Shout out to OG Ed Lover.
Of all people, Eminem doesn't need defending. He's been dealing with race issues his whole life and at this point he's beyond established. He's the highest selling rapper of all time.
Recently, charlatan 'dr." Umar Johnson went on Joe Budden's podcast and slandered Eminem claiming he can't be considered one of the greatest ever because, get this..."he's white". He elaborates saying "no non-African can ever be the best of anything African. It is an insult to the ancestors, it is an insult to the race and it is an insult to every Black person."
Using that logic only a white Canadian can be the best basketball player ever. Sorry MJ, Sorry Lebron. You guys aren't the best. Shoot, Larry Bird isn't Canadian-American so he's out of the discussion, too. Ed Lover came to his defense on his "Cmon Son" podcast saying:
“Where did you get your doctorate? What makes you a doctor? And then, where did you come from and what makes you a[n] authority on Hip-Hop? Eminem don’t need Dr. Umar to tell him he’s one of the greatest of all time because we’ve already said it. Hip-Hop is for everybody. Hip-Hop might’ve been created by Black people, but the love of music, melodies, and rhymes have spread all over this world.”
"That’s like saying [Big] Pun can’t be one of the greatest of all time because he’s not African American, ’cause he’s Puerto Rican; Fat Joe don’t deserve to be in Hip-Hop because he’s not African American. You weren’t there, Dr. Umar, respectively. You were not there."
I try not to write too much about this stuff but that just goes to show you that we should not value everyone's opinions. This just shows to me how little "dr" Umar Johnson knows about hip-hop. People of all races have been active participants since the beginning. Also, if Eminem is at that level SOLELY because he's white, why aren't the rest of the top 10 highest selling rappers all white?
Why are the Beastie Boys the only other rappers on the list of 16 Highest Selling Rappers of All Time compiled by Business Insider citing statistics by the RIAA?
I bring this up because I'm so tired of having this conversation. Hip-Hop is an inclusive artform built from exclusion. Parents couldn't afford music lessons so kids rapped/beatboxed, no dance lessons became breakdancing, and so forth. Excluding arguably the best rapper of all-time because of his skin color is historically UN-hip-hop.
I hope if that charlatan ever opens his school that he's been taking people's money for, for over a decade, that it doesn't preach this kind of silly divisive idealism, but I already know.
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