Day 122: Your favorite song from a genre you don’t typically like.

“Without Me” – Eminem

To date, there are a small number of hip-hop songs that I like.

To date, there are only a handful of songs (and that’s being generous) of songs by “hardcore rap” artists that I like.

To date, there is but one Eminem song that I like.

And the one I like is not even what I would call a “hardcore” rap song. It’s pretty much as “poppy” as he ever gets, in fact.

There’s not much about Eminem that I like in general. His persona; his lifestyle; his movie; his musical style. Just don’t like ’em.

Yeah, you’re a bad boy; I get it. Yeah, your life as a kid sucked; I get it. Yeah, you had to overcome a lot to be taken seriously as a white rapper in a black-dominated musical arena; I get it. You could still smile once in a while. It won’t kill you.

To be fair, it’s not just Eminem. I just don’t like any of it, really. And that’s probably because I’m a white, middle-class male. There’s nothing that’s happened to me in that middle-class life that allows me to relate. (Which makes me wonder how all these white, middle-class teenagers running around in Honda Civics lowered to within 2 millimeters of the road with pounding sub-woofers—which will ensure that my investments in hearing aid companies pay off handsomely in the future—relate to it, either, but there you have it.)

That said, I do like “Without Me.”

Perhaps it’s because “Without Me” is the closest thing to a “song” (like, with real music and a melody and something more than a pounding bass note and screaming) that he’s ever done.

Perhaps it’s because the song, and accompanying video, show that Marshall actually has a sense of humor under all that the brooding and staring and screaming.

Perhaps it’s because I had a teeny little aneurism and it slightly affected my music listening biases.

I simply don’t know. But I do know that when I heard the song, I wanted to dislike it. I truly wanted to lump it in with all the rest of his catalog and dismiss it as “not my thing.” And I couldn’t. It got earworm-y on me. Something forced me to seek it out. To acquire it. To like it.

I hate when that happens.

To be fair, when I did finally admit I liked it, I went back to see if there was anything else he’d done that perhaps I’d overlooked because of those biases.

Nope. Hate it all.

Eminem’s only chance of getting any money from me is to hope I have more aneurisms.

I hate when that happens.