Is he though? To me he's all the 'significant' parts of Eminem and Bubba Sparxx thrown in a blender. Maybe I'm being cynical, but the whole 'White Rapper from the trailer park of Alabama, raised on a mix of Skynyrd and Dirty South, torn between a love of his skateboard and rhymes' thing just seems really cheesy. Not to disservice his skills or songs.
Also, the moment I found out he was a professional skateboarder once, I predicted that he was a Heiro/Souls fan. Looked up like, two interviews, BAM! He's talking about '93 Til Infinity in EACH ONE. I'm annoyed more people play up his love of backpack rap than try to discern his taste in southern rap, because his taste in 'classic rap albums' has NO RELEVANCE to the music he makes.
I'm not sure I really understand this assessment. I guess I can see the Eminem similarity, but only in that one track I posted. Eminem also tends to go for those sombre piano-led productions. Also Pop the Trunk has a touch of that horrorcore thing to it, and Eminem was all about that.* Flow-wise they couldn't be any different though, and... Bubba Sparxx? Nah man. It's a bit of a harsh review to reduce it down like you did, this is kind of the equivalent of listening to virtually any New York hip hop and being like "Black guy, grew up in the Bronx or Brooklyn, raised by a single drug-addicted mother, torn between love for his hood and leaving for better things." It is possible to be white and from a trailer park and still be an individual with something unique to say. I don't think he puts forth any kind of cheesy "torn between rhyming and skateboarding" narrative either. As far as I know he was skateboarding until he injured himself too many times, so figured he'd do rapping instead.
Re: classic rap. It's not a surprise you thought he'd be into Hieroglyphics because in my experience, ALL skateboarders are. That's what they listen to. In interviews he also frequently references Snoop Dogg, Three 6 Mafia, Devin The Dude, Outkast, Mystikal, UGK and Bone Thugz. In fact, in his CB interview he actually explicitly says: "The one thing about the South is that we never really favored the underground over mainstream." I mean, I agree that his taste in anything has no relevance to the quality of his music, but neither does generalized ideas about why music critics might like him. I certainly am not one of those critics, and I don't even really know jack shit about classic era hip hop.
So that doesn't really add up; but if you don't dig him, you don't dig him, and that's cool.
* Actually, if anything, that Odd Future shit we're talking about in this thread is WAY closer to (old) Eminem than Yela.
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