Taylor Hawkins, Eminem and the skill of songwriting: “One step ahead of everybody”
In the early days of both genres, rock and roll and rap didn’t always make for the best combination. Despite being defined by rebellion and angst half the time, both styles worked on opposite sides of the spectrum and never really got their chance to shine until Aerosmith and Run-DMC helped break down the doors for rap-rock to come in. While Taylor Hawkins was much more comfortable with traditional straight-ahead rock and roll, he had to admit that there was no one competing with Eminem in his prime.
Then again, it’s not like there were many competitors for aggressive white rappers then. Eminem certainly was shocking for his time when he debuted on The Slim Shady LP, but since all that most rap-rock fans had to work with was Fred Durst, hearing him sing about his life on the streets, having to live with a mother who hated him, and his rocky relationship with his wife, Kim, was extremely raw for its time.
But it was also more than a little bit silly looking back on it. For all of the offensive jokes that feel dated for the time, hearing Slim Shady rap his ass off about his problems felt like the equivalent of watching Ren and Stimpy with more vulgar jokes and swear words laced into the mix to please the dopey 13-year-olds in the audience.
Looking at it from a raw musical perspective, though, Hawkins had a lot to admire about how Eminem constructed his songs. After all, rapping is very rhythmic by nature, so it would make sense for the Foo Fighters drummer to appreciate how many times he could switch his flow throughout a track or stop on a dime to hit someone with a rhyme no one expected.
Despite being one of the titans of modern rock at the time, Hawkins knew that Eminem was on a completely different level from his peers, saying, “What’s so cool about Eminem is the rhythms of his melodies – he’s a step ahead of everybody with his flow. As far as I’m concerned, there’s him, Snoop and Kool Keith.”
It’s not like Eminem couldn’t dabble in rock and roll when he wanted to, either. Throughout the production of The Eminem Show, half of the track list could have been rock tunes if they were tweaked just a little bit, down to his decision to bring in Joe Perry to play a guitar solo on ‘Sing for the Moment’ and turning ‘Till I Collapse’ into one of the most incessant workout songs of all time.
However, there have been moments when his reliance on rock has come back to bite him as well. No matter how many times he has tried to reach across the aisle and talk himself up like one of the greatest in the game, performing songs with X Ambassadors to establish credibility is still one of the more ill-advised decisions in modern music.
Still, that’s not going to diminish the number of anthems that he gave us in his prime. Eminem was still a cut above the rest when across his first three records, and even for someone as pure uncut rock as Hawkins, even he knew that he had to pay his respects to a fellow legend in the making.
