2002: #6 - "8 Mile"

We never liked Eminem much.

It has nothing to do with his shock-jock antics; we could probably deal with all the homophobia and mysogyny - awful stuff of course, but nothing the world of pop music hadn't accepted before - if the songs had been any good.

Don't get us wrong - his rapping is always technically stellar and when he works with Dr. Dre the beats tend to be above-average, but he's got the vibe all wrong. The cartoon-rap goof stuff is neither fun nor funny, sort of an idiot's version of Weird Al parodying The Geto Boys, and the serious stuff just sucks. Seriously, the funniest Eminem song to date is "Stan", only because it's laughably bad.

Anyway, to make a long story short, he kind of got it all together on this 8 Mile soundtrack, where he blunted most of the dumb violent stuff, but still left enough grit to keep things slightly dangerous, and most of all, kept the beats crisp and the hooks catchy. What good are serious rap songs if no one wants to listen to them?