Happy 20th Anniversary Salute: The Marshall Mathers LP

What's happening peoples?! This 20th anniversary salute goes to a rather landmark album in not just hip-hop history, but music history.  This album is among the best selling hip-hop albums of all-time and made the entire world a believer in the talent this Detroit native possessed.  Following up his already massive debut from '99, The Slim Shady LP, which garnered over six million units in sales, this Aftermath signee knew he had to up the ante in shock value, but also in artistic and lyrical merit.  He did that, and then some.  This album won numerous awards, but also brought along with it tons of controversy from different artists, civil groups, and even the government.  Regardless, this album became a  milestone in mainstream American music and ended up selling over twenty million units worldwide.  Nothing less than historic.  This is the salute to Eminem and his sophomore masterpiece, The Marshall Mathers LP.

Following up the bizarre greatness that was The Slim Shady LP, Marshall Mathers wanted to unfold more layers about him, while completely getting a lot more stuff off his chest.  When he first dropped "The Real Slim Shady", we almost immediately believed this would be another SSLP, with its references to pop figures like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and it being a fairly bubblegum-like Dr. Dre track much like "My Name Is" was.  However, the second single took a much more serious turn, as he dropped "The Way I Am", a venomous middle finger to his critics and detractors that seem to like to comment on everything they didn't like about him and he addresses them and their entitlement.  It was his third single that took his career and artistic abilities to another level.  The ominous Dido-featured "Stan" was a Mark 45 King masterwork describing the story of an obsessed fan that ended up taking his own life.  Playing the roles of both Stan and himself, this cut was as brilliant as it was dark.  It was also nominated for numerous awards, and helped propel the album through stratosphere (not to mention Elton John performed the cut with Em at the Grammys of 2001)  He released two other singles from the album in "I'm Back" and the simply dope "Bitch Please II", which was the sequel to Snoop's classic "Bitch Please".  Now, how was the rest of the album? In a word: CRAZY.

Em definitely had a lot more emotion, anger, and aggravation with this album.  While he was mostly focused on shock elements and bathroom/drug humor with his debut, this album was more serious.  He still kept a lot of elements of his debut, but as evidenced with cuts such as "Kill U", the very disturbing "Kim",  and the surreal "Marshall Mathers", Em wasn't fucking around with this album whatsoever.  He went to the core of his imagination and his pen game to present some of the most compelling music of his career in this release.  With an obsession for drugs, violence, misogyny, and homophobia (many argued), Em with many songs went there, and was unabashed about it all.  If trying to subdue any sophomore slump was his goal, he obliterated it in full.  Every cut here was filled with more intensity and more fearlessness than his first album, which is saying a mouthful.  It's no wonder this album turned him from a superstar to a megastar.

Although he released several subsequent albums that followed, including his almost as excellent follow up The Eminem Show, Encore, Relapse, Recovery, Marshall Mathers LP 2, and his most recent Music To Be Murdered By, The Marshall Mathers LP became the holy grail upon which every album from him would be put with or against.  None have met or even come close to measuring up to the god-level acclaim this album produced and how he asserted himself among the true elite of emcees and overall pop stars of his generation, if not of all-time.  Lyrically this album was head and shoulders above anything in the game during that time and remains one of the greatest albums to ever exist in hip-hop.  We salute you Em.  HELL of a job.  Lift your glasses.  Until next time folks.