NOS and X, you could say the same thing for any rapper that's gone platinum and topped the charts in the last 5 years with more than one album, in fact I've said that shit so many times before...but people never listen to me *smh*
Jay-Z and Eminem could say whatever they want on albums and people will still buy that shit, but they don't use their popularity for anything "real" or "meaningful" in my opinion...they follow the trend and don't say anything that matters, even Jay-Z himself doesn't deny that he "dumbed down" to "sell more records"...they ALL do it and if they dind't it'd force other people to up their lyricism, but still, nobody does it...
it's like they don't understand the true impact their popularity has on listeners unless it has to do with dollars...they will take responsibility for "influencing" a young artist but hate to take that same responsibility when some kid says they did something bad as a result of their music, but if they encouraged positive things it wouldn't be an issue...you can't pick and choose how you influence people that listen to your music, people interprit things differently but they could avoid a lot of negative connotations if they really wanted to, and take resposibility for influencing listeners...in fact, if they DIDN'T influence people, then people wouldn't keep on buying their damn music