Eminem

DISCOGRAPHY

Infinite (1996) 5.5/10

Slim Shady LP (1998) 7/10

Marshall Mathers LP (2000) 7.5/10

D12: Devils Night (2001) 4/10

Eminem Show (2002) 6/10

D12: D12 World (2004) 4/10

Encore (2004) 4/10

Relapse (2009) 5/10

Recovery (2010) 4.5/10

Bad Meets Evil: Hell: The Sequel (2011) 4.5/10

Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013) 4/10

Revival (2017) 3/10

Kamikaze (2018) 3.5/10

Music to Be Murdered By (2019) 4/10

Death of Slim Shady (2024) 3.5/10

   Personally, Eminem opened my mouth. He may have been the first musician who inspired me to write, to have confidence in my words by proving how exciting it can be when someone speaks without self-censoring, and that impression hasn't left a decade and a half later. 

   His early records would share hopelessness, anger, and anxiety filtered through the culture of white-trash trailer park America. As he grew more self-serious, he still compelled me with his blunt savagery on the mic, swinging from corny puns to violent profanity as abruptly as he wants. Considering how disappointing his post-2000 career became, he maintains his colorful persona as a juvenile, arrogant, tasteless, and angry brat that is as witty as he is petty. It is as anti-corporate as it is hateful, but I tolerate it in reverence for the good he's done for my own creative development. 

   Thanks, Marshall! (P.S. We should be together, too.)

   Born October 17th 1972, Marshall Bruce Mathers III was raised in the suburbs across Michigan and Missouri, constantly switching homes under his single mother before finally settling down in Detroit. At age 14, he and a friend started freestyling together, and for performances Marshall adopted the moniker "M&M" which was spelled the way it sounded: "Eminem."

   Performing at many underground rap venues, Marshall earned a reputation that would land him in a handful of local hip-hop groups: the New Jacks, Soul Intent, and the Dirty Dozen (aka D12). Inevitably he would be signed by the beat-makers Jeff and Mark Bass of the independent label Web Entertainment in 1996.

   Infinite collects digestible boom-bap sessions set to cloudy synth made by the Bass brothers. But of course the album's main feature is Marshall's early talents in vocal flow and creative lyricism.

   A decent hook stands out in Tonight, and tracks like 313, Backstabber, and Never Too Far resemble an amateurish version of 2Pac or Cypress Hill's gangsta-funk. The highlight is the title track Infinite, where the hook is properly anthemic and infectious. The rest limp in quality due to uninspired beats that the Bass brothers should have either scrapped or committed more time to.

   The debut's commercial flop drove Marshall to a minimum-wage job, working sixty hours a week to support himself, his girlfriend, and his infant daughter Hailie. He would later attempt suicide, and shortly after which, developed an alter-ego as a creative surrogate for his darker writing, a clownish and horrific persona known as Slim Shady. 

   The character's first product would be an EP released by Web Entertainment, a CD that would eventually find its way to big-time producer Dr. Dre, who would sign Eminem to Aftermath. 

   The Slim Shady LP compounds comedy-rap and horrorcore with every lyric, propelled by humble beat arrangements that add to the cheekiness as well as a careless grit that comes from the suburbs. Most of the verbal assaults are only "comedic" due to Slim's high-pitched voice — an inflection which resembles that of a bully from elementary school. 

   The humor abounds in Role Model, My Name Is, and Cum On Everybody; while the most despairing raps are If I Had and Rock Bottom, both serving as uncomfortable portraits of angst amplified by poverty. Some tracks encircle a single narrative (My Fault, 97 Bonnie And Clyde) while others teeter between multiple stories connected by a theme (Guilty Conscience, Brain Damage). The only tracks with shallower hip-hop tropes (drug abuse, violence, aimless complaints, narcissism) are pretty much all within the album's last quarter (Just and Still Don't Give A Fuck, As The World Turns, Bad Meets Evil, I'm Shady) and they are delightful in their juvenile nature nonetheless. 

   What's refreshing about the album is how unafraid Slim is to bounce back from edgy and cartoonish comedy (the opening PSA skit) to horrific drama (the ending screams in My Fault). The record is essentially a puppet show of demented jokes that will either make you laugh or or give you nightmares. 

   Soon after Eminem's boom in popularity, D12 released Devils Night. The lo-fi fuzz for Purple Pills and the knocking riot of Fight Music make delectable keepers, but the rest of the record is pretty unremarkable. The album most likely exists just to give exposure to Eminem's obscure peers (the rappers Proof, Bizarre, Kuniva, Mr Porter, and Swifty McVay). The lean toward accessibility over expression is probably to increase the chances of that exposure: bass is louder, vocals are brighter, harmonic melodies are in every song.

   After commercial success probably inflated his artistic ego, The Eminem Show began Eminem's descent into more angry and adult tones, retaining some of the humor at times (at its best for Without Me), but it also became the beginning of the end for Slim Shady's cartoony charm. 

   At worst the record supplies Eminem being serious to the point of self-congratulation (the dramatic Aerosmith hook in Sing For the Moment, Say Goodbye to Hollywood, Till I Collapse, When the Music Stops, Soldier) or other routine rap subjects, namely hating on bitches'n'hoes (Drips, Superman) and the dramatization of rapper rivalries (Square Dance, Say What You Say). 

   A more mature tone wouldn't have bugged me if the drama were as compelling as the psychopathic nightmares like My Fault or Kim, but the darkest rap of Show is just him being bitter about his mom (Cleaning Out My Closet), and even when the "adult" severity succeeds (White America, Hailie's Song), the tracks of sudden playfulness (Business, Without Me, My Dad's Gone Crazy) distract from any consistent ideas or mood.

   Screenwriter Scott Silver wrote the film 8 Mile as a dramatized depiction of the hardships in Detroit's suburbs -- which wouldn't have drawn much of a crowd lest it was also marketed as semi-biographical of Eminem's rise in the hip-hop underground, and further hyped by the popular single dropped by the rapper to promote it, Lose Yourself. 

   The movie does leave a lasting impression of what it's like to live in the modern ghetto: white trash, thugs, domestic abuse, and spontaneous crime. The rap battles are the main attraction; scenes outside of that are mere distractions to give a contextual "gangster beef" that makes the matches feel more significant. 

   Alas, the overwhelming depression amidst the rest of the scenes can get tedious; leaving the audience to sit back and cringe while watching the poor and uneducated making irresponsible choices that only get them into even more trouble. 

   D12's second big-time release D12 World is even less remarkable than its predecessor. My Band shows a funny self-awareness of D12's popularity as "Eminem's band." 40 Oz is an efficient "slam song" for hip-hop moshes. But overall the album is all flair with no emotional edge. 

   With Encore Marshall's lyrical edge officially became juvenile: the bouts of self-obsession that beg for scandal (Evil Deeds, Rain Man, My First Single), gangster rap (Never Enough, One Shot 2 Shot, Encore), political tirades (the anti-Bush Mosh), cheesy love songs (Mockingbird, Crazy In Love, Spend Some Time) and obligatory dance songs (Just Lose It) are all too predictable. And when it's not that, the album is simply too similar to its predecessor The Eminem Show, like a bad remake of an old film. 

   The greatest hits Curtain Call would include three keepers not included in the official albums: the kinky sex-comedy Fack, the rave Shake That, and the family narrative When I'm Gone. 

   The collaborative Re-Up would be a distraction during Eminem's hiatus. Pretty much every track is disposable with the exceptions of You Don't Know and Jimmy Crack Corn.

   In 2006, D12 member Proof would be killed under gunfire over a game of pool. Following this, Mathers would fall into a heavy period of grief, depression suppressed only by drug abuse. He would then endure a near-fatal overdose and a brush with rehab. His work became less playful. Eminem would adopt a more reflective and self-serious persona. 

   Relapse confuses shock value with bad taste. Dark skits and juvenile subject matters like serial murder (3 a.m.), pedophilia (Insane), and rape (Same Song And Dance) overwhelm the lyrical content, which hideously disjoints the record's tone when you'd hit the tracks intended to be taken more lightly. 

   The crimes Marshall writes about are overly "horrific" and self-congratulatory that it's easy to lose interest, although the bits centered around Marshall's anxious reflections on the overdose and rehab episode are successfully enticing. (Lines about it are sprinkled throughout the album, and the only track about it exclusively is one of the only keepers: Deja Vu.)

   My Mom at least initiates interest with its pompous synth-brass beat; We Made You is catchy enough to go back to every once in a while; Beautiful, albeit lugubrious and patronizing with its cliche message, at least sets a vulnerable mood that wasn't in the "Slim Shady" music we heard before. 

   Alas, all the self-indulgent wannabe-gangster-rap (Old Time's Sake, Crack A Bottle) and even more rape/murder fantasies (Hello, Stay Wide Awake, Bagpipes From Bagdad) just get nauseating with the evident self-consciousness in Marshall to be offensive and controversial. He wants his audience to cringe listening to his music, and we do, but for the wrong reasons: we can sense the insecurity in Marshall to fulfill his role as a provocative artist, which is a critical flaw for a writer who bases songs around his impenetrable self-confidence.

   An expansion of Relapse called Refill would hardly improve the original experience, although its seven tracks would ironically yield more fresh material than the original 20-track album: the fun melody of Elevator, the comical depiction of Slim as a spoiled brat in Taking My Ball, the tender confessions of a murderer in Music Box, and (so long as you purchased the digital edition with two more tracks) one of Eminem's most engaging narratives, My Darling, which entertains with the concept of Marshall arguing with the devil.

   Perhaps exhausted with the murder/rape fantasies, Recovery threw out the horrorcore aesthetic in favor of Eminem's most militant sound, a crisp and brittle production that emphasizes Eminem's vocals, but that reduced other musical creativity. This sound could have bode well had the record been a collection of freestyles or one-sided rants as in Cold Wind Blows, Won't Back Down, Almost Famous, or Untitled, but a bunch of pandering pop hooks compromise the violence into a dichotomy of pop-rap that confuses its demographic — the raps are too aggressive for soccer-moms of the mainstream, but the hooks are too poppy for fans of hardcore.

   To its credit, many moments of Eminem's ferocious rapping make the most of this vocal-oriented sound, but unfortunately it comes with several tracks featuring his goddamn singing voice (the worst being Not Afraid or You're Never Over) and obvious radio bait like No Love (featuring Lil Wayne), the dance-club anthem W.T.P., and the melodramatic love ballads Space Bound and Love the Way You Lie (featuring Rihanna). Other assorted embarrassments are the self-glorifying raps in So Bad, and the mean-spirited (and unsolicited) sex appeal in Seduction. 

   And yet, the parts that capitalize on Eminem's aggressive presence probably make stimulating jams for gym exercise/workout playlists, and that pointedly makes the album more valuable than a record that's just boring. Plus, Going Through Changes is a lyrical keeper for more reflections on Marshall's overdose experience, like a more emotional edition of Deja Vu. (Note that Talkin 2 Myself also attempts to reach this level of depth on the same subject, but fails due to its inappropriately high energy.)

   Forming a rap-duo with Royce da 5'9'' named after a track from The Slim Shady LP, Bad Meets Evil released Hell: The Sequel, an EP that is the length of a full album (thirty-seven min). 

   The record's sound is very much derivative of the gym-music aggression from Recovery, and it even compromises with the same radio-pop accessibility (especially with Lighters, featuring Bruno Mars). 

   Some aspects are noteworthy, such as the gothic embellishments in Welcome 2 Hell (accomplished by apocalyptic fire crackling and distant choral hums), and the aforementioned aggression is utilized best in Fast Lane. Its worst moment is probably the finale Loud Noises, where the violence just gets annoying and lame. 

   Songs on the The Marshall Mathers LP 2 swap between the rough lo-fi samples of the early years (for the hip-hop fans) to the modernized post-rehab Eminem who raps to long colorless beats before a popstar like Rihanna or Skylar Grey comes in (for the yuppies). 

   Bad Guy is a continuation of Eminem's best story (Stan) before busting into more of that aggressive gym-rap from Recovery to assert his masculinity. The semi-playful Rhyme Or Reason cancels out the angry tone of So Much Better, which is in turn contradicted by the fist-pumping Recovery sound of Survival (the sequel to Won't Back Down) and The Monster (the sequel to Love the Way You Lie). But what's worse than any of these cliches are the melodramatic Legacy and Stronger Than I Was — the latter being almost entirely of Eminem attempting to sing. Berzerk is fundamentally a Beastie Boys-esque "party-rap" song complete with turntablism and classic-rock samples; Rap God has an annoying beat but at least Eminem goes off-the-rails with his talent of rapping fast; Brainless has an interesting sample of Bach's Toccata And Fugue; Headlights makes a big deal out of Marshall forgiving his abusive and thoroughly-berated mother — and admittedly, it touches a soft spot in my heart despite the knowledge that it was a carefully contrived business move to entice maternal listeners previously alienated from Eminem for having a bad relationship with his mom. 

   At least So Far and Love Game show a style I might have enjoyed if its ideas were elaborated into a full album: quirky samples and rhythms, lyrics more humor-oriented, no popstar singing the chorus, etc.

   Revival provides more self-serious drama featuring radio stars (River, Bad Husband, Walk on Water, Tragic Endings) and some failed attempts at his juvenile humor (as in Framed, while also offering what is quite possibly his worst-ever hook). His political commentary is vague and critically unprofound. 

TOP 10 SONGS

• 1. Stan (2000)

  2. The Real Slim Shady (2000)

  3. Without Me (2002)

  4. Kim (2000)

  5. The Way I Am (2000)

  6. My Name Is (1998)

  7. Guilty Conscience (1998) ft. Dr. Dre

  8. '97 Bonnie and Clyde (1998)

  9. Rock Bottom (1998)

  10. Lose Yourself (2002)

ROCKUMENTARIES

Curtis Hanson: 8 Mile (2002) 6/10