Tio said:
THe fact is WG that many white people (a lot of friends of mine included) didn't even try to experiance with rap. Ever since my name is by slim, many people of different groups have been listening to him at first for the comedy and than he realeased much more serious stuff. Pretty soon people were listening to other groups, and now hip hop is the most popular music style in the world today. He definately influenced that, to a major degree. Talk to many youths today, they can probably only name 1 beastie boys song.
Maybe you are younger, maybe you were not into it then.
But your statement brought white america into rap, what WG said is more on then yours.
Simply because the beastie boys really brought much of the young white audience into rap and they got into it so much that even if you read interviews of Public Enemy at the time they will tell you that many times while on tour and at the show they would have more white kids then black kids there to watch them.....this was back in the mid to late 80's ....almost twenty ago before slim shady.
He may have brought that back but to be honest by that time MANY white kids were buying rap and had being buying rap, following rap and so on for YEARS.
For the longest time the biggest thing for MTV (as far as rap goes) was Beastie Boys and also Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff because it was deemed "safe".
Heck even Vanilla Ice made a big dent into the market around 1990.
Once again Slim Shady may be a great rapper, he may have sold millions of records, he may have brought some more white american into rap....but there is no way in heck that he is responsible for the majority of them listening to rap because many were listening before that and mostly because of the beastie boys and the Fresh Prince getting the few rap heavy showings on MTV in the earlier days.
