Rock Hall CEO Greg Harris says that Eminem’s music “is as hard-hitting and straight ahead as any metal song.” The legendary rapper was announced a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2022 inductees, earlier this week.
“For a lot of years people asked about hip hop. He’s the 10th artist to be sort of categorized that way. But you listen to his music, it is as hard-hitting and straight ahead as any metal song,” Harris declared during an interview with Audacy. “It’s right there. It’s a chest punch with a message and with a power and with a rhythm and with a band. We’re thrilled he’s going in [his] first year of eligibility, it’s a big statement.”
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Eminem is the single best-selling artist of the 2000s, he’s won 15 Grammy Awards, and he’s the first artist to have ten consecutive albums debut at the top of the Billboard 200 chart.
The Rock Hall’s website credits his career as having “solidified hip-hop as the most commercially successful music on the planet.”
Other members of the class include Dolly Parton, Eurythmics, Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, Carly Simon, and Lionel Richie. Other nominees who failed the make the final cut included Beck, A Tribe Called Quest, Rage Against the Machine, Kate Bush, Devo, Fela Kuti, New York Dolls, MC5, and Dionne Warwick.
Check out Harris’s full comments on the Audacy below.
[Via]