Eminem Cleanup

As suggested from this ATT, I'm starting a cleanup project regarding Eminem and his subpages. It is well-documented that much of Eminem's music is autobiographical in nature, but several pages of his need a scrub for breaching a little too deep in violating the Real Life Troping policies. Of particular note is how is there not only a Character sheet for Eminem, but also a subpage for Eminem — Beefs, which is directly about documenting his real-life drama against certain other celebrities that he made diss tracks about or otherwise insulted in his music.

To summarize the most relevant bit from the Real-Life Troping page, real people involved may not be troped, only the fictional personas they adopt. We aren't here to write biographies about Eminem's personal history. As suggested in the ATT, I think there is some precedent for documenting the content of his diss tracks within the context of the tracks themselves (i.e. as unflattering, but often exaggerated/over-the-top caricatures), but only as such, not on what we know from elsewhere in real life tabloids.

Also, not to put the one editor on the spot, but it was also found in the ATT that there's been some gush-y Entry Pimping about Eminem's personal life on other pages that may need toning down for the same reasons.

I'll start by removing the immediate real-life stuff that jumps out at me and the examples that are supposed to go on YMMV. The extensiveness of character pages for a musician has had me raising a questioning eyebrow for awhile.

So I don't know where else to take this but I found this on Foe Yay Shipping

• Machine Gun Kelly's beef with Eminem involved MGK obsessing over Em's greatness and how much he'd worshipped him growing up. Eminem's retort, "Killshot", involved comparing Kells to his Stalker with a Crush character Stan and ended with an extended gag about MGK sucking his dick — and Em telling him to keep going. A not insignificant section of MGK's fanbase ended up taking to AO3 to fantasise about Kells taking Em up on his offer. Many even got into Eminem's music via the shipping, especially after finding out about what a Pretty Boy he had been during the years Kells was imprinting on him.

I know that it's not No Real Life Examples, but is this actually okay to list.

Ah back to work on this topic; what I want to have figured out right out the gate is, does the page about Eminem beefs even need to exist? Even if we go in with the logic of "the songs are representing fictionalized depictions of artists" as per the caricaturized nature of the involved songs, there are still problems that jump out to me.

Like, the Benzino folder includes a mishmash of both very pointedly personal insinuations as well as odd meta entries exploiting the "Invoked" tag to qualify. Just some choice cuts:

• Arc Fatigue:invoked Eminem eventually became really, really sick of Benzino due to viewing him as an unworthy opponent and use of his time, while his own pettiness prevented him from being able to leave him alone. His last few songs and verses released as part of the beef are increasingly bored pleas for Benzino to accept the beef is over and leave him alone. This contributed to Encore!'s Album Filler issues, since tracks addressing the beef were removed in order to replace them with "Like Toy Soldiers", which lyrically (and visually, in the video) shows him laying down his mic and walking away from the beef. Benzino self-declared himself to be Eminem's Arch-Nemesis and continued slinging insults at him on-and-off for several decades. He was still insulting Eminem on Twitter as late as 2022, dragging in his unfortunate daughter Coi Leray when it turned out that even she took Eminem's side in the beef over his.
• Arch-Nemesis: Benzino self-declared himself to be this. While the relationship is somewhat one-sided, he is probably the closest candidate (excluding Eminem's family members and Eminem himself), having inspired a much larger body of work than any other rapper who went up against him and being chiefly remembered for fighting Eminem for a year and getting pasted.
• Boisterous Weakling: Described by Eminem as "a 83-year-old fake Pacino" talking big and having no ability to back it up.
• Driven by Envy: Benzino is described as being motivated by jealousy, both of Eminem's success and his abilities as a rapper.
• Perilous Old Fool: Eminem repeatedly mocks him for his willingness to believe he's a violent gangster at his age (in early middle age at the time of the beef) - "nobody wants to hear their grandfather rap!". While some point out the fact that Eminem is currently older than Benzino was at the time of the beef, Em's view of it was more to do with Benzino's abilities, wondering why "the worst rapper in the world" would decide to go up against himself, one of the best.

If I just scrub out the entries that go unambiguously beyond caricature and just actual personal insults, that's like 80-90% of this whole page. Should I just do that and then scatter what's left, or should perhaps we just save what content this page does have, bin it, and then redistribute the actual available and valid non-real-life tropes elsewhere?

There is an argument for Eminem's Slim Shady persona being a character and not him exactly, even if the lines blur some. And many of the "sub-personas" I guess could also be seen as characters Eminem is playing? But this is certainly a page.

I would not keep the Marshall Mathers section, as that's (I think?) supposed to be the real person.

I could see the beefs being moved to a Recap page (if we recap music, I don't actually know our policy on that). The Foe Yay Shipping example I don't see why shouldn't be there. It's no different than all the Music Ho Yay examples.

Edited by PhiSat on Oct 9th 2023 at 10:14:20 AM

I have been thinking on the Foe Yay Shipping entry and I think it is fine because it seems about their personas. So, I am good keeping that.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 10th 2023 at 11:07:28 AM