12. EminemMarshall Mathers LP
I think what Eminem brought to the game was extreme self-awarenss. In a way, he’s like the anti-R Kelly. He did the kind of pre-emptive, Andy Kaufman approach. What Andy Kaufman did in his comedy performances was that he’d always be one step ahead of what the audience could be thinking about him and be so incredibly intelligent as to let the audience know what they’re thinking about him as they’re thinking it. Of course, Eminem, being the first white rapper to do it in a way – he had to be in a very special position. He’s like President Obama, he has to be twice as good and half as black, and in Eminem’s case, he had to be twice as good and half as white. He did that, I think, by being so incredibly aware, so there was no chance to really ridicule him, because anything you could have said about him – he is everything we say he is. He has that Andy Kaufman level of what I would call the conceptual mastery of the perception of what he was doing, and that was just incredibly inspiring. It’s an incredible album musically and lyrically, and that’s why he owned the whole decade – up until Kanye West there wasn’t really a rapper who really defined the time [like him].
