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Compact discs: A Case History

Compact discs are so much a part of our everyday world that we rarely stop to think about the process of how they come into being: They appear to have sprung forth ready made like Athena being born in her armor from the head of Zeus. But, of course, CDs are made and not born, and understanding the who-what-where-when-and-how behind a CD's development and release not only helps us to understand more about the CD itself and to place the music on that particular album within the context of the artist's work as a whole but helps us to understand the role that popular music plays in our culture in general. Although pop music, and especially some forms such as rap and hip-hop, are designed to express social dissatisfaction and even rage, they are produced and distributed within a framework that in many ways resembles the ways in which cars, dentures, or Viagra is produced and marketed. This paper examines the history of one particular recnt CD, "The Eminem Show" by Eminem as a way of understanding the overall social and artistic context of album.

It is impossible to understand a solo album without understanding the artist at the center of it even as we also remember that every album is very much the production of dozens and even scores of people. "The Eminem Show" could certainly not have been produced without Eminem. At the same time, he could never have produced it alone.

Eminem, as is probably known to most Americans, even those without the slightest interest in rap music, is one of the few white musicians in this subgenre. If one were being cynical, one could argue that his success as a rapper (and even his choosing to go into this line of music at all) resulted from a calculated choice he made that it would be easier for him to succeed in rap where he would most certainly stand out than it would be for him to succeed in (for example) a standard-issue heavy metal band in which being a young, disaffected white male would hardly be a...

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Compact discs: A Case History. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:58, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688314.html