Eminem commits suicide in new music video for ‘Space Bound’

Eminem is torn apart by love in new music video for "Space Bound"


Eminem officially premiered his new music video for the song “Space Bound” on Monday.


The Joseph Kahn-directed video, shot in February, features the rapper battling his demons, which ultimately ends with shocking results.


The song, similar to the theme of his previous hit “Love The Way You Lie,” tells the story of a relationship where the rapper would do anything to keep his girl in his life before it ends.


The video begins on a dark foggy road, where the rapper is approached by a car. Eminem’s love interest, porn star Sasha Grey, is behind the wheel. Once inside the car, an alternate Eminem appears. While the mellower rapper sits in the passenger seat, the angered Eminem spits expletives at his girlfriend from the back seat while a gun sits in the glove compartment.


Grey and Eminem arrive at a diner where the screen splits, and the two Eminems go their separate ways. The mellow Eminem joins Grey in a booth, while the alternate, more human Eminem sits at the counter.


The mellow Eminem finds out his girlfriend is cheating when he looks in her phone after she gets up, and that is where he begins to fall apart.


Events are foreshadowed in his lyrics: “I’ll blow my brains in your lap, lay here and die in your arms.”


When the rapper and Grey go to a motel, he remembers the gun in the car and the text he found that revealed his girlfriend had cheated. He attacks his girlfriend, only to find she’s not really there. It is then, as he sings, “Tears stream down both of my cheeks, then I let you go and just give. And before I put that gun to my temple, I told you this,” he puts a gun to his chin and pulls the trigger. He, along with the alternate version of himself, who stayed at the diner, fall backwards. After that moment, the video rewinds and all the events that played out are shown in reverse.


The end of the video ends right where it began: on that foggy road. It is left with an open-ended conclusion leaving fans to wonder if it all happened, or if it was all just in his head.


Source is http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/eminem-commits-suicide-new-music-video-space-bound-06-27-2011

Digital album sales soar, thanks to Adele, Eminem

Are digital album sales finally taking off?

Just one week after Eminem's Recovery became the first album to sell 1 million digital copies, Adele's 21 has surpassed the milestone and is now the biggest-selling digital album in history.
Digital sales of 21 exceed 1.017 million (out of 2.6 million total), compared with Recovery's 1.005 million (out of 3.9 million).
Overall, almost a third (32%) of the 155.5 million albums sold in the first half of 2011 were digital, according to a midyear report released last week by Nielsen SoundScan. That's up 19% from the same period in 2010, when 27% of 153.9 million album sales were digital.
Adele is helping fuel the rapid growth in digital album sales overall, but "she's not just a digital phenomenon," says Keith Caulfield, Billboard's associate director of charts/retail. "She appeals to older consumers, who will still buy full albums, and to younger people who may just buy a single track."
She also has sold more than 4 million copies of hit single Rolling in the Deep, but "she connects with people in a way where they feel she is a 'full-package artist' and you want to hear everything she sings."
Caulfield says at least two more albums, Lady Gaga's TheFame (976,000) and Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More (890,000), probably will join the 1 million digital sales club by the year's end.
These days, music buyers have ever-increasing options for accessing music, including phones, computers and other electronic devices, as well as cloud and streaming services. Caulfield says the technology is moving at a faster pace than it did in the past, when the move from cassettes to CDs took more than a decade.
"If you ask anyone under the age of 20 how many CDs they have, they might look at you with a blank stare," he says. "This is completely normal and expected. Every day brings a new service or wrinkle to how people get their entertainment or music."
Physical CDs still make up two-thirds of all sales, so it's unlikely they'll disappear anytime soon. But Paul Resnikoff, publisher of Los Angeles-based Digital Music News, says he expects digital album sales to increase for the next three years before flattening out. He says CD sales will continue to decline as consumers get more comfortable with downloading and CDs get increasingly harder to find in stores.
"The reality is that digital formats have shown growth because they started from zero, but they haven't come close to replacing the physical totals of 10 years ago," Resnikoff says. "The problem hasn't been one of appetite. There is more access now than there has ever been in the history of music, but there hasn't been an ability to price that music.
"You can sit in front of YouTube for 12 hours a day and not pay a dime.

Source is http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2011-07-13-eminem-adele-digital-sales_n.htm

Eminem & Royce Da 5’9″ Fly Past Big Sean on the Charts

Bad Meets Evil reclaims the top spot for a rap act on the Billboard Top 200…


With no major hip-hop album releases last week, Hell: The Sequel, from Eminem and Royce Da 5’9”, and Big Sean’s Finally Famous were the sole rap reps holding down top spots in the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, released today (July 13).


Bad Meets Evil climbed four spots this week from the No. 9 slot they occupied last week to No. 5, moving 35,500 units, according to the Nielsen SoundScan report. After four weeks the Detroit lyricists sold about 311,400 discs. Fellow D-Town native, Big Sean, sold 27,400 copies of his Def Jam debut in it’s second week, to register in at 114,700 CDs sold-to-date.


At No. 16 sits Pitbull’s Planet Pit, which, in it’s third week, sold 18,800, resulting in a total of 102,200.


Rounding out the Top 40 are Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, and Eminem, who came in at No. 25, No. 29, and No. 34 slots, respectively. Pink Friday, which moved up nine spots from last week, moved 12,600 in its 33rd week since being release. Young Money’s first lady has now sold 1,473,200 copies of her debut. Young Khalifa jumped back in the Top 40 after a one week absence, bolstered by 11,300 sales of his Atlantic Records debut Rolling Papers, as the XXL Freshman alum has moved 495,200 units to date. Slim Shady is creeping in on four times platinum, as Recovery sold 10,700 this week, bringing sales to 3,943,000


Check back next Wednesday (July 20) to find out how The Cool Kids’s When Fish Ride Bicycles, Pimp C’s. Still Pimping, Trae Tha Truth’s Street King, Cali Swag District’s The Kickback, and MellowHype’s BlackendWhite fare on the charts. —Adam Fleischer


Source is http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2011/07/eminem-royce-da-59-fly-past-big-sean-on-the-charts/