Getting ready to celebrate MTV Video Music Awards on August, 30, Billboard comes up with the list of “the artists who have given the most to the music video”.
Even Billboard staff cannot purge Eminem from this list. Marshall is plainly the most nominated artist in the show’s top category “Video of the Year”. Since 1999, he has received 41 VMA nominations (including three with D12) and won 13 times. He is the most followed hip hop artist on YouTube and the fourth most followed across all genres. So no, it would be impossible to ignore Eminem and Billboard had to mention him.
So they put Eminem at No. 22 on the The Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time List, with Guns N’ Roses, TLC and “Weird Al” Yankovic ranking higher than Em.
Here is the introduction a staffer gave to Marshall:
EMINEM
Why He’s a Video Icon: At his peak during the late ‘90s and at the turn of the century, Eminem packed a special kind of attention-grabbing commercial prowess into his music releases and video accompaniments that few artists have been able to replicate.
The MTV Classic: “Without Me,” the Grammy- and VMA-winning comic book-themed clip that portrayed Em as the anything-goes kind of superhero he’d become to teens worldwide over the prior few years in tandem with other videos like “My Name Is” and “The Real Slim Shady.”
Worth YouTubing: “Mosh,” a political protest single with a visual that ridiculed George W. Bush – 13 years before Marshall would go viral with a BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher lambasting Donald Trump – and encouraged Americans to vote for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. — J.G.
