Anybody that has known me for a long time would tell you that me listening to Eminem is so bizarre and outside my nature that I may be coming down with an illness. I can’t say that they would be wrong in making such an observation. When I was in high school, rap and hip hop was the popular music; kind of like dubstep today. Altogether it was not my forte. In fact you could say that I actively despised it. Melody was always more important to me, and for at least the rap portion of most rap songs… well melody isn’t what the artist is trying to emphasize.

So what’s changed you might ask? Well as I work on my own writing, I’ve been looking more and more at how to form nuanced meaning. Metaphors in particular is something I’ve found I’m not very good at. What I come up with always feel forced and contrived to me.

But how does this relate to Eminem? Well, I ran across a YouTube video a few months back where somebody cut episodes of the television series Rick and Morty and dubbed Eminem’s Rap God over it. The end effect was it made it appear as though Rick is singing the song. I thought it was brilliantly done and after watching the video a handful of times I realized I actually liked the song.

Since then I’ve gone through all of Eminem’s music and found several that I like and… wow, yeah, Eminem is an absolutely brilliant lyricist. Unparalleled I would even argue. The way he manages to twist metaphors and words to fit his purposes is just brilliant. SHe steps so far outside of the box people could confuse it with madness and maybe there’s a touch of that there. But I think it’s genius.

In the past week I’ve also been considering the idea of speedily writing out a few books to put out for publishing–which is an idea I’ve never really entertained before.

To me writing has always been about more than making money. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to make a living off of writing, but I look at authors put out 2-5 books a year and they seem to be the authors that are best off financially.

This concerns me, especially after dedicating a lot of time to Penumbra for the past year. I can’t imagine putting out a quality piece of work after only spending a few months on it. But if doing that allows me to spend the time I need to spend to writing my quality works is it worth it? Or rather does it make sense to write several smaller novels to fund my larger works. Is that worth it?

I don’t know. But it’s something to consider. In the end I have to build an audience first, and actually need to have something to publish. So I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rick and Morty Rap God: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1WvX88lng