Robert Hilburn, the long time L.A. Times rock critic, has an online question and answer column, and this just happened to appear in last week's column:
A reader's question to Hilburn:
I'm aghast at your listing Eminem among rock's MVPs. While I don't deny that he is a quick-witted firestarter, I shudder to think of him sitting at a table and having lunch with Bob Dylan and John Lennon. And while Lennon certainly wrote and recorded "The Ballad of John and Yoko," he never wrote a whole album full of intensely self-referential songs. Yes, "Plastic Ono Band" is the big primal scream, and it's all about "John," but at no point do I feel alienated from the music by Lennon's self-obsession. Eminem seems to (especially of late) regurgitate the things that intellectual music and culture critics have said about him. And while it's true that we are all the stars of our own shows, how can you find "The Eminem Show" relevant when his one and only topic seems to be, explicitly, himself and the reaction to his last album and tour? He's dating himself with a vengeance! I know we're all hungry to find a "modern Dylan," and maybe we think that is the person who is out there doing the most shocking stuff?
RH: I understand the debate over Eminem, and I'm not sure anyone is fit to sit with Dylan at a dinner table as a creative equal, but I think John Lennon would have enough flexibility and intellectual curiosity to enjoy meeting Eminem. The problem is that some of Eminem's music is so needlessly crude. But some of it is brilliant and revealing. Start with "Stan" on his last album and listen to the pain in "Cleaning Out My Closet" on the new album. My daughter, who has children of her own, thinks "Closet"--a song about a young man's rage about the lack of love he received from his mother--was so moving that she cried. I actually think Lennon and Eminem would connect on some level--the same way I think Bono could connect with both of them.