A 90s kid, I was your typical rebellious teenager around the time legendary rap artist Eminem first popped on the scene, and I’m ashamed to admit this, but I was a “stan” for the guy.
A 90s kid, I was your typical rebellious teenager around the time legendary rap artist Eminem first popped on the scene, and I’m ashamed to admit this, but I was a “stan” for the guy. I cringe recalling this period of time, as most adults hitting mid-life do when they look back at the days of their youth. But I have extra reason to be embarrassed as I was not only a super fan of the angry blonde rapper’s extremely vulgar and violent music, but I basically tried to become the guy myself.
Yes, I dyed my hair, sported earrings, and even took up rapping. And I wasn’t half bad. Alas, I was a phony. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, adopting someone else’s pre-packaged persona instead of developing my own. It was cringe.
However, I found out there are a couple of things more cringe than a phony Eminem impersonator — for example, a middle-aged tech guru running for the Republican Party presidential nomination who gets on stage during a campaign event in Iowa and raps along to an Eminem song. But that’s exactly what Vivek Ramaswamy did, earning the ire of the rapper in the process.
There’s another thing more cringe than my days with blonde bristle on my head: it’s the guy who built his entire music career on being a rebel who stands for free speech and refuses to censor himself going out of his way — as an older, far less relevant force in pop culture — to be a cog in the very machine he once raged against.
This situation produces absolutely no winners. None. However, the biggest losers are the folks who attended this event in Iowa and were subjected to Ramaswamy’s lame attempt to look cool.
