The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 267

< Verse 42. 2009 >

Verse 42. 2009

American rappers often refer to their rap names not just as stage names but as alter egos.

Because rappers pour their entire thoughts into their music, they consider their rap names not just simple pseudonyms but another version of themselves.

It’s impossible to know who started this alter ego trend first. However, it’s easy to answer who popularized it the most.

The answer is Eminem.

Eminem’s music features a total of three personas.

They are ‘Marshall Mathers,’ ‘Eminem,’ and ‘Slim Shady.’

The first persona, Marshall Mathers, is Eminem’s real name, representing Eminem himself, unadorned.

A child who grew up unloved under a drug-addicted mother after his father left. Someone who experienced severe poverty, feels love and hate for his ex-wife Kim, and is an ordinary father who loves his only daughter, Hailie. That was Marshall Mathers.

The second is Eminem, the most familiar to the public.

The alter ego, expressed as ‘Eminem,’ which sounds like a quick pronunciation of his initials M & M, can be easily explained as his persona as a singer.

Compared to Marshall Mathers, Eminem is more aggressive, has great dissatisfaction with the world, and doesn’t hesitate to express his complaints. Nevertheless, he has a clear awareness of being a singer.

If the Eminem persona is more aggressive and direct than Marshall Mathers, the last persona is a man who transcends that category: a ‘criminal psycho.’

That was Slim Shady.

Slim Shady was eccentric, vulgar, and dangerous.

He doesn’t hesitate to curse at someone, commits crimes without a second thought, and is even a psychopath who doesn’t hesitate to kill people.

Since his debut, Eminem has been criticized for his excessively aggressive and violent lyrics.

Even parents in the United States submitted petitions demanding legal restrictions to prevent Eminem from releasing songs. Until filming the movie <8 Mile>, Eminem was a public enemy to parents with young children.

However, almost all of these criticized songs were sung by Slim Shady, not Eminem.

I’m saying stuff that everybody thinks
Like, “Whoa, no he didn’t!”
I’m just saying it cause everybody else won’t

Eminem described Slim Shady in the song ‘The Real Slim Shady’ as a ‘schizophrenic persona that everyone has but cannot express due to social norms.’

In fact, those who know Eminem well were well aware that the domestic man ‘Marshall Mathers’ and the crazy guy ‘Slim Shady’ were separate entities.

Eminem was simply catching and creating songs about the very violent and aggressive tendencies that people think of and soon forget.

Very few people actually kill their boss for scolding them, but everyone imagines killing their boss for a second, or even 0.1 seconds.

Eminem’s alter egos were not just characters that appeared in a few songs.

His first major debut album was led by Slim Shady, and his second studio album was heavily influenced by the persona of Marshall Mathers.

And the next album recorded a whopping double diamond (20 million copies), swept the Grammy Awards, and remained at the top of the music charts.

These alter egos of Eminem began to have a significant impact on Sanghyun.

“Fivesix, you’re too rational. I’m amazed that you can express every story as your true self, but don’t you think it’s unnecessary? There are multiple people inside everyone. Sometimes violent, sometimes intellectual. It doesn’t mean it’s not you just because it’s expressed exaggeratedly, does it?”

“But wouldn’t it be better to express myself as accurately as possible if I can?”

“Of course, it’s good. But then there’s bound to be a limit to the spectrum of expression. It doesn’t matter if you’re only going to release one album, but that’s not the case, is it? Do you think Dr. Dre has never done a humorous song before?”

“Are you talking about ‘Guilty Conscience’ that you did together?”

“Oh, my God. I’m starting to doubt if you’re really not Stan.”

“Fivesixstan?”

“Didn’t you learn jokes while learning English?”

“That can’t be true. Actually, I was a very funny person in Korea.”

“If your jokes work in Korea, I’m going to go to Korea and become a comedian. People will laugh no matter what I say.”

Sanghyun laughed at Eminem’s words.

Paul Rosenberg, who had been Eminem’s manager since his underground days, was surprised by Eminem’s new attitude.

Eminem was a person who hesitated to give advice to others. He wasn’t introverted or shy, but he wasn’t someone who made unnecessary remarks.

As a child, Eminem didn’t talk much and always hummed, creating strange melodies, which led to severe bullying from his classmates.

However, strangely enough, he gave a lot of advice to Fivesix.

Of course, it was also because Fivesix claimed to be a huge fan of Eminem and expressed endless respect, but there couldn’t have been only one or two people like that until now.

Therefore, Rosenberg thought that Eminem had acknowledged Fivesix.

Rosenberg, who always listened to Eminem’s raps, rarely felt special inspiration from other rappers’ raps, but Fivesix’s raps always gave him something special.

Like Rosenberg thought, Eminem considered Sanghyun an already complete rapper.

Since there is no absolute technical score in art, it was difficult to say exactly what Sanghyun’s level was. However, Eminem was sure that if his level was 100, Sanghyun was no less than that. Maybe even more.

That’s why he didn’t hesitate to give advice.

Because experience is something that can never be filled with talent.

A genre like rap, which pursues pleasure using endless variations, could have every moment’s choice influence the whole of the rap. And the difficulty of this choice was inevitably greater for rappers with great talent.

Because they have the ability to utilize all the options well, they rather repeat the past choices of ‘as usual’.

That’s why producers or seniors who can objectively look at the music are important to rappers, and Eminem wanted to do that for Sanghyun.

Just like Dr. Dre or Proof had done for him.

In fact, there was one more reason why Eminem didn’t hesitate to give advice to Sanghyun.

Perhaps this part was an even bigger reason.

This was an emotion that Eminem himself was not fully aware of, but it was that Sanghyun was proving the results of the ‘path’ that Eminem had struggled to build for 10 years.

When Eminem first started rapping, the rap scene was a completely black space.

It wasn’t that there weren’t non-black rappers active in the mainstream like Vanilla Ice, but they weren’t treated as rappers and were often ridiculed by black rappers as Wack. Because of this, Eminem also had to be booed from the moment he went on stage at a club for a performance.

One day, Eminem was fed up with the jeers he received on stage and spat out rhymes as he pleased. But whether those rhymes, which he didn’t even remember, were amazing, the black people’s jeers stopped abruptly. And for the first time, he was able to finish the performance safely.

From that time on, Eminem began to study a style that made sentences sound like rhymes by bending the pronunciation.

In other words, the rap style that made Eminem what he is today started from the motivation to be recognized by black people.

Then what is the ultimate shape of this ‘recognition’?

All black people praising Eminem’s rap?

Eminem’s existence being recognized in black culture?

These were also important parts, but there was a more ultimate shape.

It was the culture itself changing.

It is still a rap scene that is a black culture, but it is changing to be able to embrace other races if they have the skills.

And Sanghyun was proving this change.

Perhaps if it had been 10 years ago, no matter how well Sanghyun rapped, even if he was 10 times better than he is now, it would have been impossible to be incorporated into black culture.

Even Eminem, who came from a slum and lived with black people, had received so many death threats from black people that he had to hire a bodyguard.

So, Eminem’s efforts were underlying Sanghyun’s success, and the higher Sanghyun flew, the more firmly the changes Eminem had made were revealed to the world.

That’s why Eminem was helping Sanghyun more than he was aware of.

In fact, Eminem had projected these feelings onto white rapper Yelawolf around 2011 before Sanghyun returned. That’s why Yelawolf ended up joining Shady Records, the label Eminem created.

Of course, Sanghyun didn’t take Yelawolf’s place. In time, Yelawolf will come to Eminem’s record.

Sanghyun had just become friends with Eminem.

“Oh, this is good? Who made the beat?”

“I made it.”

“All the sessions too?”

“Ah, this session was sequenced by a DJ named Standard a long time ago, and I sampled that sequencing.”

“Really? Play it again.”

Originally, Sanghyun met Eminem to work on Crack A Bottle.

However, when two geniuses met, there was no way that sparks of inspiration wouldn’t fly.

Sanghyun was in the process of getting a studio in Detroit with the help of Hadel Raines, and before he knew it, the scope of his work with Eminem had gradually expanded. He was still working on Crack A Bottle as a top priority, but in addition to that song, several other songs were naturally started.

Of course, superstars like Eminem don’t include all the songs they make on their albums. Rather, there would be far more songs that are thrown away than included.

However, Sanghyun was so satisfied with his current life, regardless of whether the song was included or not.

It was good to have built a friendship with Eminem himself, but having the ‘man who is considered the best rapper on the planet’ right next to him meant that every moment was a series of tensions.

Thanks to this, Sanghyun began to handle the feeling he had realized in The X Factor for himself.

While staying in Detroit, Sanghyun became acquainted with Eminem’s daughter, Hailie, and also became acquainted with the members of D-12, a label that had been with Eminem since his underground days.

He also got to know Royce Da 5`9″, and he also got to greet the gangster rapper 50Cent, who would be featured on Crack A Bottle together.

In the meantime, November passed and December arrived.

Even during the three weeks that Sanghyun was holed up in his Detroit studio, the world was still flowing.

The X Factor was popular even without Sanghyun.

Now that the Judges’ Houses [the stage where judges decide which contestants will advance to the live shows] were over and the live broadcast competition was entering its second week, the Top 12 would be revealed next week, and Eminem was finally scheduled to appear on the show.

However, just because it was popular didn’t mean that the public was showing favor. The public was still unhappy with the Japanese capital invading the reality show.

And the rappers were being harshly compared.

Plan Paper, who barely passed the Judges’ Houses, was eliminated in the first week of the live broadcast competition. The public and the judges were giving particularly harsh evaluations to the rappers.

Because the afterimage of Lonely Road remained in their heads.

Thanks to this, MTB’s sales increased by a significant number, and more concert officials approached Sanghyun.

However, Sanghyun was still in the studio. Like when he first started working with the 888 Crew, he was frantically making and deleting music like a possessed person.

Hadel Raines later said, ‘It seems that Fivesix saw the end of rap during that time.’

However, Sanghyun had no choice but to be called out of the studio.

Not by others, but by his own will.

MTB was included in the list of nominees for the Grammy Awards, which are announced every year in early December.

< Verse 42. 2009 > End

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