New Album from Four (cough) Weeks Ago: Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem

Sorry, there isn’t any time this week for an overly-long-winded-yet-hilarious-and-insightful-anecdote/discussion to lead into my review. I got way too much to say about this album and not nearly enough time to say it. So, let’s get straight to the review. Also, as usual, sorry I am a week late.

Let me preface this review by stating, I know almost nothing about rap. As I have stated many times before, I used to hate rap. I wouldn’t have called it the worst genre of music, but that is because I wouldn’t call it music. A catchphrase of mine was “you can’t spell crap without rap”; apparently I thought I was clever in addition to being intolerant. My hatred of rap was insufferable.

Then in early January, John put on Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. Because I respect John a great deal I actually listened to the album instead of my usual reaction, throwing a fit until the music was changed. I was taken back; I actually liked it. My eyes were opened and I realized that rap is a perfectly respectable genre.

The Marshall Mathers LP single handedly converted me from one of rap’s most staunch and bitter opponents into a fan of it. It is important to note that I do not just like the album. If I had just liked the album I could have called it an exception and a guilty pleasure and continued to hate on rap. No, The Marshall Mathers LP converted me to a full on fan of rap music in general. People don’t change their minds like that very often. Yes, the album is that good.

The Marshall Mathers LP is a masterpiece. I don’t have to know anything about rap to say it is one of the best rap albums of all time, seeing as it is the most critically acclaimed and financially successful album of one of the most critically acclaimed and financially successful rappers of all time. The album is proof that art and popularity need not be mutually exclusive.

So what makes the Marshall Mathers LP so good? It has this texture to it that is unlike anything I have heard before.  The album is incredibly complex and contradictory. It is simultaneously personal and fictional, hilarious and horrifying, poetic and crude, defensive and self-deprecating. The album is bursting with emotions, which are down-right terrifying at times. More importantly, Eminem plays with words in a way that at times is simply breathtaking. In short, The Marshal Mathers LP grabs you right at the start and doesn’t let you go until it is over.  

Eminem’s second major label record, The Marshall Mathers LP marks a great shift in subject matter from its predecessor, The Slim Shady LP.  Eminem touches on this shift with the line “they said I can’t rap about bein broke no more, they aint say I can’t rap about coke no more”; the main theme of the Marshall Mathers LP is dealing with family, drugs, and success whereas his previous album was centered more about being poor. However the real shift is how much more personal Eminem is on the MMLP is versus the SSLP.

Like many rappers Eminem created an alter-ego, the infamous Slim Shady, as an exaggerated version of himself. Slim is incredibly violent, explicit, and deranged. The Slim Shady LP almost exclusively features Slim, whereas the MMLP uses him much more sparingly. By using less Slim, Eminem balances the overly elaborate fiction of Slim with more subtly reality of the real him. Songs mix honest feelings and thoughts with fictionalized exaggerations of reality. The result is an eerie mixture where it is hard to determine what is real and what is fiction. In Who Knew (below) Eminem comments on hypocritical parents who blame him for youth violence in the same breath as graphically threatening to kill them. He purposely makes himself into the world’s most unreliable narrator so he can create and maintain paradoxes without disrupting the tone of the album.

Speaking of paradoxes, the MMLP is one massive paradox. It is simultaneously one of the funniest and most terrifying albums I have ever heard. Jokes range from crude, “So I can sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst and hear them argue over who she gave head to first”, to offensive, “Slim for pete’s sakes put down Christopher Reeve’s legs!”, to ironic “this music is for the kids!”, to disturbing (all of Ken Kenneth). Some jokes are a bit cleverer. In Remember Me? he promises not to say “fuckin” for six minutes, only to say “fuck that” a minute later. Yet he didn’t say “fuckin” and doesn’t until after I’m Back, over six minutes later. If you take it literally, he fulfills his promise, a fact that makes me laugh every time I listen the album.

Yet at the same time the album is horrifying; he frequently talks about beating women, spews homophobic lines, and describes graphically killing people. Not to mention Stan (below) and Kim, two songs that are probably heavier than every Goth and Emo song combined. Kim in particular is the scariest song I have ever heard in my entire life; it is so complex that I will have to save my discussion of it to an Eccentricity someday.

The whole album is filled with emotion. Sure it might be almost exclusively anger, but emotions are emotions. Almost every track on the album feels like Eminem poured a bit of himself into it. This emotionality adds to the weight of his words. Everything that he says, be it joke, truth, falsity, or explicative, feels like it matters. It allows Eminem to create lines that feel incredibly raw and intense.

Yet Eminem doesn’t let it the emotionality of the MMLP take control, he uses Slim to hide it in the midst of reality versus fiction. The album is not weighed down, it remains in a haze between heavy and raw and light and trivial. This balance allows him to create tension and release it. He can say something serious and then undercut it in the very same line.

That all being said, the best lesson the MMLP taught me about rap is that what you say does not matter nearly as much as how you say it. A rap about a baloney sandwich could be the best rap ever if it was (absurdly) well crafted. This is where Eminem truly shines. The excellence of his meaning is magnified a million time over by his shear rap talent. He is absolutely incredible; he manipulates words in ways that load my brain with explosives and delivers them in a way that lights the fuse.

Eminem uses every rhyming trick in the book and then some. He is like Shakespeare combined with Dr. Seuss and a liter of grain alcohol. He is able to pack about a million words into one second and then slow down to utter the last couple syllables to finish the line off. He varies his rhyme throughout each song to create some really memorable lines. My personal favorites are both completely frivolous.  One line is in Who Knew, “Fuck shit ass bitch cunt, shooby-de-doo-wop, skibbedy-be-bop, a-Christopher Reeves, Sonny Bono, skis horses and hittin some trees.” The other is found in Kill You, “I invented violence, yu vile venomous volatile bitches vain Nicadin, vrinnn, Vrinnn, VRINNN!!! (chainsaw sounds)”. Neither line really means anything, but my god are they bad-ass. Surely this is proof that rap, even if it is about hoes, rims, and blunts, can be a work of art.

The end result of all of these points is an album that is almost impossible to comprehend. What is real and what isn’t? Which lines does he actually mean and which are lies? I don’t think you can really tell what Eminem thinks from listen to this album; you would have to know him in person. I do not have the luxury of knowing Eminem, so I am left guessing like everyone else. The thing is though; the opacity of the MMLP is a great part of its appeal. In short, the complexity of the album makes it intriguing and engaging in a way that most albums aren’t.

In trying to discern his music, People have often claimed that Eminem advocates violence, homophobia, and misogyny. These claims aren’t unfounded; almost every song has at least one line that is insulting to homosexuals, involves beating women, or discusses murder. These lines can get so bad that even I, someone who has a very dark sense of humor, have trouble swallowing it. So I understand the controversy behind Eminem. However, as Robert Everett-Green wrote, "Being offensive is Eminem's job description.” A lot of what Eminem says it to provoke a reaction, hence why he is labeled as a horrorcore rapper. When you listen to the MMLP you have to know how to distinguish between what might actually be real and what is just spitfire. This is something that children are unable to do, most take everything at face value. It is my strong opinion that Eminem is not a villain; he is not an awful person trying to corrupt people. However, impressionable people who can’t easily distinguish reality versus exaggeration (read: children) should NOT be allowed to listen to Eminem.  

That is to be said I do have some complaints with the album. For one, he could tone down the three things I described a bit. I know that is not the point (seeing as I just argued against him toning it down), but that doesn’t mean that I like it. Another thing that bothers me is Eminem’s constant reliance on pop-culture references. This album in forty years will be worse than it is now simply because no one will know who Brittney Spears, ’N Sync, or Fred Durst is like people who were alive in 2001 (I actually had to look up who Fred Durst is). All of the lines where he talks about how boy bands suck will be meaningless when people don’t understand the context. And unfortunately, Eminem raps about how they suck a lot.

I am glad I gave the Marshal Mathers LP a chance. Not only have I discovered another great piece of work, but it has opened my eyes to another world of music. I now want to check out some Tupac, Biggie Smalls, and more. I never thought I would ever say that sentence, let alone mean it. I want to see what else rap has in store for me. And I owe all of this thanks to that firebrand white rapper out of Detroit. I wonder what he would say if he ever read this. I like to think that he would laugh and then curse me out.