BILLIONS CLUB: Eminem (7/375)

 BILLIONS CLUB

Eminem (7/375)

73/375  =  19%

  OK- almost to 20 percent- which has been harder than I thought. The first 10 percent of the BILLIONS CLUB comprised four artists: Sheeran, Post Malone, Drake & Dua Lipa- though that should have been Ariana Grande- but that is four artists for the first 10 percent.  Getting to 20 percent requires five  more artists, and that is taking into account I excluded Justin Bieber, who himself has 10 songs in the BILLIONS CLUB.

   Eminem just recently placed his seventh track in the BILLIONS CLUB, Mockingbird from his album Encore, which does not have any other billion stream tracks.  I was surprised that Lose Yourself, his anthem from the highly succesful Eminem biopic 8 Mile, only has 1.6 billion streams- I would have pegged that song to have over two billion streams for sure.  And Eminem isn't solely a catalog artist either, Godzilla, which features Juice WRLD who himself has three other billions stream cuts, was off his 2020 LP(!) Music to Be Murdered By (who knew?).  Godzilla was added to the Billions Club playlist in October of 2022 and then Mockingbird this week.  Another mild surprise in the Eminem discography is that Stan- a song that literally launched a Gen Z culture, only has 834 million streams.

In terms of a potential eighth track for Eminem in the billions club, Stan would be it but that seems far off in the future if ever.  Unlike almost all of the other artists I've looked at on this list, I have plenty of personal experience listening to Eminem. I had some awareness of his existence before he signed to Interscope via his participation in the underground hiphop/turntablist scene of the mid to late 1990's- I can remember owning a cd with an early freestyle of his.  Obviously the story of Eminem is pure major label malarkey after Interscope got involved- he was a real pop/MTV/cd selling machine during an era when artists made real money at that level. 

  His level of stardom peaked in 2002 and 2003 when 8 Mile was released in theaters.  It grossed 250 million, which was good, but it also cemented an idea of Eminem in the public consciousness and gave him Lose Yourself, which I would argue is his biggest hit.   Stylistically, Eminem emerged out of the loosely defined "horrorcore" which you can basically trace back to the Gravediggaz and Kool Keith and his record as Dr. Octagon.   Gravediggaz dates from 1994, and Dr. Octagonacology came out in 1996.  Both Prince Paul, the animating force behind Gravediggaz, and Kool Keith were from the world of turntablism and horrorcore emerged as a kind of high concept attempt to create a new genre of hip hop.  As such, there was always something artificial and inauthentic about the original wave of horrorcore.  No one, for example, though that Kole Keith WAS Dr. Octagon and neither RZA nor Prince Paul ever publicly identified as their Gravediggaz personas.

   What Eminem introduced was a personal narrative to couple with the outrageous lyrics about murder and dismemberment and obviously it landed with a wide, wide audience.  After 2002 he was basically done despite some commercial success- no one really took Eminem seriously after 8 Mile and he responded by fully embracing top 40 commercialism, continuing to release records that critics and audiences hardly know exist.   It seems unlikely that he will ever have another song make the list, but it's impressive that he still had one break through as recently as this week.