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Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century: No. 12 — Eminem

Eminem is one of the greatest pop stars of the 21st century for how he defined seemingly the entire culture for its first three years.

The world was clearly ready for a rapper like Eminem, a (peroxide) blond-haired, blue-eyed, angry young white man who combined the youth-galvanizing outsider appeal of the nu-metalers with the intensely personal rhymes of DMX, also with a healthy dose of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s bratty humor and cultural commentary mixed in. Most crucially, his character came with theme music that was even better than Rocky Balboa’s: “Lose Yourself,” the seize-the-day jock jam that essentially tells Rabbit’s story (and seems to play in his head throughout the movie), became Eminem’s most ubiquitous hit; while previous singles of his were more impactful on MTV than on radio, there was no chance the latter could be able to resist a pop song this accessible and enormous. Released in 2009, and led by his third Hot 100-topper in the Dre and 50 team-up “Crack a Bottle,” the album had all the hallmarks of an athlete returning from injury and still getting back in game shape — the entire set carried a serial killer theme that he didn’t quite seem ready to totally commit to, and the singles were relatively weak, with Em trying out some new vocal tics and inflections that he’d later express regret over(and his rhymes still a little rusty).

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