The 500 - #275 = The Slim Shady LP - Eminem

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #275

Album Title: The Slim Shady LP

Artist: Eminem

Genre: Hip Hop, Horrorcore

Recorded: Studio 8, Ferndale, Michigan

Released: February, 1999

My age at release: 33

How familiar was I with it before this week: A little

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #352 (dropping 77 places since 2012)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Brain Damage

In my last post, I wrote about my first year of full-time employment as a teacher. I had been hired as a music educator for Grade 4 - 8 students. To connect with my young charges, I would play music as each class entered or exited my music room. Posters of musicians from different eras plastered the walls diverse genres (Mozart, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Dave Matthews Band and Run DMC, to name a few).

The Miles Davis Poster I had in the music room

Additionally, I invited students to bring in compact discs to be played during the next period. Many of them came from challenging socio-economic situations and others were "street-smart" beyond their years. This was 2000, just as Eminem exploded into popular hip-hop culture with the release of his second studio album, The Slim Shady LP. Among the different grade cohorts were fans of the hip-hop and rap genre, and some even sported Eminem's closely-cropped "Caesar haircut".

Eminem (Marshall Mathers)

As you might have guessed, it wasn't long before a student produced a compact disc copy of Eminem's album and asked if we could play it in class.

"It's got a couple bad words though." he said in earnest.

"Let me give it a listen tonight," I replied.

If you are familiar with The Slim Shady LP, you already know where this story is going.  If you don't, check out  the lyrics to the first two tracks – My Name Is or Guilty Conscience – for a dose of anger, violence and misogyny. However, neither prepares you for the song '97 Bonnie & Clyde -- a fantasy scenario, complete with sound effects, where Eminem disposes of the corpse of his ex-wife, Kim Mathers, in a lake while their infant daughter is strapped into the car seat. He speaks as one might talk to a toddler:

Needless to say, I was aghast. However, I reminded myself that "every generation is shocked by the music of the next". 

After all, my mom wouldn't let me purchase KISS or Meat Loaf records because of the album covers, and I distinctly remember how horrified my grandfather was when the Sex Pistols and punk rock hit the scene while I was visiting England in 1977.

Article on Sex Pistols in U.K.'s Daily Mirror

Still, I determined this wasn't going to be played in music class and I returned the CD the next day with a few cautionary words.

"It's not the swear words," I said. "It's more the violence toward women that concerns me."

"He's just kidding about that, he doesn't mean it," came the reply.

I have since learned that this student wasn't entirely wrong with his assessment. The "Slim Shady character" is an alter-ego that represents Eminem's hyper-masculine, dark, troubled and evil side. The character is used within the confines of a sub-genre of hip-hop called “horrorcore”, which intentionally leverages dark, violent and transgressive lyrical content to court controversy. It is to music what slasher-flicks are to film and, much like the aggressive, over-the-top violence in Friday The 13th or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is not meant to be taken seriously.

A collection of horrorcore hip-hop artists including Eminem (top left)

There is good reason that Eminem, born Marshall Bruce Mathers III, has a dark, troubled persona lurking within him. Like many students I have worked with over the years, his early life was shaped by abandonment, poverty, physical and mental abuse, as well as frequent housing insecurity.

Born in 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. and Deborah Rae "Debbie" Nelson, Eminem’s father, soon abandoned the family in order to return to California and his other two children. Debbie, shuttled her son between Missouri and Detroit, Michigan, trailer parks and low-income homes for most of his childhood. Among the places they lived was the Continental Mobile Village near 8 Mile Road in Warren, Michigan -- the setting for his 2002 semi-autobiographical film.

Growing up in predominantly black communities he was treated as an outsider and badly bullied including an assault in elementary school that hospitalized him. He recounts the events in the song Brain Damage from The Slim Shady LP.

Social service investigators were regularly involved in his unstable and traumatic life, with one social worker describing his mother, Debbie, as having addiction issues and a "suspicious, almost paranoid personality". In his song, Cleaning Out My Closet, Eminem reveals that his mother put prescription medications in his food to make him feel ill, ostensibly to keep him home where she could protect him. Often dubbed Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy -- this condition is a mental illness and form of child abuse where a care-giver causes symptoms that make a child feel unwell, often to isolate the victim from the outside world.

As Oscar Wilde famously said: "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and this is not being talked about." The polarizing Eminem has certainly been talked about over his 25-year career. He is loved and loathed by many.

Eminem has courted controversy for decades while simultaneously rising to fame as one of the greatest rappers of all-time. Sometimes dubbed "The King Of Hip-Hop", he is the best-selling solo-rapper ever. His 2002 record, The Marshall Mathers LP (#244 on The 500) sold 11 million copies in the U.S. alone.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads here.

• My exploration into the world of hip-hop has led me to recognize that Eminem is a gifted wordsmith who deeply understands the interplay between beats and bars. I intend to explore his clever use of multi-syllabic, internal rhyme in a future blog.
• I also understand that, like a blood-soaked gun battle in a Tarantino film, his horrorcore lyrics are not to be taken seriously.
• I also know he suffered mightily in his childhood, which led to addiction issues and mental health struggles, exacerbated by an autism diagnosis that was missed until adulthood..

However, I continue to think back to that 12-year-old in my Grade 8 music class who first brought me The Slim Shady LP. He was a bright chap and, clearly, he could separate the messages on this record from reality. Is that the case for the millions of young boys, with their Caesar haircuts, who worshipped and emulated either Eminem or the Slim Shady character who has...

• Elevated verbal abuse and degradation, particularly of women, to an art form?
• Amplified and glorified the image of a hyper-masculine male, who casually drops homophobic slurs, while perpetuating the notion that women are attracted to insensitive men who do not respect them?
• Portrayed a semi-fictional version of themselves as a sympathetic underdog who rebelled against impossible odds? One who not only should be forgiven, but lionized for offensive and warped utterances?

Which takes me back to the same spot I was at when I first listened to this record in 2000. With one exception (I’ve put a track on my Spotify 500 Playlist) I've heard enough to know I’m not going to play it anymore.

This week I talked to several twenty and thirty-somethings who reported that they liked or even loved this record – some admitting they memorized every word while in elementary school.

I thought back to my teenage fascination with Black Sabbath, Dio or the aforementioned Sex Pistols. The music did not make me a satanist or an anarchist. I too understood that "they didn't mean it". So, in the words of The Who: “The Kids Are All Right”.

As my friend’s 30-year-old son put it: “I don’t listen to the Slim Shady LP often, although revisiting it is a guilty pleasure – his later material is far superior, after he got off the drugs”.

We’ll find out soon enough, I get to The Marshall Mathers album in 30 weeks.