What's happening people! With this twentieth anniversary salute, we honor one of the most polarizing, yet commercially successful, debut albums in modern hip-hop history. This blond-haired, blue eyed emcee from the D was making a lot of noise in their underground scene with efforts like Infinite and The Slim Shady EP. Widely regarded as a lyrical monster, this guy had cosigns from several notable acts including Jersey's The Outsidaz. It was this noise that was made that prompted him to be a part of the Rap Olympics, and from there he caught the ear of the almighty good Doctor himself, Dr. Dre. The rest, as they say, is history. Signed to Aftermath, we knew this would be a changing of the guard, but we didn't know to what capacity. Gottdamn we had no idea the impact would be to where it has become. It all started from this controversial album. Ladies and gentlemen, we salute Eminem and his debut major label album, The Slim Shady LP.
In '99, we saw this video from this young guy from Detroit named Eminem called "My Name Is". It was a goofy video, plus clearly you saw some talent. Furthermore we all know Dre doesn't associate with just "good" emcees. While we saw and heard goofiness and somewhat childish rhymes, some were throwing him away, already labeling him as the next Vanilla Ice or another novelty white boy act. However, underground heads peeped a cut called "Just Don't Give A Fuck" and those notions were taken back, quickly. The cut was raw, in-your-face, and filled with rewindable lyrical swordsmanship. This is what heads wanted, and needed, to hear from him. Alas, The Slim Shady LP was among us. Commercially, it did well within its first week, selling around 225,000 units, but later went platinum within a two month period. Could the rest of the album hold up lyrically, and less of the zaniness we got from "My Name Is"? Let's see, shall we?
Lyrically, we knew this kid was somewhere else. We had never heard any Caucasian rhyme with this much wit, clarity, and razor sharpness, much less with imagination and sick wordplay. Truly this dude was a diamond in the rough. Thematically, we heard a guy who's life was drugs, dreams of killing his daughter's mother, homophobia, and misogyny, but made it all sound borderline comical. It's like this Slim Shady persona was a sophomoric, juvenile version of himself turned all the way up. On cuts like "Role Model" and "Brain Damage", he excuses himself from being someone one would ever want to be like, but instead learn from. Is he angry on here? Damn right he is, and on tracks like the aforementioned "Just Don't Give A Fuck", or others like "If I Had" and "My Fault" where he gives the middle finger to seemingly everyone and everything.
He explores a humorous, yet dark, side of him with the Dre-assisted "Guilty Conscience", where he plays the bad half of every situation, and does so in such tickling fashion, you almost forget his lyrics are pretty dark and violent-natured. However, it hits another level on the ominous "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" that has him and his then very young daughter Hallie Jade riding around with her mother presumably stuffed in a bag in the trunk about to get dumped over a bridge. It's perverse, twisted, and maniacal, but it also got you talking. It was a fantasy he had of his daughter's mother, Kim, when they were going through some highly tumultuous times. The track provided shock and awe, and if anyone can relate to shock and awe, it's the almighty Doctor. When he gets up with his tag team partner, a then relatively unknown named Royce Da 5'9", they obliterate the cut "Bad Meets Evil", and in this moment where we see how animalistic not just Em can be, the two of them together can be, as Royce proved he can be a deadly as Shady can be.
This was a drug-infested ride that marked the beginning of a legendary career for Marshall. His follow-up album, The Marshall Mathers LP, became one of the most commercially successful albums in modern music, and labeled as a classic among hip-hop aficionados, and the follow-up The Eminem Show, was almost as hard. From there, Em would have good and not so good moments from albums like Relapse, Encore, Recovery, Marshall Mathers LP 2, and the most recent Kamakazi. However, this was the album that started it all for the man that would refer to himself as the "rap god", and there are many that echo those sentiments. For The Slim Shady LP, we salute Em for twenty years of its relevancy.
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