Eminem emerged over a decade ago as an unlikely worldbeater: a white rapper from Detroit with a vexatious obsession with violence and social dysfunction. His pop megasuccess was serendipitous, explicable by no common measuring sticks.
Eminem, nominated in 10 Grammy categories, took two awards in February 2011 for best rap album and best rap solo performance (for the song “Not Afraid”).
Certainly, in the rear view, it was tempting to see Eminem's ascendance as a fluke, never more so than now, several years past his commercial peak. On June 21, 2010, he released "Recovery" (Aftermath/Interscope), his sixth solo album on a major label, his first album as a sober man and the most insular of all his releases.
In many ways, the Eminem captured on "Recovery" was reminiscent of the artist he once was, before the world got hold of him. He still had the familiar preoccupations: cartoonish gore, sexual aggression, astonishingly intricate rapping. He sounded far more invigorated than on anything he has released since 2002, the year of his last strong album, "The Eminem Show," and the soundtrack to the quasi-biopic "8 Mile."
For the first few years of his fame Eminem, born Marshall Mathers, exerted a gravitational pull on pop and was impossible to emulate, making him only more powerful. But over the last few years, as he retreated into drug-fueled isolation, Eminem — one of the most crucial figures in pop culture in the last 20 years, who pushed hip-hop over the final hump to mainstream acceptance — has been a nonentity.
In 2010, he was a true anomaly, neither an integral part of the pop landscape nor of the rap landscape. He became a multimillion-selling cult figure, trafficking in a peculiar style that once transfixed the world but now feels anachronistic.
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