Somebody RESTRAIN ME

Anyway, my favorite moment is the end, when he walks away from Mekhi Pfifer, mumbling about how he's got to do his own thang, i.e., leave this black-dominated environment to become the superstar his homeys never will be. Now, THAT'S Republican—positively Lott-ish. It's scary that the sole mainstream white rapper in a field of black talent (Kid Rock's basically gone over to the metal side) sold double what his closest rival, Nelly, clocked in with Nellyville.
Ouch. Ouch and Ouch.

Marzorati is pretty maddeningly off the mark, but Powers is a bit more reasonable. (Not like that's hard.) What bugged me out more was Neil Strauss' piece in the NY Times last week in which he placed sole responsibility on '8 Mile' for reinventing Eminem's image & pushing him into mainstream likeability. Sigh.

Oh God... catch phrase overload... does not compute...does not compute....

*head explodes*

Then again, I don't know how much to fault Slate -- I mean, it's not really a publication specializing in music coverage, to say the least. Their emphasis seems more industry-oriented, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But testing only the most superficial waters of who was hyped-and-who-wasn't and who-sold-how-many-copies-and-who-didn't and who-achieved-a-critical-consensus will likely lead to more obvious conclusions. I'm not saying necessarily because of the celebs they chose to cover (Eminem, Timbaland, etc) but how they chose to cover them -- as media phenomena. I think the industry-based perspective can be interesting, but I want to see more behind it

Is it because I'm reading them on the 18th (after the bigging up of Mum and The Streets) that I don't understand what you guys are talking about?

I totally agree that Em's rhymes in the movie are whack
Thats because Dre wasn't whispering the next line into Em's ear.
Check out 'Sue all the World' and watch for Eminems cameo.