Review Summary: Laced with rock-influenced instrumentals underneath a slew of angry political commentary and personal hardships, this record is more Marshall Mathers than ever. Fix your bent antenna, tune it in, and enter into The Eminem Show.
I remember when I was in 5th grade, taking this CD from my sister’s room and listening to it all day. She got it for Christmas, and what a gift it was. I would take the booklet out of the case and read along to every song, word for word until the end of the album, admiring the pictures of my new favorite artist along the way. I was a kid – 11 to be exact – but I knew Eminem was special. I knew he had a way with words. Being so young, I hadn’t really realized how music could tell stories. I never really listened to the words, so this was a revelation to me. Eminem not only told stories, but they were done in rhyme-form, and really well executed – it blew my mind. This guy painted pictures with words.
Simply put, this album is an autobiography. In gritty detail, Eminem touches on the past and present, personal matters, and the impact his music had on America. Parents hated him, and the kids loved him. It sounds cliché, but at the time he was the perfect villain, and maybe the hero the nation's parents needed to distract themselves from the heating conflicts overseas. Being the biggest artist of the time, his life was on display, hence
The Eminem Show. He knew he had developed a platform, so he took advantage of it and used this record to lay down his side of the story, clearly and concisely. Tackling subjects that vary from the war in Afghanistan, to being a father, we're greeted with the same commanding passion and inflection we heard in 'The Way I Am' from
MMLP. The angry mouth-filling-up-with-spit, phlegm-hocking Eminem we all love so much. I'm not sure if I even knew what freedom of speech really meant until I heard the end of “White America.”
Up to this point, everything he put out consistently got better and better. Eminem was being molded by his experiences in the forefront of music, and this record is the pinnacle of his career. Musically and lyrically, it's not easy to find similarities between previous records when you listen to a track like 'Kill You' from
MMLP, then listen to any song on
The Eminem Show. This is largely due to the fact that Eminem himself produced most of this album and knew exactly where he wanted to take it without Dre's hand weighing so heavily on the mixing board. Instead of being solely reliant on electronically made Hip-Hop instrumentals, a handful of tracks exhibit rock based drums, guitar riffs, and solos. With lyrics to match the raw, heavy tracks like “White America”, “Cleaning Out My Closet”, “Sing For The Moment”, and “'Till I Collapse”, we are welcomed with a profound sense of maturity with the snot-nosed, controversial brat still poking his head in on the record when he's needed. “Without Me” is a stunning example of Eminem's proficiency in technical rapping, displaying how he can write with such dense rhyme schemes but make it seem so natural that most don't even notice it.
The Eminem Show is no exception to Eminem's unique writing capabilities.
"White America"
All I hear is: lyrics, lyrics, constant controversy, sponsors working 'round the clock to try to stop my concerts early. Surely, Hip-Hop was never a problem in Harlem, only in Boston after it bothered the fathers of daughters startin' to blossom. So now I'm catchin' the flak from these activists when they're raggin', actin' like I'm the first rapper to smack a b*tch or say f*ggot? Sh*t. Just look at me like I'm your closest pal, the poster child, the mothaf*ckin' spokesman now, for WHITE AMERICA!
Eminem managed to capture so many events in twenty songs that it's hard not to view it as a piece of music history. Every track on
The Eminem Show was written and put in place to be a part of this one cohesive diary of music, and contains some of the best work he ever committed to reel. Eminem pulled us in, and gave us a taste of what it's like to be him; to be a target, and everything he did to get to that point. Eminem proved for the first time his production prowess, and proved to the world that what he had was not just a buzz, and became one of the most important artists in Hip-Hop and music alike.
