The question then, is what is that characteristic? To answer that, we need a theory of value. These aspects are not the standard by which to rate the quality of an Eminem song, especially considering I believe that the defining characteristics of Eminem’s success are different from any other artist. However, he probably means none of these things. Still, though, what makes an Eminem song valuable? Is he asking which is Eminem’s catchiest song? Which one has the best beat? Which one has been most successful? Which one is relatable to the most people? He could mean any of these things when asking which is Eminem’s “best” song. What Jake is asking, then is which of Eminem song has the most value. What does he mean by “best?” Let’s assume that by wondering which song is “best,” we are essentially wondering which song has the most value. Jake’s original question is a little too vague for us to be able to directly answer. So, here we gooo-oo-oooooo (see: last song on Recovery). The point here is that Jake should have known that my answer to his question was not going to be a simple monosyllabic response. Schmalacker’s last-day-of-pledging skit can attest – I’m obsessed (but not the Mariah Carey kind of way). Now, anyone who has known me for over 39.5 minutes is painfully aware that: (1) I’m of the opinion that Eminem is the second coming of the Messiah, (2) I believe his genius is not confined simply to lyrical talent, but extends to a staggering amount of sociological awareness, and (3) His song Seduction (about how his songs cause girls to leave their boyfriends for him) is ironic, because I am much more of a candidate to run away with Marshall than my girlfriend would ever be. He’s mastered storytelling, fast rap, and more, now he’s moving towards something else.My friend Jake Johnson, an alumnus of both Lafayette College and my Niskayuna High School Varsity soccer team, asked me a provocative question a while back: “run rabbit run might be eminem’s best song, yay or nay?” An artist can’t keep making the same product. The wordplay, deleveries, rhymes and double/triple intenders. Now Em’ is mostly showing off why he is the best with words. Altough the deeper songs still comes once in a while, go listen to Bad Guy on MMLP2, Believe and Arose on Revival, Steppingstone on Kamikaze or Stepdad/Darkness on MTBMB. So the meaningfull lyrics can’t always be stories about his past, he can’t keep milking his past. And since his wealthy now, mostly home in his house, he does not experience much. He has to experience some new shit before he can tell a story about it. But he can’t keep making songs about the same situation. The real songs, the stories like Rock Bottom, Sing for the moment, Stan, When i’m gone, Mockingbird, Not Afraid etc. I was ironic, of couse you can’t write like Em,Įminem has made countless of songs, he can’t keep making songs about his past. I'd like to see him back to about 2-2.5 high quality simile's per song, but that's just me - I recognize I'm being that fan he refers to in White America ("I don't like this note!"), and I'm sorry for that, but it comes from a place of enormous respect and appreciation. To emphasize the point, his use of similes has increased around 5x per song from his early few albums to MTBMB (Side B). Personally, it's not a trend I'm a fan of - as he's gone for quantity over quality in this department too often for me in more recent times. This, no doubt, ties with most people's anecdotal evidence that, over time, Eminem has used and resorted to more and more similes, metaphors, puns and double/triple entendres in his songs. It's clearly not a perfect correlation with his actual use of similes, but it's pretty damn close and directionally correct. Skits, intros and outros were, of course, excluded entirely from the analysis. I eliminated any "like" used by featured artists on each song. I also only counted the use of like-as-a-simile once per song when used in a chorus. I then discarded any "like" usage that was, in my view, not used as part of a simile. I used the word "like" as a prima facie proxy for the use of similes in Eminem's songs on his studio albums. I had a few hours spare today, so I put together this quick bit of statistical analysis to prove or disprove the hypothesis. For quite a while I've been wanting to add some meat around the commonly held view that Eminem is using way more similes and metaphors in his raps than he has before. Hi folks, big time fan of Em's here since '99.