout at you?” The whole thing is a nightmare blasted through the speakers as Eminem screams at Kim for bringing another man into their bed, and then screams some more for her to look at her new guy now, look at him, existing somewhere between dead and alive. Eminem then puts Kim in the trunk of their car, a familiar image that — while repeated ad nauseam — never grows less frightening.
