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On these 50 essential songs, Eminem fearlessly displays that devotion to task and proves why he’s been one of pop music’s most fascinating, complex characters.īy Christopher R. But for a poor, white, emotionally unstable MC to excel in hip-hop and not be viewed as a villainous buffoon, he must possess prodigious artistic gifts and a real commitment to personal transparency. He’s also, on occasion, regurgitating grotesque sexist, homophobic stereotypes. When Eminem raps about violent, tragicomic death, he is furthering a grand murder-ballad tradition in folk and blues music. But spend serious time with Eminem’s entire catalogue and you quickly realise that those two sides of his music are inextricable, one always informing the other.

They eschew the more viciously somber, rock-leaning character studies helmed by Em and his longtime Detroit collaborators Jeff and Mark Bass. Some fans celebrate only the funny “Slim Shady,” when the musical comedy is quality controlled by executive producer Dr. It’s just now he’s finding it harder to joke about the darkness that has always fuelled his best work. At age 45, the Detroit rapper continues to make art about how people are driven crazy by weakness and lack. Just listen to the vulnerability and self-doubt on his recent single “ Walk on Water“, from the forthcoming Revival. Years later, as the shock has faded, it's those lyrical skills and the subtle mastery of the music that still resonate, and they're what make The Slim Shady LP one of the great debuts in both hip-hop and modern pop music.Though he’s been a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning star for almost 20 years, Eminem is not an unequivocally triumphant figure, either within pop music or within his own mind. At a time when many rappers were stuck in the stultifying swamp of gangsta clichés, Eminem broke through the hardcore murk by abandoning the genre's familiar themes and flaunting a style with more verbal muscle and imagination than any of his contemporaries. As well they should be - there are few rappers as wildly gifted verbally as Eminem. Dre but also helmed in large doses by Marky and Jeff Bass, along with Marshall himself - mirrors his rhymes, with their spare, intricately layered arrangements enhancing his narratives, which are always at the forefront. Eminem's supreme gifts are an expansive vocabulary and vivid imagination, which he unleashes with wicked humor and unsparing anger in equal measure. There have been more violent songs in rap, but few more disturbing, and it's not because of what it describes, it's how he describes it - how the perfectly modulated phrasing enhances the horror and black humor of his words. Of course, nowhere is this more true than on "97 Bonnie and Clyde," a notorious track where he imagines killing his wife and then disposing of the body with his baby daughter in tow. This was unsettling in 1999, when nobody knew his back-story, and years later, when his personal turmoil is public knowledge, it still can be unsettling, because his words and delivery are that powerful.

The Slim Shady LP bristles with this tension, since it's never always clear when Marshall Mathers is joking and when he's dead serious. Then, it wasn't clear to every listener that Eminem was, as they say, an unreliable narrator, somebody who slung satire, lies, uncomfortable truths, and lacerating insights with vigor and venom, blurring the line between reality and parody, all seemingly without effort. Given his subsequent superstardom, culminating in no less than an Academy Award, it may be easy to overlook exactly how demonized Eminem was once his mainstream debut album, The Slim Shady LP, grabbed the attention of pop music upon its release in 1999.