White Noise: The Eminem Collection [Paperback]

Hilton Als (Editor), Darryl A. Turner (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2003

Grammy-winning Eminem (Marshall Mathers) is the first white crossover star of the hip-hop generation and it is a crossover notable for the absence of the resentment (but more of the controversy) that confronted past white performers of "black" music. In fact, black cultural bigwigs from Zadie Smith (who profiled Eminem in a Vibe cover-story lovefest) to rap progenitor and mogul Russell Simmons, not to mention superproducer to the stars Dr. Dre, a host of lesser lights, and hordes of bona fide fans have been crawling out of the woodwork to deflect the very criticism you might expect a white boy to draw when taking up a black form as his own. Meanwhile, self-consciously highbrow journals like the New Republic and the Nation have taken Eminem to task over his confused class antagonism, as portrayed in both his music and his first (it won't be his last) $100 million–grossing feature film, 8 Mile, and his truly scary misogyny and homophobia. This illustrated collection with fifty photographs includes interviews with Eminem along with selections from Toure, Andrew Sarris, Kenneth Turan, Armond White, Richard Kim, Ann Powers, Vic Everett, and many others.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As if to balance the muted hagiography of most recent biographies of the rapper, Als and Turner have compiled a comprehensive, provocative and fascinating look at the varied critical reception given to Eminem and his music by more than 25 prominent writers, including Frank Rich, Richard Goldstein, Robert Christgau, Zadie Smith, Elvis Mitchell and Armond White, plus two revealing interviews with Eminem. The result is a solid look at the complexities presented by "a white boy bursting with lewd boasts and menacing taunts in the nastiest gangsta style." Defenders of Eminem's art such as Christgau ("Because he can be such a jerk, he can also be such a genius") and Paul Slansky ("the most compelling figure to have emerged from popular music since the holy trinity of Dylan, Lennon and Jagger") do their best to explain the value of Eminem's mix of innovative beats with homophobic, misogynist lyrics. But the strongest voices belong to the nay-sayers. These include Hank Steuver's look at "the bizarro-world Eminem logic" posited by critics who say that "Eminem doesn't really mean those awful things he says about people"; Roy Grundman's expos‚ of how Eminem's semiautobiographical film 8 Mile is contrived to show "one big orgy of black hands patting a white back"; and most notably Goldstein's view of Eminem's critical ascension as "a glaring example of the herd reflex passing for rebellion" whose danger "isn't the fantasies Eminem generates but the refusal to see them as anything more than that."
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Review

"The truth-telling prophet to a generation."

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (November 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156025534X
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255345
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,475,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great collections of differing reviews, May 23, 2011

By 

runnerossi1964 "g Rossi" (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: White Noise: The Eminem Collection (Paperback)

i liked this book a lot because it included intelligent reviews from people of all different opinions. although some negative reviews made me extremely angry (i'm a huge eminem fan), they were well thought out and not just blind perspectives from various bystanders. excellent source of people's opinions of eminem.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile Collection, February 14, 2004

By 

Jose Gabriel Liz Moncion (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: White Noise: The Eminem Collection (Paperback)

Hilton Als and Darryl A. Turner over twenty articles on Eminem ranging from praising him to well, not being exactly kind. They range from his rise as a superstar, to race issues, his movie debut, and just about anything else. The articles are very well written, and although minor editing errors exist, transferred very well.

Recommended read to get all points of view.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars timmy review, March 17, 2004

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tim morris (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Noise: The Eminem Collection (Paperback)

The book White Noise is very enteresting. I don't read books very much but this one I can say was really good. Hilton Als put a lot of details into the book an made people want to read the book.The things that i like was how they told about his live when he was younger and how he used to get beat up all the time. then there was lyrics from his songs in the book to i relly like to read the lyrics that he had wrote. So if any one ever plans to read a book i recomend this one.