**** Despite what the theorists like to say, popular culture isn't always the barometer we would like it to be: its adherents are fickle and its reliability as social news is questionable, as might be expected from a species of culture so reliant on marketing, fashion, and the nebulous thrust of the short attention span. But now and again it throws up something that is absolutely dead center: people felt that very strongly when Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published, when Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs was released, or when the rock group Nirvana suddenly came blasting out of every radio in America singing about the likes of rape and alienation. Nastiness is a good subject for a songwriter; it always has been. What Dr. Dre saw in Eminem was an instant classic, "a young white misanthrope," as Bozza writes, "who rejoices in the freedom of his uselessness." Eminem had the native guile (and the sense of timing) to present himself as the nation's subconscious. "We were on welfare," he says in Eminem Talking, Chuck Weiner's collection of his talk. ******
Carrol