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I’ve put up a post on the Rap Genius blog which uses an analysis of “Renegade” as a starting point for a general comparison of Jay-Z and Eminem . It’s been getting great reviews from everybody who’s read it (which I think probably stems from the fact that I think only my friends have read it so far), and I think it’s one of my better-written blog posts. Here are the first few paragraphs to give you a little taste:
Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint was a baller achievement; XXL Magazine gave it a perfect XXL rating, The Source gave it 5 mics (also perfect), it sold 426,000 albums in its first week. But…funny thing; the album was released on the same day as this:
Needless to say, people weren’t talking about Jay’s album as much as they would have under normal circumstances. 9/11 changed everything (kind of a big deal). But as if Jay’s shine weren’t already being clouded, the song most people were talking about was “Renegade” and, when people talked about it, all they could talk about was how good Eminem’s rap was. Granted, Jay-Z’s verses were great as well, but the consensus is that – as Nas pointed out on “Ether” – “Eminem killed [Jay] on [his] own shit.”
Poor Jay-Z: he only had one guest featured on the entire album, and, when people weren’t talking about 9/11, they were mainly talking about the two verses on the album that weren’t his.
