

In 2020, having gone platinum 10 times, “The Marshall Mathers LP” hits differently. With his troika of identities - Marshall Mathers, Eminem, Slim Shady - appearing together for the first time, multisyllabic mockery, metrical slaloms of disdain and lots of funny voices, he exorcised trauma like a street magician flourishing cards, lyrics whirring around your ears. Eminem was a one-man internet before the internet really became the internet.

As a result, virtually every bystander had an opinion cocked, locked and ready to rock, to quote another Motor City madman, Ted Nugent.
EMINEM THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP FULL ALBUM PLUS
In the often very catchy pop songs of “The Marshall Mathers LP,” Eminem got into it with all these people, plus his family, other musicians (famous or obscure), celebrities and the media. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is the upcoming eighth studio album by Eminem, annunced to be released on November 5, 2013, by Aftermath Entertainment, Shady Records, and Interscope Records.Production for the album took place from 2011 to 2013 at several recording studios and was handled by Eminem and other record producers, including Rick Rubin, No ID and Dr. But in 2000, multitudes were engrossed: a United States Senate committee about entertainment and violence (where vice-presidential wife Lynne Cheney said Eminem “advocates murder and rape”) feminist and gay activists parents groups and religious activists. These days, a rapper’s rhymes are rarely more than a Twitter trending topic. Was he a prankster, an industry plant, a generational voice? (The last was asserted in 2003 by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.) Were his lyrics truth or fantasy? Was he a public danger? The skillfully focused controversy, anger, and demented thoughts put into words by a master lyricist, both funny and dark. This is Eminems finest masterpiece, the epitome of hardcore rap. Were rappers real or fake? If you claimed to be a product of the drug trade, had you actually moved weight? After Eminem’s unprecedented success for a white rapper, via “The Slim Shady LP” in 1999 and its follow-up, questions abounded. The second full-length from Eminem (aka Marshall Mathers) garnered two Grammys for the rapper and became the fastest-selling rap album in history. This remained a hip-hop conundrum 20 years ago - especially after the still-unsolved deaths of the Notorious B.I.G. “The Marshall Mathers LP” wasn’t a murder mystery, per se, though plenty of characters met their demise. It may be a world that is as infuriating as it is intriguing, but it is without question his own, which is far more than most of his peers are able to accomplish at the dawn of a new millennium.Eminem’s second major-label album was a compelling but lurid whodunit. As an artist, he's supposed to create his own world, and with this terrific second effort, he certainly has. But, once you're in, Eminem doesn't care if you understand exactly where he's at, and he doesn't offer any apologies if you can't sort the fact from the fiction.

There may not be overpowering hooks on every track, but the album works as a whole, always drawing the listener in. The production is nearly as evocative as the raps, with liquid basslines, stuttering rhythms, slight sound effects, and spacious soundscapes. It's both funnier and darker than his debut, and Eminem's writing is so sharp and clever that the jokes cut as deeply as the explorations of his ruptured psyche. It is, however, a fairly brilliant expansion of his debut, turning his spare, menacing hip-hop into a hyper-surreal, wittily disturbing thrill ride.

Eminem is all about blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, humor and horror, satire and documentary, so it makes perfect sense that The Marshall Mathers LP is no more or no less "real" than The Slim Shady LP. To Eminem's credit, he decided to exploit that confusion on his masterful second record, The Marshall Mathers LP. Many dismissed his considerable skills as a rapper and social satirist because the vulgarity and gross-out humor on The Slim Shady LP were too detailed for some to believe that it was anything but real. It's hard to know what to make of Eminem, even if you know that half of what he says is sincere and half is a put-on the trick is realizing that there's truth in the joke, and vice versa.
