Eminem at his scariest and most toxic was something I was aware was happening but was too young to enhoy

by the time I was old enough to start understanding it properly, he was shutting down. Ass Like That. his last single in the Encore cycle and the last single as the original incarnation of Slim Shady

I totally missed out on Relapse which is a shame because I would have been all over that thing

I know there is literally nothing good about having been a miserable, poor teen in the fucking late Blair era clinging onto Slim Shady as the emblem of a kind of dispossessed rebellion and rage. but I can't help kind of wanting to have been there because I kind of was, but not quite enough

does that make sense? not the nostalgia of something I had in childhood, not the nostalgia of an imagined past

but like "wow, now I can check out that childhood thing properly"

I feel the same way about the PS1 games I never got as a kid. I played Chase The Express and Galarians because I saw them previewed in games mags when I was a kid and thought they seemed cool

but obviously I was a child and too young