First let me say....Em is an OK rapper.... I think he's good, not great... I was feeling a few songs off the first album... the most depressing/embarrassing thing about eminem (and let me say I'm white) is the amount of (white) people who are not hip-hop fans but know every word of eminem's albums.... Here in Boston (I know, I know) there's a radio station (WFNX) that plays mostly alternative but also a bit of techno and hip-hop... the sad fact is, they will only play white rappers.... If you are the beastie boys or eminem, you can get on, otherwise forget it - I even heard House of Pain's "Jump around" the other day....but never any other hip-hop and I'm not exaggerating (I heard a Busta song ONCE... for what it's worth) they hardly ever played hip-hop before Em blew up (with the exception, like I said, of HOP and Beasties).... now they play that song "the fan" like once an hour... what does this say? I don't know... maybe it means em is reaching a whole new audience for hip-hop, that otherwise would not hear it (which some have stated here), and enlightening people to the genre, which is probably the case with a few people and that is great.... but more likely, the folks who listen to Britney Spears and Korn and Backstreet Boys and Limp Bizkit (please, you know these are the same people) are now pumping eminem in their rides, talking about N*gger this and Sp*c that, and voting Republican, and wearing their Abercrombie hats, and thinking "RUN-DMC"'s only song was Walk this way.... anyway, I'll stop here...I don't think the eminem phenomenon is em's fault - he's a talented rapper and he's got some creative rhymes - but it does point out something sad about our popular culture (that it needs a diaper change, I guess.)... How can you listen to eminem but not love hip-hop? This was always a problem for me as a fan of the beasties, which I (was) for a long time... so many people knew every word to check your head but when you put on Illmatic, they're like "wtf is this?"... If you love eminem but don't love hip-hop (which is the case with many of his fans right now), then basically you only love him for one reason......