Prior to Eminem signing to Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records, the rapper released his debut album, Infinite, in 1996 to very poor sales. The Slim Shady LP is called a classic rap album around the world. The album won a Grammy for Best Rap Album and was ranked number 273 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album sold 283,000 copies in it's first week, debuted at number 2 on the US Billboard 200 and went on to be certified quadruple-platinum by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). The Slim Shady LP was a critical and commercial success, launching Eminem from a underground rapper into a high-profiled celebrity. The majority of the lyrical content on the album is written in the prospective of the rapper's alter ego Slim Shady and is noted for its over-the-top deceptions of violence and heavy use of profanity. Dre, The Bass Brothers, and Eminem himself and was recorded during 19 at Studio 8 in Ferndale, Michigan. It was released on Februby Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records. The Slim Shady LP is the second studio album and the major-label debut by American rapper Eminem. Slim Shady was the sound of someone climbing off Dr Phil’s Couch for Troubled Teens and grabbing America by the throat.The cover for the special edition CD/DVD that was included with the special edition of the album. “How the fuck can I be white?” he asks at one point on The Slim Shady LP, “I don’t even exist.” What’s that old saying? Hurt people hurt people. He’d even bite the hand that fed him, if he thought the moral justification was there for it (he even took jabs at mentor Dr Dre on “Guilty Conscience”). The problem with Eminem was that he was smart and wrote catchy songs-and that he had nothing to lose. Asked about the editorial in an early interview, Eminem smirked and said, “I think it hit a soft spot for Timothy White.”īeing funny was one thing (though Eminem could be really funny). After all, the media has long profited off violence and the denigration of women-and yet, here were powerful scolds telling Eminem that he was the problem, ignoring their own complicity (“Role Model”). And there’s Eminmen himself, of course (“Guilty Conscience”).īut Eminem’s rage is also driven by the hypocrisy of the culture as a whole. There’s the humiliation of being so poor that you can’t afford diapers for your daughter (“Rock Bottom”). There’s the mother who didn’t provide for him and the teachers who didn’t care, either (“My Name Is”). There’s the minimum-wage job as a grill cook (“If I Had”) and the bully who terrorized him as a kid (“Brain Damage”). “What is he mad at?”įunny you should ask, as Eminem lists the causes of his rage throughout The Slim Shady LP. The expected gripes with Eminem’s music are all there: It’s violent it’s unrepentant it makes money by “exploiting the world’s misery.” But White also spends a lot of time laying out statistics about domestic violence, and interviews the executive director of one of the country’s oldest domestic-violence-related agencies. Of all the complaints and concerns that greeted the 1999 release of Eminem’s The Slim Shady LP, the most interesting response might’ve been an editorial written by Billboard magazine’s then-editor-in-chief, Timothy White.
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