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Eminem’s Kamikaze and how it’s affecting the rap game.

Until I took this course I didn’t realize the number of networks that I constantly saw every day. Whether it was in nature, within my relationships, or through the venues that I got my food the world of networks has become a prominent part of my life. Still, I was surprised to realize that the world of networks could also be applied to the musical landscape and the artists within it. This past week Eminem released a new surprise album “Kamikaze” and amongst the lyrics of several songs he disrespects artists adjacent to him in the rap world. Although Eminem is normally known to try and get the attention of the listener through his zany wordplay and weird analogies, this time he does it by simply slandering his recently more successful contemporaries. People like Drake, Kanye, Tyler, the Creator, and more do not escape Eminem’s wrath and there is where we can see several social network principles appear.

Based on the ego network that could be made surrounding Eminem and his social network before and after the Kamikaze album we can see various classroom subjects at play. For example, due to Eminem’s comments about his peers, many of his connections with them have gone from somewhat positive to straight up negative. This could then violate the Structural Balance Property as now not all edges will be positive in many of the triangles in his ego network. Oddly enough though many artists were actually excited to even get their name mentioned by one of their childhood idols. Here we can see some weak connections moving towards strong as the interaction between Eminem and newer fellow artists has just become a two-way street. Here issues could also arise regarding Strong Triadic Closure because new edges must be formed with other nodes that were not previously connected. Although it does not matter the strength of these new edges the content of Kamikaze must lead to new edges between nodes that were not previously connected. The music industry is yet another example of a social network at work.

Article: https://news.avclub.com/eminem-s-bad-new-album-has-created-a-vortex-of-bad-rap-1828856481

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