This album contains little lyrical depth other than Eminem overcoming his addiction and the one song about Proof that I very much dislike. That flow does get old, I will admit, but after listening to so much Tech N9ne, the stuttery nature and weird accentuation of certain syllables doesn’t bother me. Eminem’s flows varied but this is the beginning of the choppiness that everyone seems to despise. The album’s sound is very much defined by its melodic, sticky hooks, it’s either very airy production, or very stripped back bass heavy production. By any measure, “Not Afraid” and “Love the Way You Lie” are two of Eminem’s biggest hits of all time. The album was absolutely designed to give Eminem a couple of hits. However I do recognize the somewhat lazy and uninspired nature of the production. The greatest pop-rap album of ALL TIME!!! I’m exaggerating. Unfortunately that other half is all D and F-tier songs. Half of this album is filled with A-tier songs. In reality, Em probably should have just released a nine to ten track project, but in 2004 you just didn’t see that kind of thing, and this album suffers for it. The most disappointing part is going through the album from start to finish and hearing the obvious difference in the tracks that were on the original release plans and the songs that were made in that barn burning last segment of studio time. This completely shot the release plans for the album and Eminem and his producers scrambled to create half of an album that had already been in the works for about a year. Four to six months before the release of this album, roughly half of the planned tracks for this album were leaked. This is less a hip-hop album and more a Greek tragedy. How do artists this great, release albums this bad? Don’t get all cocky Jay-Z fans, The 20/20 Experience exists. Eminem is somewhat the king of albums not aging well, but this bad boy really does take the cake.The production is this hodge-podge of The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and Recovery except it’s worse and strips away all of the creativity from those albums’ sounds. This album came out two days before my birthday and oh boy, it was not good. So, in some semblance of celebration of the twentieth anniversary of The Marshall Mathers LP, let’s get into the list. The point of this article originally was to rank the releases of Detroit native Marshall Mathers, and that’s the intent I desire to stick with. Not even one paragraph in and I am already wildly off track. Coincidentally I think Eminem is also a wrestling fan. If that wasn’t enough I am also a big wrestling nerd.
Did I have to reveal that at the beginning of this article? No, but I do enjoy a bit of heel heat on an article.
He also happens to be my favorite but these two things are only vaguely related. I can, and in the future will, make a damn fantastic argument as to why Eminem is the greatest hip-hop artist of all time. This is not because of the placement of albums, the top three is pretty chalk, but because of my overall opinions on Eminem. This article is about to become immediately more controversial.
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