"It's over, nobody listens to techno!" – Eminem Vs. Moby

I always think about how Eminem is one of the most enduring, popular artists of our time, and any kid getting into his catalog is gonna be bombarded with all this completely alien ca. 1999 ephemera like Tom Green's "The Bum Bum Song," the Bloodhound Gang and a skit where the members of Insane Clown Posse blow someone

"The Bum Bum Song" reference was completely lost on me at the time, because MuchMusic didn't regularly play Tom Green's music at the time, outside of "Check the O.R.".

Eminem was not only the greatest rapper working for about two years, he was so good in those two years that he remains one of the best rappers in history. However, he also did D12, had a bunch of gross stuff on his good records, and has made eight billion terrible records since that time.

Moby has made a mere 1 million boring records, plus a handful of enjoyable-to-fun records as well, and the Long Ambients show he can still be good.

Moby invented Knob Touch in an interview. Eminem learnt that porn was on the internet in an interview, in 2009, and promptly ended the interview.

I think I have to give it to Moby, though Eminem was once a better musician than Moby has ever been.

"The Bum Bum Song" reference was completely lost on me at the time

This is completely lost on me at this time.

One of them should've stopped in 2000 and the other one might as well have done

Moby has stuff that has aged well, I'm just not sure if Play is amongst that.

That song above, used in a 2016 comic book movie that grossed $325 million dollars and aimed at kids born when the song came out, has references to Tom Green, Lynne Chaney, Malcolm McLaren, the burgeoning career of Obie Trice, a 15 year old public legal battle with his mom, Chris Kirkpatrick and a line beamed from a time where it was more acceptable to call someone a fag in a song. It makes no logical sense.

Eminem had the good sense to limit his most ephemeral, topical bars to about one song/video per album, so that was smart.

For those of you blessedly ignorant of Tom Green:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJfnOdVeHxg

I thought the Tom Green reference was limited to Real Slim Shady.

I don't really feel like relistening to Without Me to confirm that.

Eminem doesn't have anything that touches "We Are All Made of Stars," so Moby. believe me I loved Eminem at the time and still like/love most of the singles (the harpsichord on "The Real Slim Shady" was so beautiful and strange and alluring to me as a kid), but he gets old real fast. Moby has some all-timers.

Eminem's Bum Bum song reference is Biggie's "remember Rappin Duke" line for people who've seen Deadpool 2

i'll take Moby's discography but he seems like such a bad person that i vote Eminem

both of their discographies could vanish from the face of the earth and we would all be the better for it. tbf I wouldn't notice.

I probably like "Purple Pills" better than any Moby song.

what could have been

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDJ7NSFNsI

Moby is more or less a fake musician but otoh this is more twisted than any classic Eminem joint https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WywzWjZATKA

this is still classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc_39aTxsP0

just the Triumph part not the Eminem part

I almost included the Triumph video with my original post.

Classic!

I voted "Without Me" #10 on my 2002 year-end ballot because it made me laugh: "Even the wildly
misplaced attack on Moby is hilarious--I don't have strong feelings about Moby one way
or the other, but I do know that middle-school kids, who make up a sizeable part of
Eminem's core audience, have never even heard of Moby! He may as well have gone after
Klaus Voormann or Edgar Froese."

both of their discographies could vanish from the face of the earth and we would all be the better for it. tbf I wouldn't notice.

this!

I hate moby as a person, so eminem

I hate moby as a person, so eminem

Kinda baffled by this. What did Moby do that makes him more loathsome than Eminem, who's always struck me as the sludge trapped in the crevices of a shower door come to life?

Someone posted some articles of an artist who toured with moby (aphex twin and the orb also featured iirc) and he comes off precisely as the class of human I always thought he was.

I mean I know Eminem is dodgy but he has never pretended being better than he is. Moby comes as a self-righteous, talentless hack. I can’t remember where I found the article but I’m sure it has been discussed in here before.

the tales are fucking endless. but the one that gets me the most is really one of the more innocuous ones, as detailed in this infamous podcast episode https://www.gimletmedia.com/heavyweight/2-gregor

http://inthemix.junkee.com/my-1993-rave-adventure-with-moby/19934

Here is the one I was talking about.

I don’t know why it sends to another announcement in mobile. From google it still works:

https://www.google.com.mx/amp/inthemix.junkee.com/my-1993-rave-adventure-with-moby/19934/amp

Voting for Moby because a) he has one song I like ("Honey") to Eminem's zero, and b) he was (and remains) the far easier of the two for me to ignore. Admittedly, working in a record store during the peak of Eminem's fame pushed what would have otherwise been a casual dislike of him into an outright loathing that has never gone away.

I like Moby and Eminem 🤷🏻‍♂️

Eminem's production on 'Renegade' is a better beat than anything I've heard from Moby.

That’s a terrible opinion

Moby was amazing at times:

https://youtu.be/DiKKYHH4ilo

Also:

https://youtu.be/W2zZMiBlQSI

a friend claimed to me that a friend claimed to him that when she went out with moby he spent the entire time describing "his ideas for how boggle could be modified to make it a better game"

Is this about who had a more rotten personality? Let me get this straight, among other things:

Eminem: regularly insulted his on again off again wife in the press, joked about beating her up and killing her, and then wrote a song about her where he did exactly that.

Moby: acted like an entitled dick towards people,sometimes.

Moby's bio was amazing too. FWIW, two years after "See the Lights", he became an alcoholic and went back to partying with his band every night, in case anyone is seriously hung up about that aspect of his personality.

Eminem doesn't have anything that touches "We Are All Made of Stars," so Moby.

Come on mane, "Stan" pisses on that song from a great height

I agree about how he's only bearable in small doses but six or seven songs which represent Em at the height of his powers as a writer which I suspect will still sound amazing for many more years

I'm not a fan of either (although I did like Moby's Animal Rights back in the day) so this would basically be "TS: Go vs. Stan", except Without Me is one of my least-favourite songs of all time so Moby wins by default.

when I say I'd take Moby's music over Em's it's cuz I'm old, not because it's better (although I really do like EIR/Play/18)

i haven't paid really any attention to anything moby has done since play but everything is wrong is an important record for me personally and i'll always love it deeply

even at his best eminem is annoying

a friend claimed to me that a friend claimed to him that when she went out with moby he spent the entire time describing "his ideas for how boggle could be modified to make it a better game"

Definitely voting Moby now.

Moby was amazing at times:

https://youtu.be/DiKKYHH4ilo

― Tim F, Thursday, November 1, 2018 3:10 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also:

https://youtu.be/W2zZMiBlQSI

― Tim F, Thursday, November 1, 2018 3:14 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea these are so good

also "feeling so real" & "everytime you touch me" are so exhilarating & fun

yea Moby has more tunes I like than Eminem, who even at his peak was doing stuff like basing entire songs off the Mr. Mackey voice. and while Moby is clearly kind of dickish (though he's probably mellowed in the last 25 years), Eminem strikes me a legitimately bad person

all these stories that moby was a shit are from a long time ago.

are there more recent examples that he is still an arrogant sod, or, has he realised the errors of his ways and grown up.

I still listen to his 'destroyed' album a lot (no guest vocalists, late night lonely ambi-techno).

of course I voted moby as I never really enjoyed Eminem even at the height of his skills.

I tried to find the techno track that sampled the "nobody listens to techno" line, either the one I found was a different track or it's much worse than I remembered.

As much as I still have time for some of Moby's work up to and including Play, I had to vote for Eminem just simply on the strength of The Marshall Mathers LP alone.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I like Moby’s remixes of “Stella” better than anything Em’s ever done. I liked Play and 18 quite a bit, really should check out Ambient one of these days. Plus Moby never did anything as terrible as “Just Lose It” or “Fack”. Moby wins.

wiped out his entire fanbase just as surely as if he'd given them a Zyklon-B power-shower.

Can we plz not w the neo-nazis-makin-holocaust-jokes.

Fucking Vice.

Anyone who prefers Moby is a cop

do you really have a serious emotional investment in Eminem

ok sorry he was a good rapper I just can't imagine it

If you were to judge both of these two on the first three or four years of their career it would be a lot closer. Early rave-era Moby (up to Everything Is Wrong) had a lot of straight up bangers. If you put Go or Feeling So Real on now they'd still destroy.

Near unmitigated dreck after 1994 but anyone repping for Eminem after 03 or thereabouts needs to take a long look at themselves as well.

Worth noting that Eminem's last big hit inevitably featured Ed Sheeran while Moby actually made a first chart appearance for 11 years a few months back as a guest credit on an A$AP Rocky track.

Em vocals on something like 'Bodyrock' would've been a logical, tho not necessarily wise, beef squash collaboration between the two (as Em n' M, possibly also featuring Triumph)...before 2004 at least.

Been struggling with this for weeks and still can't decide. I guess Moby is a more unlikely long term success as an artist somehow which might tip it in his favour. Either way 'Move' is still his best single.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Does this mean he won’t get stomped by Obie?

Indeed something about Moby's (90s) melodic heavy-handedness generally feels both dated in a way a lot of 90s dance music doesn't and is also kinda loveable? He feels like the only dance music "star" who really embodied (or purported to embody) PLUR.

his early "rave" stuff felt at the time like a good example of somebody with an impostor syndrome deciding not to worry about it and just recording what he likes to hear. very obvious in some ways but it works and the self aware naivete of it carries it. and that's what i find myself listening to most now, all the way up to Everything Is Wrong DJ Mix (which i like more than the album). actually that sound makes a lot more sense now that i'm reading his autobiography, him describing djing for raver/club kids/vogueing crowd.

Play era started okay, i think it was Bodyrock being constantly played on MTV that got us into that, before it all got horribly saturated, and that saturation carried over to record stores what with a bazillion of various compilations etc and that was perhaps the biggest turn off overall, even leaving the disappointment of spending limited (at the time) CD budget on Animal Rights.

but yeah i love the early era. it's interesting to revisit all that while reading his autobiography, i'm kinda starting to really like him as a person too.

Never heard this longer mix of “Move the Colors” till now:

https://youtu.be/5gAgOsnUPV4

This is a good track imo

On Thursday, December 6th at McCaw Hall, musician and activist Moby will showcase the breadth of his career with an orchestral performance, featuring his many hits, accompanied by members of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, with Emil de Cou conducting. This is Moby’s second-ever performance with a full orchestra, and currently no other performances of this kind are scheduled. Proceeds from this special evening will benefit KEXP’s programming. Supported in part by Lyft and Umpqua Investments.

This is a good video imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqYJwDL4k0

this is a travesty

Still it’s evident that Eminem is on another level and can be considered a zeitgeist-y, timeless artist in a way that Moby just isn’t. I guess he can always boast about being the biggest sellout in the music business.

Um... have you heard Revival?

Have u heard Slim Shady LP?

95% certain I saw Moby in the veggie section at the grocery store last night. This was only half a mile from his vegan restaurant so it makes sense.

You should have told him that he won this poll.

Ah, he would have smiled at you.

These poll results are insane

"insane in the membrane!" -- eminem
"insane in the brain!" -- moby

lol

Anyone who prefers Moby is a cop

― President Keyes

speaking for the cops of the world we don't give a shit about eminem _or_ moby, thanks

In an Uber listening to “Love The away You lie” and had forgotten about “Now you get to watch her leave,
Out the window, guess that's why they call it window pane”

unforgettably, indelibly awful

I can't stand Moby, but I'm glad he won this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMKPwQXReHs

this has been making the rounds. misses a couple of eminem's vocal modes but kinda otm mockery of others.

we should poll their 2001 grammy performances

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sdSfru61jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPNceNV5bh8

getting a divorce and an abortion in the floorboard of a ford taurus makes for a shitty day

holy lord that Moby video! Want to change my vote to Taurus guy -- perfect.

“the elder statesman of electronic music”

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/moby-natalie-portman-dated-book-1203225746/

you fucking rubes voting for moby

“Go”, my man

https://www.scaruffi.com/music/techno.html

picturing a Scaruffi reverently listening to "Drop A Beat"

by all accounts this guy is a scum/douchebag, fuck him

They've always both been terrible, and they've aged equally terribly.

In other words, I was wrong upthread.

no, the Long Ambients are good, and I checked last night & Next Is The E still goes

we don't really need to be discussing this douchecanoe nonsense on two threads though

The more pressing reason I was wrong was that no one listening to Eminem thought it or he was good for them. Moby's liner notes, otoh...

xp What’s the other thread? I try to avoid that faux pas...

it has the word “Moby” in the title

This is the only active such thread

ILE, yo: Moby is a dork

Yeah, I don’t look at that.

worth running a quick ctrl+f on SNA

I’d rather stick to one messageboard. Why have other boards at all, if ILE preempts and supersedes them?

(Give me some credit, I bookmarked and use the ILE “Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen” thread, after being told the ILC “Watchmen” thread wasn’t the right place to discuss it.)

tbh you should have started a thread on I Love Books to talk about Moby's book

Someone should! Without fear of being redirected to ILM or ILE, lol