(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Albums: #15: Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

There were a handful of momentous pop stars in the zeroes—Kanye West, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Lil’ Wayne, etc. People forget now that Eminem belonged in that list once upon a time and, in fact, he was one of the decades’ most incomparable figures. In one of his singles, he once compared himself to Elvis—an appropriate comparison because of him being white and him conquering “black” music—but, if you think about it, he’s closer to a Kurt Cobain or a Tupac Shakur due to the way he lit a fire under a sprouting culture. And if the yardstick for rock superstardom is one’s capability to traumatize the parents of the world, then Eminem is probably the last rock & roll icon we’ve seen. But in all likelihood, people have also forgotten how staggering he is as a lyricist and how tremendous his songs used to be, which is the reason why the controversy never trounced the music he’s putting up.

With his second release The Marshall Mathers LP, he went from a backpacker sensation, a cult symbol to a poster boy for the impressionable suburban teen. For a few years, Eminem was so influential in shaping the conventional image of a teenager—vulgar sense of humor, repugnance towards pop culture’s main characters, unapologetic homophobia, and in-your-face rage; it all sounds like the traits of a zeroes malfeasant, one that should exist in infamy in everyone’s mind. However, as I said up top, white boy can rap. The careful breath control in “The Real Slim Shady” is stellar, sounding like a rapper that can only be stopped by a tazer. The fierceness of the internal rhymes and alliteration in “The Way I Am” is unmatched. And everyone knows his storytelling prowess from “Stan”, an unsettling narrative about an obsessed fanatic, in the form of letters written by Stan to Shady (Eminem plalying both parts, obviously). “I HOPE YOUR CONSCIENCE EATS AT YOU AND YOU CAN’T BREATHE WITHOUT ME,” we sense the intense arrows of outrage directed at Shady whiz by.

If forced to choose between this and the classic debut The Slim Shady LP, I’d be in real trouble; it’ll really depend on what color my aura is that day. Slim Shady was more comedic, more uncooked, more impetuous. If I need to obtain a smile from Eminem, I pop the first album right in. Marshall Mathers LP is more powerful, more deliberate, unwavering; even when his comedy and creativity show up in these verses, it’s done while he spews bile. “Kill You” is an amusing extravaganza of Em battling his Freudian issues; “Kim” is a haunting dramatization of when he supposedly killed his ex-wife; “Criminal” is an entertaining justification of his villainy. And when you’re sick with the entire wrath, you can always enjoy his ode to illegal substances (“Drug Ballad”) or one of the most elite West Side track of the decade (“Bitch Please II”), second only to Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode”.

To put how big Eminem was in perspective, Chris Rock said it best somewhere sometime ago: “you know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, [and] the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese.” So what happened to an idol destined to be one of the all-time greats? Basically, Eminem just blew his wad a little too quickly in late ’02 to early ’03, a period where he gained as much commercial success, critical acclaim, and respect from his peers as he or any other artist was likely to attain in a lifetime. After that, he struggled to find new targets and, consequently, he kind of lost the drive. From there, he put sub-par product on the market, regressed both in talents and maturity by embracing dick and poop jokes in his songs. In my honest opinion, the accelerated fall from grace is only appropriate for Slim Shady’s career, because it validates how high he was soaring for that first few years of the zeroes. And two or three phenomenal years from Eminem still beat ten good years from the majority of rappers from this decade.