In doing so I attempt to address the ways hip-hop can be differentially mobilized for identification, primarily in relation to Eminem’s cultural success. I examine hip-hop’s relationships with historical racial discourses and contemporary whiteness, and the effects of the latter on understandings of contemporary hip-hop community and authenticity. In this paper I consider hip-hop as a black cultural formation constituted largely by its musical media, where community is established around cultural texts, their meanings and the ways these are used by individuals. Whether it is condemned for its racial and gender representations or lauded as the voice of a generation, hip-hop has brought black youth culture to the forefront of popular culture. Eminem’s performances provide us with a mirror in which numerous questions surrounding whiteness’s significance come into focus. This “rearticulation” of whiteness in hip hop paralleled a number of other ideological realignments in the 1990s, many of which pit questions of class against those of race in the service of constructing new political and cultural authenticities. In particular, Eminem’s influential single “My Name Is,” which helped launch his mainstream career, parodied various representations of whiteness to help counter charges that the white rapper lacked authenticity or was simply stealing black culture. Comparing The Slim Shady LP (1999) with his relatively unknown and commercially unsuccessful first album, Infinite (1996), reveals that instead of transcending racial boundaries as some critics have suggested, Eminem negotiated them in ways that made sense to his target audiences. Eminem’s emergence as one of the most popular rap stars of 2000 raised numerous questions about the evolving meaning of whiteness in U.S.
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