The Immortals #82 - Eminem

Brace yourself. Because I'm about to make one of those grand, broad, sweeping comparisons between a relatively "young" media figure and one of the most enduring and popular icons in pop culture history. I'm warning you now that if this is the sort of thing that is as nausea-inducing to you as it usually is to me, then here's your chance to skip it now. Might I recommend a visit to www.deadbluesguys.com to peruse the grave sites of many terrific artists who were not featured in Rolling Stone's "Immortals" list? Or maybe one of those websites with the funny cats? Because here, thar be discussion of Eminem. Eminem- hip-hop's answer to...

wait for it...

Elvis Presley.

(Yes, because he's white.)

((Mostly)).

Yeah, it's really that easy. It's, like, All Music Guide easy. So let's get the list out of the way early. Eminem and Elvis are the two highest selling solo artists in their respective genres (not counting 2Pac's sales for the bazillion re-packagings of the same material). Both popularized their genres nearly a decade after their arrival as full-fledged popular phenomena in the "other" America (is it racist to continue the "black people are cool" meme? How about just ahead of the curve then?), and both became the first mega-selling white cultural ambassadors of their respective genres (I'll get to the Beastie Boys and why they're not hip-hop later on down this list).

Both also entered secondary careers as multi-media "threats" who blurred the lines between personal iconography and art, although, for the record, Eminem is a way better actor. And the public issues with substance abuse have been well-documented in the case of both men, as well as their precipitous effect in their declining popularity in eras not far removed from their initial popularity- Elvis because the Comeback Special really only earned him a quicker flight to Vegas residency as rock moved on and people stopped buying his records in favor of newer, more exciting sounds, and Em because 1999 was for-fucking-ever ago and nobody buys CDs of any kind anymore.

Eminem didn't "steal" hip-hop any more than Elvis did rock and roll, but its hard to manage a reason for his inclusion on this list without framing him as some sort of analogue to "The King" (a term used pro forma, believe me). I don't know that anybody was as really influenced by Elvis any more than either the acts he was accused of ripping off or those whom he merely outsold as contemporaries. Sure, he was great for selling the image, but did he add anything so definitively greater than Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, or frankly anybody that also happened to be recording for Sun in 1953? And is there something in "Stan" or "The Real Slim Shady" that's set to ignite a dormant creative spark in some soon-to-be brilliant 'head out there with an unwritten masterpiece that will change everything? I doubt it.

That doesn't mean they're not fun songs, or records like The Marshall Mathers LP don't hold up today. Em is a fine MC, with above average delivery and no worse than average lyricism. And he's from the Midwest. You can really never overstate the benefit of a neutral accent toward one's mainstream appeal. And as a representative of the last golden age of the music video (a form whose relevance fellow NH alumnus Steve and I notably and vastly disagree on) Eminem is a particularly poptent representative of the time and place. Hey, just like Elvis was for television! Look at that! When it rains over-obvious analogies it pours.

Bottom-line: Eminem did for hip-hop the same thing that Elvis did for rock and roll. He brought new heights of popularity to a "dangerous" style of music a good period of time after all the real danger had left it. And because there will never, ever be another 25x platinum-selling rapper, the easy comparison is all we're ever really gonna need to remember him by. That and his records, I guess. But mostly the other thing.

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America's Neon Hustle

Up until last night, I had never seen an episode of American Idol. That’s not because I’m some fussy elitist, mind you— I’ve watched more episodes of The Single Guy and Suddenly Susan than I care to admit. It’s just that I never got around to catching up on the show’s first few seasons, and at some point that failure became something of a badge of honor, on par with my accomplishment of not throwing up for 14 straight years (a streak terminated, sadly, by an ill-fated tub of KFC mashed potatoes a few years back). Anyway, a fluke series of events finally made me cave to inevitability, and last night I finally succumbed, sitting through the finale of America’s most popular show. I’m glad I did.

I suppose I should start off by saying I didn't enter into this arrangement totally ignorant of American Idol’s workings. Thanks to Ken Levine and Alan Sepinwall, I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s been going on this season, whether it was the ill-timed apotheosis of little David Archuleta, Paula’s drunken soothsaying, or the inescapable sense of a formula starting to fray at the edges. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how irritating that formula could be. In particle physics, there’s something called the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which essentially states that if you affect one particle in a certain way, its partner will be affected inversely. Watching the show unfold, it was hard not to think back to that dynamic, because every time something cool and exciting happened, it was almost immediately undermined by something equally odious.

Take Graham Nash. He’s a great performer, a living legend, and perhaps most relevantly, one of the few artists from the 60s who has consistently managed to not become a total parody of himself. I was really excited when he came out on stage, in other words. But his duet with Brooke was such shameless pandering (and so devoid of harmony) that it made me reconsider my previous assessment of Nash and his accomplishments, to the point that when I was re-listening to Déjà Vu after the show, I couldn’t stop thinking about that desultory duet. Has American Idol ruined CSNY for me? God, I hope not.

There were quite a few other good/bad moments, like eventual winner David Cook’s bliss with ZZ Top being followed by the unforgivably talentless Jonas Brothers (or, Hansen without the guilty pleasure of "MMMBop", which, come to think of it, wasn't even that pleasurable). But through all that, I remained mesmerized. To the extent that there’s anything culturally redeeming about American Idol, it’s probably how unabashedly American it really is: outrageous spectacle, style trumping talent, rabid commercialism at its most unforgiving. It's a force of nature, propelling an everyman into an international superstar, while simultaneously able to destroy my confidence in what I once cherished. Here’s a show that embodies, rather perfectly, the very ethos of this blog's spiritual namesake, bashing its viewers into perfect submission with the greatest of ease.

I can't wait for next year.

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The Immortals: #99 - Curtis Mayfield

The soundtrack for which he remains best known is, today, lessened, marred by the trappings of a movie which demanded uncharacteristically unsubtle (read: cartoonishly racist) subject matter that both dates and devalues his excellent work. I don’t care who you are, making characters like Youngblood Priest and Eddie into anything less than an offensive caricatures and cinematized stereotypes was a superhuman task. That Mayfield made from that ludicrous material music so heartfelt and enduringly resonant as to nearly legitimize pure exploitation has to be a testament to both his talent and those songs (this was proven again when Superfly became the first film to make less money than its soundtrack.) Still, while a stigma may forever be attached to that heralded “classic,” Curtis settles the debate over which was truly his best record.

Mayfield showcases every ability here. An extraordinary producer, his reverbed, psychedelic vocals and inventive instrumentation influenced everyone from Sly Stone to Jimi Hendrix. The extra material on subsequent releases of Curtis includes several future mid-hits in demo form, and comparisons display his exceptional talent as an arranger and composer in both the elegance of his studio dynamism and the visceral punch of his hard-wah riffing. And of course, as an alternately uplifting and apocalyptic lyricist, his tracks plumbed the darkest depths of politics, race, drugs and urban ill-health while never descending so deep into the engrossing paranoia as to lose faith that we could not rise above it all again.

Unfortunately, like most artists in the early 70s retroactively noted for making “socially conscious” music, that recurring message of hope is too-often remembered as the whole story of what is, in actuality, a much more significant result from Mayfield’s musical endowments. His contemporaries in the modern sounds of soul, greats like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the Gordy-led menagerie of Motown masters, made innovative records built from the gold-selling foundations of their socially conventional pop sounds. Remember, by this time previously negative associations were merely archaic reminders of 50s race-baiting, and the 60s had officially established whites as the prime (and profitable) audience for what was now the full-cultural force of rock and roll. Even as the nation descended into ever-worsening levels of sickness in the polarized era of civil rights, Vietnam and general socio-political upheaval, the radio became as safe as milk, and new orders of catchy numbers by clean-cut representatives from any popular genre could be made to order overnight from Hitsville, Wherever.

Mayfield, though of a similar mass-marketed pedigree in his back-catalogue with The Impressions, became the key figure in separating the homogenized racial legacies of co-opted rhythm and blues based musics. Unafraid to parlay in both the idioms of language and emotion found in real-life discussions of highly-charged issues, he determined that honest self expression couldn’t appeal to everyone all the time- that to create something great might well have to alienate some people in the process. Put another way, Curtis Mayfield boldly made black music that was really black again. And with that, good shit returned again to the AM dial.

"Sistas! Niggers! Whities! Jews! Crackers! Don't worry... If there's Hell below, we're all gonna go!"

One can quite likely trace a straight line from Mayfield’s first spoken words on the first cut off the first side of his solo debut to the sounds yet to come straight out of Compton, Detroit, and Brooklyn and everywhere else there was inequity in class, race or creed. Like the future works of those artists, Curtis provides a brutally authentic examination of not only its own time, but of some of our lasting American dualities. The message remains as simple as ever: we are a people rife with spiritual decay, yet together we're still capable of truly great things. Whether this amounts to a defense of gangsta rap or BET, or an attempt to reconcile any controversy associated with taking sides on our cultural divisions I’m really not sure. But what I am certain of now is that, in a towering and singular career, Curtis Mayfield once taught us that we simply couldn’t pretend we had achieved the harmony and prosperity that a unified people deserve. And he promises us that we have greatness still to earn.

Curtis by Curtis Mayfield

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