THE STING OF BECOMING THE BITTER, OLDER GENERATION

Trending topics on social media come and go for millennials, but not one has hit them harder than Eminem trending on Twitter.

A Tik Tok diss video went viral where the user rapped to Dr. Dre’s “Forgot About Dre” featuring Eminem after Gen-Zers tried to cancel Eminem for his problematic lyrics. The diss video explained why Eminem shouldn’t be canceled and his importance to pop culture.

A Gen-Zer, Tik Tok user posted a video dissecting the lyrics to Rihanna’s 2010 song “Love the Way You Lie” featuring Eminem where the rapper suggests murdering his love interest. The younger generation was horrified at the lyrics and decided to cancel the rapper 11 years after the song was released.

Eminem being problematic isn’t news to millennial ears, though. This generation grew up listening to the Michigan native and his raunchy and often misogynist and homophobic lyrics, which was the norm of many rappers in the early 2000s. The rapper, who also goes by the name Slim Shady, shaped the hip hop genre of that time and has been considered by many rappers and music critics alike as one of the best lyricists of all time.

Cancel culture isn’t new to millennials either. If anything, millennials invented cancel culture. Cancel culture was meant to be used for people’s words or actions in real time or when revelations have come to light and not so much in this retroactively, canceling people trend that Gen-Zers are into, and especially not for things that everyone already knew about.

The fact is that we’ve been knowing that Eminem has explicit and eyebrow-raising lyrics for most of his songs—it’s just that Gen-Zers were too young to realize it when the song was released. Its kind of like when you watch your favorite kids show as an adult and catch all the dirty jokes that you were too young to understand. 

The Tik Tok diss video dedicated to Gen-Zers is admittedly embarrassing and probably deserves half the flack it’s getting. With that said, however, millennials need to stop caring about what Gen-Zers think of past trends, songs, styles, etc. It wasn’t that long ago when millennials criticized Boomers for the exact same thing. If anything, it seems like millennials have turned into what they dread most—the bitter, older generation.