While Em was working to make his name as an emcee, he was going through serious substance abuse issues and some major obstacles on the home front. And the album is largely ruled by the “Slim Shady” alter ego that Eminem created.
Eminem slim shady ep plus#
It features about half the songs that appear on the EP, plus another eleven new tracks. The Slim Shady LP succeeds in demonstrating how music can be the salvation for a troubled soul.Īs the title suggests, The Slim Shady LP is a repackaged and expanded version of the Slim Shady EP. It depicted the thought processes of a person dealing with extreme circumstances in his life, and frantically searching for an outlet to channel his emotion and feeling.
It’s definitely an album of the time that represents where Eminem was at that singular point in his life just before he was about to make it big. Considering that these are often pillars of Em’s current catalogue, the question persists as to whether albums like The Slim Shady LP still “hold up.” In the realm of the arts, people like to believe that we live in more enlightened times, and tales of grisly murder, violence towards women, and the mocking of the LGBTQ community is becoming increasingly frowned upon. The poor quality of Em’s product in the second decade of his career has at times led to a reevaluation of the beginning. Along the way, he recorded Infinite (1996) and The Slim Shady EP (1997), the latter of which really got him noticed. D12, which included Detroit underground heavies like Proof, Denaun Porter, and Bizarre. And he always kept his original camp close to him, rolling with the Dirty Dozen a.k.a. He also collaborated with his other underground peers at the time, recording with Shabaam Sahdeeq, Old World Disorder, and The Anonymous, and became an affiliate of the New Jersey-based Outsidaz camp. He earned his stripes in ultra-competitive hip-hop cyphers and battles, finishing second in the 1997 Scribble Jam freestyle competition and participating in the Rap Olympics. He lived what he rapped about and he came up the “right” way, toiling in the Detroit’s hip-hop underground scene, working small shows and open mic nights. And the genesis of his career as a rap superstar began with The Slim Shady LP, which was released 20 years ago.Įminem is not the creation of an A&R or focus group targeted towards appealing to the 18-25 demographic. Love him or hate him, he brought hip-hop to a wider audience, and influenced the careers of many of the genre’s current superstars, including artists like Kendrick Lamar and the entire TDE, Tyler, The Creator and the rest of Odd Future, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chance the Rapper, J. And yes, much of his power and appeal has come from the fact that he’s a white rapper that appealed to segments of the population that had never listened to hip-hop before he came around. That includes five for best hip-hop album. He has sold over 47 million albums in the US, over 220 million worldwide, and has 15 GRAMMY awards to his name. He’s one of the biggest selling hip-hop artists of all time, and one of the most decorated. No, I’m not joking.Įminem wasn’t always a caricature that churned out stinkers like Kamikaze. Fifteen years ago, Em didn’t take so kindly to this type of thing, getting into a ridiculous beef with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. To Em’s credit, he at least has a sense of humor about D’Elia’s impression, even tweeting out the comedian’s recent parody of the rapper’s labored 10-minute “freestyle” session. The project is 45 minutes of Em railing against everyone who didn’t like his previous album, the equally unlistenable Revival (2017). They’re certainly preferable to Kamikaze, his most recent anger-fueled album that he released in early fall 2018. Minute-long viral videos by D’Elia have been the most interesting thing about Eminem as an artist over the past few years. This is Marshall “Eminem” Mathers now, for all intents and purposes. Made up of equal parts unintelligible growling and spittle, a few phrases can be deciphered, such as, “You’re in a Ford Taurus getting an abortion and divorce at the same time as Harrison Ford!” Then there’s the coup de grace, “YOU’RE USING TOO MANY NAPKINS! BAPKINS! LAPKINS! YOU’RE USING CHAPSTICK AND NAPKINS WHILE I’M PAPKIN! FLAPPING AROUND LIKE A BAPKIN!” Comedian Chris D’Elia sits in his car and does the best Eminem impression ever captured on video. The video is slightly over a minute long. Happy 20th Anniversary to Eminem’s second studio album & major-label debut The Slim Shady LP, originally released February 23, 1999.