The forbidden question I’ve been waiting for has been asked. And the answer is a big bad YES!
Rap was always supposed to be talking about your own struggles, experiences and how you got through them. Rap is an extremely personal form of a musical genre which adds to its uniqueness making every rap artist unique simply because of his struggles, experiences, and lessons would be different. Rap songs lost this authenticity in the late 2000’s and transitioned to party songs, talking about money, and drugs. Even Eminem has songs in that category. It was mostly bad(there are exceptions) but rap has further degraded with its newest iteration starting in 2015 called mumble rap.
And let me tell you, mumble rap is EXTREMELY INFURIATING!!!! The perfect example of mumble rap would be Lil Pump’s Gucci Gang and you already know why it's infuriating. Rap has now become a part of teenage party songs you later hate and nothing else.
Eminem’s attempt at bringing back the old days with a certain fresh mixture of genres in Revival was bogged down by other rappers for being old. The fault in Revival was the lack of focus. Sure Revival wasn’t revolutionary and I personally don’t enjoy some of its songs but the backlash from fellow artists saying Em doesn’t get the industry’s trends was dumb and as Eminem himself says ‘it was beyond constructive criticism’.
The negative attention it got was worth a reply. The reason mumble rap sold was that nothing else was on offer. Nobody likes mumble rap when they’re sober. People crave a good rap song and Eminem’s reply to the criticism from the artists is just and well-founded. Rap is about facing demons.