Curtain Call: The Hits by Eminem

By Jessi Shinn

American rapper, actor, songwriter, and record producer, Marshall Mathers lll, professionally known as Eminem, is the top-selling artist of the 2000’s. Eminem’s LP, “Curtain Call: The Hits,” released in 2005, debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Top 200 Charts just after 2 sale days. The LP stayed at number 1 for 2 weeks, during this time sales were close to 430,000 copies, and went platinum seven times. The LP has know been on Billboard Top 200 Charts for 350 weeks “making it the longest charting rap album in history,” says Trevor Anderson from Billboard.

This LP includes, “Lose Yourself,” his sixth track, which was certified five times platinum on June 29, 2012 and was also Billboard Hot 100 No.1 song for a consecutive 12 weeks. He also had five songs from this LP certified gold: #9 “Without Me” reached No. 1 in 15 countries; #10 “Like Toy Soldiers” tells a story of the violent dispute between rappers; #12 “Mockingbird” is an apology to his daughters for their parents splitting up and how he has failed them, this song also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance; #15 “Just Lose It” caused a quarrel with other artists as he made jokes about them in this song; #16 “When I’m Gone” is a heartfelt song about his career interfering with his family.

Eminem unlike most rappers nowadays likes to write about things that mean something. Most of the songs on this LP are written about his family or his friends while other rappers are constantly rapping about money and drugs. While Eminem does write some songs that don’t really have deep meaning all of his top charted songs are written about his life. Rappers like Kodak Black and SOB x RBE rap about doing drugs and making money and usually bag on girls. Eminem is different in the sense that he raps about real life stuff and things that have happened in his life that have helped him get to where he is.

While other rappers do make the charts and their music is highly listened to, Eminem’s LP is the kind of music that people can relate to. A lot of people go through the same struggles as he has and the way he write it makes it so heartfelt. You can feel the pain, and struggle, and agony in his songs which is what makes his songs so good. He also has songs that aren’t about his life and yet he still finds a way to put meaning into each song.