The Elvis of rap and the Eminem of rock

By Vince Guerrieri
210 west Managing Editor [send email]

I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
--Eminem

A white male is born of origins that can generously be described as humble. He absorbs the culture around him, including black music. He begins performing, bridging the gap between black performers and middle America. He becomes a phenomenon and starts acting in movies.

People my age are nodding their heads and know exactly who I’m talking about. “Eminem,” they might say. But people of my parents’ generation or older also nod knowingly. “Elvis,” they say.

And they’re both right. The rapper and the singer both overcame hardscrabble beginnings to become phenomenal stars. Eminem has established himself as arguably the most successful musician of his generation, selling millions of copies of his last two albums and winning Grammys and becoming the first rapper to take home an Oscar.

But he still has a long way to go to catch up with the man they call the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll. Elvis Presley has sold more than one billion records, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that he’s been dead for nearly 26 years.

Elvis and Eminem also have one more major thing in common: both made their respective musical genres safe for white people while still offering a sound that appealed to black people.

Find me a white man who can sing the blues, and I’ll make a million dollars.
--Sam Phillips, Sun Records

In the early 1950s, a hybrid of music started to emerge, combining elements of jazz, blues, country and gospel. Black people called it “rock ‘n’ roll,” a euphemism for sex. White people called it “race music,” and that was being polite.

Many people thought that it was the devil’s music, driving young people to drink, commit wanton acts of carnality and drive too fast. There was actually a movement afoot to have it banned.

The growing number of teenagers in America listened to rock ‘n’ roll. And they liked it. The Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland in 1952, the first rock concert ever, ended abruptly after 6,000 people tried to crash the gates. There were already 10,000 people at the show, and although the bands were mostly black, the audience was mostly white.

But while the youth of America were drawn to black music, their parents weren’t. White rock ‘n’ roll singers usually consisted of clean cut, Hush Puppy wearing geeks like Pat Boone or Ricky Nelson, who covered (and sanitized) black rock ‘n’ roll.

Then came Elvis. He grew up in a shotgun shack in Mississippi and then lived with his parents in public housing in Memphis. While there, he absorbed the rhythm and blues and gospel music scene. He sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before, and within two years of his first recording for Sun Records, he is singing for RCA, appearing on television and making movies.

If people were nervous about race music and the effects it had on teenagers, they were absolutely apopleptic when Elvis came on the scene. They found his dancing lewd, and didn’t think he was that wholesome. Most famously, Ed Sullivan only filmed Elvis from the waist up when he appeared on his show.

But even though Ed Sullivan refused to film Elvis’s gyrating pelvis, he thought he was a decent boy, and said so on his show. Elvis loved his mama, buying her a pink Cadillac. He made charitable donations and played a concert in Hawaii in 1961 for the benefit of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. He was a man-child, maintaining his fundamental decency after he’d become famous, up to his death on Aug. 16, 1977 of heart failure. At the time, he was almost a relic, performing in Las Vegas and getting tired of touring. However, his legend continues and has even expanded since his death.

Around the time of Presley’s death, a new form of music started to coalesce. In the 1970s, disc jockeys had moved from spinning records at dances or parties to playing several records and mixing them together. Disc jockeys started to use MCs to keep parties moving. MCs used to throw out rhymes to the beat of music. Soon, musicians were making albums of those rhymes, usually with some social commentary.

Marshall Mathers wasn’t 5 years old when Presley died. Seven years later, he moved with his family to Detroit and, for a time, lived in public housing. Mathers was exposed to the hip-hop culture and rap music, which was starting to gain popularity as well as notoriety.

2 Live Crew released an album that was judged obscene. Ice-T released a song called “Cop Killer,” which went over in mainstream America like you’d expect a song called “Cop Killer” to do. Much like parents in the 1950s fretted about the black influences of rock ‘n’ roll, parents in the 1990s fretted about rap music. There were a few white rappers, but they really weren’t taken seriously. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Vanilla Ice is the Pat Boone of rap.

In 1996, Mathers released his first solo album as Eminem. His life crumbled around him, forcing him to move back in with his mother. Their relationship wasn’t as good as the relationship Elvis had with his momma. Eminem’s girlfriend wouldn’t let him see his daughter.

In 1997, Eminem created an alter ego named Slim Shady, and released The Slim Shady LP in 1999. He released another album in 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP. He completed the trilogy last year, with The Eminem Show. By then, he had weathered a storm of controversy from gay-rights groups and women’s groups accusing him of being a misogynist.

He mended some fences by singing a duet with Elton John at the Grammys, and had been described as a doting father to his daughter, Hallie. No less than Maureen Dowd, middle-aged white woman and columnist for the New York Times (not exactly a voice of the counterculture), expressed her enjoyment of Eminem.

Rap has emerged from the underground (literally, as it fomented in New York City subway stations) to go mainstream, due in part to Eminem. More than 40 percent of the Top 30 songs are rap or hip-hop, now the largest genre of popular music today. Its audience includes white suburbanites who would never even meet people like those they listen to. And to think, a couple of white guys made it all possible.