In his first album from 1999, Eminem sparked the big bang, presenting the first white star to express his teen rebellion through hip-hop (ok, there were the Beastie Boys in the eighties, but they were relatively marginal). A year later, Slim Shady assesses the situation, in his disgusting and amusing way. As he bashes other forms of white pop – boy bands, pop princesses, metal – he observes that white youth no longer flocks after them, but rather wants to imitate him. And hindsight shows that he was right: the boy bands disappeared almost completely, metal fell from grace, and even the pop princesses increasingly turned to hip-hop. But, he says, there is only one Slim Shady, and none of those imitators will ever be able to match. And here, too, he was correct: ten years later, no white rapper has achieved star status. I suppose it will happen eventually, but when Eminem enters the closing verse, firing the intricately interwoven rhymes in Vulcan speed, it's hard to imagine anyone who will ever be able to top him.
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