The Slim Shady LP [Clean] [Edited] [PA]

Performer: Eminem
Artist: Royce Da 5'9"
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Personnel includes: Eminem, Kristie Abete Swift, Dina Rae (vocals); Richard "Segal" Huredia (spoken vocals); Jeff Bass (various instruments); Mel-Man, DJ Head, Denine Porter (drum programming); Paul "Bunyan" Rosenberg, Zoe Winkler, Marky Bass, Aristotle, Royce Da 5'9". Producers include: Dr. Dre, M. Mathers, Marky Bass, Jeff Bass, Mel Man. Engineers include: Blumpy, Aaron Lepley, Alan Mason. THE SLIM SHADY LP won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. "My Name Is" was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. Recording information: Dre's House; Mix Room. You'll need a well-developed sense of humor to fully appreciate the debut of Eminem aka Slim Shady. Produced by hip-hop super-producer Dr. Dre and released on Dre's Aftermath Records, the album features an infectious lead single, "My Name Is," a winning mixture of alternative rock and rap. One listen will have you hooked on the chorus, but future plays will reveal the lyrical gymnastics that Eminem kicks out so effortlessly. Obsessed with fantasies of sex, violence, drugs, and a general depraved indifference to life itself, Eminem's alter ego, Slim Shady, is constantly involved in a battle of good vs. evil leavened by a high degree of irony. Dre even drops in on an mind-blowing cameo playing the shoulder angel on "Guilty Conscience" to Eminem's devil. You'll need a few listens to absorb everything that Eminem is about lyrically. SLIM SHADY might offend the faint-hearted, but that's probably Eminem's intention. Given his subsequent superstardom, culminating in no less than an Academy Award, it may be easy to overlook exactly how demonized Eminem was once his mainstream debut album, The Slim Shady LP, grabbed the attention of pop music upon its release in 1999. Then, it wasn't clear to every listener that Eminem was, as they say, an unreliable narrator, somebody who slung satire, lies, uncomfortable truths, and lacerating insights with vigor and venom, blurring the line between reality and parody, all seemingly without effort. The Slim Shady LP bristles with this tension, since it's never always clear when Marshall Mathers is joking and when he's dead serious. This was unsettling in 1999, when nobody knew his back-story, and years later, when his personal turmoil is public knowledge, it still can be unsettling, because his words and delivery are that powerful. Of course, nowhere is this more true than on "97 Bonnie and Clyde," a notorious track where he imagines killing his wife and then disposing of the body with his baby daughter in tow. There have been more violent songs in rap, but few more disturbing, and it's not because of what it describes, it's how he describes it -- how the perfectly modulated phrasing enhances the horror and black humor of his words. Eminem's supreme gifts are an expansive vocabulary and vivid imagination, which he unleashes with wicked humor and unsparing anger in equal measure. The production -- masterminded by Dr. Dre but also helmed in large doses by Marky and Jeff Bass, along with Marshall himself -- mirrors his rhymes, with their spare, intricately layered arrangements enhancing his narratives, which are always at the forefront. As well they should be -- there are few rappers as wildly gifted verbally as Eminem. At a time when many rappers were stuck in the stultifying swamp of gangsta clich�s, Eminem broke through the hardcore murk by abandoning the genre's familiar themes and flaunting a style with more verbal muscle and imagination than any of his contemporaries. Years later, as the shock has faded, it's those lyrical skills and the subtle mastery of the music that still resonate, and they're what make The Slim Shady LP one of the great debuts in both hip-hop and modern pop music. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone (4/1/99, pp.93-94) - 3 1/2 Stars (out of 5) "...Eminem earns his buzz as a bona fide rap star one tasteless insult at a time, battling the world with a mouthful of adjectives and a boxful of laxatives." Spin (5/99, p.148) - 8 (out of 10) - "...Eminem [aka Marshall Mathers] is humorous enough to be an honorary Beastie goy, and his scenarios are so far-fetched the songs almost never sound as ugly as they actually are. Mathers's hard-knock raps translate hip-hop for folks with Wu-Tang decoder rings, articulating suburban anger and violent apathy through the lens of white kids' experience..." Q (1/00, p.84) - Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1999." Mixmag (5/99, p.146) - 5 out of 5 - "...Perversion, paranoia and slapstick humour meet in Eminem's gob and get spat out 19 to the dozen....makes great voyeuristic entertainment..." Muzik (1/00, p.69) - Ranked #8 in Muzik's "Albums Of The Year '99" Muzik (5/99, p.82) - 3 Stars (out of 5) - "...It's dazzlingly funny and gloriously offensive..." CMJ (2/8/99, p.30) - "...Pairing Redman's gutter humor and metaphorical dexterity with Canibus' raging themes, the Detroit native has matched the high expectations surrounding his brilliant new album..." The Source (2/00, p.95) - Included in The Source's "Top 10 Albums of the Year [1999]." Melody Maker (5/1/99, p.36) - 4 stars (out of 5) - "...By far the most distressing thing about THE SLIM SHADY LP is how seductive it is - largely due to Dr Dre's production work, it captivates and thrills, and this is an unavoidably amazing body of work..."

Turning the music world on its head, Eminem, the blond-haired rapper from Detroit, forced the hip-hop world to accept him as an equal. Despite lyrics full of anger, misogyny, violence, racism, and homophobia, Eminem has been a major commercial success since his debut in 1999, selling records as no black rapper with similar lyrical content ever could. Considered by many a "rapper's rapper," the Dr. Dre-sponsored Eminem has accomplished the seemingly impossible--platinum sales with street cred intact, largely due to his triplet-based rhyme meter and undeniable narrative skill.

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