Eminem

My Name Is b/w Bad Guys Always Die

So roundabout 25 years after I first heard "My Name Is" it's interesting to revisit the whole hubbub. I remember seeing his name, in a variety of spellings, in concert listings in the Detroit Metro Times, well before this ever dropped. 

So when I finally saw the video on MTV, it was a little bit of "oh shit...THIS is THAT guy?"

But with the impending release of the first White Stripes album and already hearing the earliest swirls of Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" I couldn't help but think that the song was just everything I was against. Him being from Detroit didn't really have any bearing on the situation, positive or negative.

I had very little rap music that spoke to me, and the idea of a white guy rapping felt ill (the bad kind) since Vanilla Ice. I don't really recall any instant excitement or fandom amongst the other 16-year-olds in my social circle, but years later I would find out that my brother and some of his friends had crossed paths and hung with Em and his crew way back in '97 or whatever. 

But now..shit, the song is almost cute. The plonky keyboard sample interpolation of "I Got The" feels clever and well-placed. That, on top of knowing this was the opening salvo of an artist who's now got TEN songs with more than one BILLION streams on Spotify, and a weird little me in the back of my head pines for a time when this was rolling out.