The Way They Are: Eminem and Friends

HIP HOP, you don’t stop. Whatever it is that this hybrid of street poetics and processed beats represents for modern culture, it ain’t going away. And that still makes a lot of people uncomfortable, however inured we’ve become to the genre’s splenetic rage-venting. If this year belonged to anyone in pop, 2000 was owned by Eminem, the sulky-faced midwestern misfit who’s done even more to legitimise Caucasian rhyming than the more-or-less hallowed Beastie Boys.