ninti, it looks like this area of the argument has been reduced to semantics. I define skill as something a person was once incapable of doing, at all, and then learned from someone else who was a master at it. The easiest analogy is going to college to learn a specialized field and then carving a successful career in that field after graduation.

A good vocabulary, imagination, and the physical ability to do what "talented" rappers do with words is what I think is necessary. The only thing that gets them to be famous is the attitude, in my opinion. Record producers want something similar to the attitudes of previous phenom rappers that made millions, but with a new twist. Eminem definitely has that twist.

I used to listen to some rap when I was little. When it didn't all suck. But now things have changed, and rap, in my opinion, has become the poster child for the collapse of commercial music. That would lead me into other topics, though.

Please don't think I'm judging the people who listen to Eminem or any other rapper, or judging the rappers themselves. I'm simply trying to explain why I don't like that particular form of "artistic expression."

Edit: And in the interest of fairness, why don't you list a few of his songs that have these wonderful melodies you claim he has written? I sincerely hope it's nothing akin to what Puff Daddy did with Jimmy Page. Puffy fans actually told me that Puffy wrote Jimmy's instrumental part.