i mean thanks for answering without flaming me. that was refreshing. i thought for sure i'd have to stop, drop and roll for this one.

>Well Aaron's work is obviously influenced
>by Japanese animation. He even
>refers to his style as
>"afro-anime", but to call him
>a culture thief is a
>huge stretch.

that is obviously what i was referring to, but i don't think he's a culture thief. I eat burritos. I'm not a Mexican culture thief. I live in a part of the country that used to be Mexico. There has been a lot of Mexican culture stolen here, but me eating a burrito, McGruder drawing in a japanese style, and eminem rhyming all do not qualify us as culture thieves.

> There is
> the obvious fact that
>his strip is about black
>folks, and black folk's issues.
> It's not like he's
>walking around in a Kimono,
>yelling Bonzai! like Mr. Miyagi.
>
lol. good point.

>I can't speak for A-Dub, but
>my beef with Eminem is
>that I think he acts
>like a caricature of a
>rap star.

i'm not a huge eminem fan or anything, but i think the dude's funny and a lot of his rhymes are dope. he's definitely a caricature, but what makes you think he's a caricature of a (typical) rap star. i think his ish is pretty original, but maybe i just don't know whose style he has.

from what i can tell, he's not "walking around in a komono" either. He's rapping and his music is very much hip hop, but that is the extent to which he "acts black" as far as i can see. he paints himself as a white trash caricature, not as having any black stereotypes. He hates his mother, wants to kill himself, beats up his girlfriends, and takes all kinds of drugs. If he were to be the kind of rap caricature that i (and most of us) hate, he would SELL drugs, PIMP his girlfriends, want to kill OTHER PEOPLE, and would probably never mention his mother.

i can understand where you're coming from though. some whiteboy just pops up on the scene with all these really negative lyrics and makes a assload of money and gets maaaad attention in a very short amount of time, obviously because he's white. i can see how you'd hate him, but i can't see how race is THAT much of a factor.

>Don't get me
>wrong, there are plenty of
>black folks doing that in
>hip-hop, and I dislike them
>as much..if not more. But
>it doesn't offend me to
>the same level.

that's good you point out the difference between "dislike" and "offend". I can understand why eminem would offend you, but i don't understand what racially offends you about him.

>To me it seemed like 3rd
>Bass was doing it from
>the heart, same for the
>Beasties (they had their own
>shit), and The Mountain Brothers,
>etc, etc. If it's real,
>it's real, and people will
>recognize that.

i think you can tell that eminem is for real. you can tell that he loves what he's doing underneath that pseudo-hardness. No one's going to argue that his ish is as good as the Beasties, but i think he's in it for more than the money. Why would he do a Rawkus compilation if he wanted to make money?

>I'm sure he will respond to
>this himself.
>Obvioulsy you have some axe to
>grind with Aaron, but having
>met him (Aaron, I'm the
>guy from NBC in DC,
>we bumped into each other
>at the mall out here
>in Cali) , I can
>say that he is as
>much a Japanese culture thief
>as I am a Jewish
>culture thief. Happy Passover!
>
i wouldn't say "axe to grind" because that suggests that i'm pissed off about something. i'm not. i'm just confused. I totally understand if you don't like eminem, but i start scratchin my head when i hear it's a racial issue.


"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotamy." -- a psychotic drunkard