Eminem - Slim Shady LP (1999 - Tangent)

History also says that Eminem's breakout hit was his 1999 single, My Name Is, which, like its title, served as his introduction to the world.  This would be followed by the magnificent rap duet of Guilty Conscience, where Eminem played the devil on the shoulder while Dr. Dre played the angel (with a twist, of course.) Another, this time less known (or, at the time and where I was, basically unknown) single to come out of the same source was Just Don't Give a Fuck; however, as an entry in the encyclopedia of context that was entirely lost on me, Bad Meets Evil, a track that featured Royce da 5'9'', which was also the beginning of their collaboration.

I had two songs from my trusty little website, two days' relative labor to bring me Guilty Conscience and Just Don't Give a Fuck.  Having fallen in love with what I could make of Marshall Mathers LP, it didn't take me too long to track down its predecessor.  It was easy, I just had to go to the cassette rack, find the letter E, and then search for something Eminem that wasn't the album that I had listened to death.  Of course locating it proved to be a bit more difficult than that, because, who the hell cared about another album? I finally lucked out and brought the cassette home.

Now, Slim Shady LP was a different beast.  If then I had to label the two albums that I had, I'd say that this was Eminem as an adolescent, whereas the later album was Eminem as an early adult (I'd say, early-to mid-twenties.) His voice was a bit... I don't know, mousier, I guess.  His flows were there, and his insane storytelling was present, but the heavier rhyme schemes I was used to were largely absent*.  The production was decidedly thinner, in fact, I was kind of bothered that any sound effects that would be used were done by Em himself, the timbre of his voice helping me identify that.  It was a bit less filtered, a bit less concerned with clarity... but Slim Shady, through and through.

Some of Eminem's fixations are well-documented, but to me, they were new.  Especially after being roughed up by the lethality of Kim, I was surprised to find the sequel, '97 Bonnie & Clyde.  I had some vague idea of who Bonnie & Clyde were at the time, but beyond that they were lovers, and somehow associated with Thelma & Louise*, I didn't know anything. However, the song itself was like being doused with cold water, especially with the way Eminem was explaining to his daughter that her mother was gone before dumping the body in the lake with her... sick? Definitely, but I think it related to the fact that I was good with children, and still am, and that a child's mind can easily be manipulated if you know how it works.

Slim Shady LP spoke to me in ways its successor had not.  It related to my perceptions of myself and some of my daily experiences with Brain Damage. It had me laughing my head off at the sick humour of My Fault.  With that song, I was meeting head-on, perhaps for the first time, a storyline that I would see in many forms and love: a descent into insanity.  After all, Susan's predicament (an accidental mushroom overdose) and the way Slim full-on panics, but still asks their provider-friend Dave how long the 'shrooms will take to wear off, 'cause he's hoping that she'll get over it by the end of spring break* was absolutely hilarious.  The lunacy of Just Don't Give a Fuck made my smile, and I remember wondering if that was a sentiment I should start applying to my life.  The insanity of As the World Turns and the stranger-than-fiction tale told within blew me away.

Of course, it's not all fun and games, and with Slim Shady, I had found out, to have the fun, you had to be sick in the head.  You had to laugh at something you would normally never consider funny because of the way it was put.  It was a very George Carlin thing to do, come to think of it, but the practice of pitch-black humor and the sickness of it, I always found appealing.  That was clearer in the skits, which also featured my favourite homosexual pervert/prank caller, a character that'd appear in more skits, Ken Kaniff.  Paul Rosenberg, Eminem's producer, also had his own skit.  These, and the soap opera skit before As the World Turns spiced it up - not everyone can do good skits on their albums.

But there are darker moments.  Still Don't Give a Fuck, the sort-of continuation of the earlier track is decidedly dark, bitter and venomous - if its first part was based on an almost comical carelessness, this track is pure anger.  Rock Bottom was exactly what it said on the tin, and I felt like I had been there... except I really hadn't.  If I Had had the perfect line, "What's life? I'm tired of life." My thoughts, exactly, and even though not everything in there was a condition I was facing, I could still understand, and thus accept.  '97 Bonnie & Clyde is a sickening father-daughter bonding road trip, ending with the corpse being dumped in a lake and Slim Shady taking his daughter away from it all.  Uncertain future, the weight of the crime, the thought that this little girl had actually processed everything and how it would affect her weighed heavy.

This album concludes the 2000 Brigade.

*Footnotes: 1- I've always felt that to be able to carry a rhyme efficiently throughout a verse, or, in some cases, throughout entire songs was admirable; also, heavy rhyme-schemes depending on multis and wordplay also tickled my fancy.  Slim Shady LP is a bit different in this regard.
2- Of course the 'such-and-such' is a trope, and at the time, the most I could have associated it with was the 1989 Sylvester Stallone & Kurt Russell movie, Tango & Cash.  Fun flick, that.
3- We don't have Spring Break in Turkey, so I didn't exactly know what that was.  We did have one-day holidays for national occasions, plus two religious holidays that may take the whole week if we, the students, lucked out.