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| Inside Cover |
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| Front Cover |
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| Back Cover |
Eminem's
album 'Curtain Call' was released in 2005 and is Eminem's '6th'
album. This is debatable because it's not studio recorded it's a best
hits album. It comes in between the albums named Encore (released in
2004) and Relapse (released in 2009). In my opinion the album cover
suggests that Eminem is retiring or putting music on the backseat.
This is made obvious by the name, Curtain Call - the
appearance of one or more performers on stage after a performance to
acknowledge the audience's applause. Going back to my point about him retiring it appears as though he's ready to take credit for all of his work and end his career. The roses on the stage indicate that the crowd love him. The roses are a sign of appreciation for the performer, because he's put on a good show, this could relate to his career, it's made a lot of people appreciative and their showing his appreciation. Curtain Call is written in a green font, there are interesting meanings to the colour green, in a positive sense green portrays relaxation a tranquillity, as if to say Eminem didn't want to make a fuss when he retired. On the contrary green can portray deterioration and rotting, maybe suggesting that he was fading away and his time was up leading the Hip-Hop genre. The front of this digipak does not follow the conventions of it's genre. For me this album started off a trend is this particular genre where rappers can express themselves even if they are not feeling aggressive or threatening. Tupac Shakur also had this approach with his songs such as Ghetto Gospel, but wasn't around long enough to start a trend and the harder side of Hip-Hop prospered. This harder side of the genre can be seen on the inside cover, this may be because he does want to stay true to the genre that he has spearheaded for years. Also the songs on the album would not suit the digipak if it was all done in a classic style. On the other hand you could say that he wasn't 'brave' enough to completely disregard the conventions of the genre because it had never fully been done before. The image choice for the outside is pretty standard for the look he was going for, we can see on the inside cover that he has made an interesting decision to include a threatening image of him holding a pistol, this forces the audience to 'stare down the barrel'. In theory this would put the audience in a difficult position (if it was a real gun). I think he has used this to put the audience in his position, maybe suggesting that retiring from music was forced because he was pinned down by a theoretical gun. All of these factors, in my opinion, communicate his position to his audience, and say that he wasn't or isn't necessarily in a good place. I also think that the digipak does not communicate the genre to the audience, but Eminem has done this on purpose because he wants to be seen as a maverick and seen to disregard the conventions of his genre.
