I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There's no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.
EminemRead
I grew up on Hip Hop, it's the music I love and it's the music I respect. I respect the culture...that's me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects Eminem's deep connection and appreciation for Hip Hop music and culture.
Eminem expresses his upbringing and identity shaped by Hip Hop culture, emphasizing his love and respect for the genre. This sentiment highlights how music can form a crucial part of one's identity and cultural experience, suggesting that the roots of artist inspiration often stem from their formative years and the cultural influences surrounding them.
In practice
In a speech about cultural influences in art.
I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There's no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you're always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.
Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter - for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion.
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.
My thing is this; if I'm sick enough to think it, then I'm sick enough to say it.
There were musicians that influenced me, but they weren't all women. Teena Marie was a big influence because she wrote and produced her own music, which let me know that women could write and produce their own music, which was an empowering moment for me.
Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.
No one has any respect for someone who can play a million notes per minute but can't put together a decent tune that someone can sing to or feel some sort of emotion from.
You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.
Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny.
I had a vague idea of the song's impact in the '60s, but that was tempered by the hate mail and threats I was receiving. It was only about ten years ago, when I finally put it back in my show because so many people were asking for it, that I understood 'Society's Child' real impact.
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