Monetizing Pill Poppin': Eminem on VIBE Real Rap Cover, Relapse Album Art, Popsomp Hills Rehab "Viral"

Eminem on Cover of VIBE's Real Rap 2 Issue

So Eminem makes the cover of VIBE's Real Rap 2 issue cause he keeps it so real.

Note the cover text telling the tale of pills and rehab drugs, near death and the return from addiction. But that doesn't mean he'll be rapping about being clean. No, like most rappers hung up on keeping it real, he'll mostly be rapping about his sordid past, cause that's what the market likes, while interviewing about his journey through hell to redemption, cause that's what the media needs to monetize what the market likes.

Eminem - Relapse Album Cover

The album cover art for Relapse is a portrait made of pills with a related "prescription".

Though the cover focuses on relapse with no reference to recovery, MTV's Gil Kaufman makes it clear that, for his analytical purposes, this is an edgy reference to the past:

"The not-at-all-veiled nod to the rapper's struggle with addiction to prescription medication is in keeping with Em's career-long habit of putting his personal struggles on display in his art, from his problems with twice-ex-wife Kimberley Mathers to his disputes with his mother and beating at the hands of a bully in high school."

Which makes it ok to monetize.

Popsomp Hills Rehabilitation Center

The use of Twitter to announce and link out to graphics included not only the album cover art but also a link to the above graphic introducing the Popsomp Hills Rehabilitation Center "viral" campaign. The site itself was revealed via an indirect route from Eminem's MySpace page, an example of Eminem "embracing the Web like never before."

Wow!!!

This aspect of the overall Relapse campaign is referred to as "viral", not because it's spread all over the web without requiring advertising, because that's true of everything shown above, but because it takes an indirect route and marketers need a cutting edge term to justify their billing.

And "viral" is easier to monetize than "indirect".

The Popsomp Hills site combines tongue in cheek text about doing drugs with links to useful resources about getting off drugs because everybody wants to make it clear that this is a responsible use of addiction to make money.

And that makes it sophisticated and not cynical cause Americans are savvy consumers of media and pills, right?