No Rap on Eminem: He Gets His Shot, His Opportunity, and Doesn't Let It Slip

Hey there's a concept that works / 20 million other white rappers emerge / But no matter how many fish in the sea / It'd be so empty without me

-- from "Without Me," by Eminem

Rapper Eminem's lyrics exaggerate the number, but the best-selling solo rap artist in history crisply captures the music industry's quest to copy his cross-racial success.

Record labels have spent a small fortune signing about half a dozen white rappers with names such as Tow Down, Genovese and Hot Karl. Undoubtedly more will be coming with the smash debut last weekend of Eminem's loosely biographical movie "8 Mile."

But the road ahead for these aspiring stars probably will be a dead end, much as it has been for others who already have tried the trip to the top of the charts.

Tow Down and Genovese, for example, have been dumped by their record labels. Hot Karl ended his contract after his label refused to release the album he recorded.

"A white rapper has to work under a much finer microscope in a very competitive field. If the black audience isn't with it, it's not going to happen," said Elektra Entertainment Group Chairwoman Sylvia Rhone, the only African American woman to run a major record label.

It's not surprising that labels would try to replicate Eminem's success. In the entertainment business, if a concept works once, it's assumed that it will work to wearying excess. That's true whether the medium is film, TV or music.

Record labels saw Eminem's sales and said, " 'Oh, a white rapper can make money. Let's get our own white rapper,' " said Stephen Hill, vice president for music programming at TV channel Black Entertainment Television. What they didn't see, he said, was that the controversial singer was not a novelty like early white rappers Vanilla Ice and Mark Wahlberg, whose music careers quickly flamed out. In contrast, he said, Eminem is "a person with an amazing ability to connect with his audience."

That connection is so powerful and unique that the 30-year-old Detroit rapper was able to transcend the roots of the genre, no small feat for a white speed rhymer.

Rap began more than two decades ago as an art form among urban blacks confronted with poverty and discrimination. Since then, its appeal has spread to young music fans of all colors who embrace the fiercely rebellious nature of the lyrics and wrap themselves in the grittiness of a life that may or may not resemble their own. Record industry surveys have consistently found that about 75% of rap music is purchased by U.S. white, Latino and Asian consumers.