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.

Limp Bizkit - Significant Other (1999 - Tangent)

History says that Nookie, off of Significant Other was Limp Bizkit's breakout hit.  Depicting a Rage Against the Machine-style unauthorized street gig in its video, the song itself, while not containing the final word of its legendary chorus line ("So you can take that cookie and stick it up your-") was often censored.  Yes, the censors were keeping a trademark Fred Durst "Yeah!" from being heard.  Representative of the very late 90's and very early 2000's music, an epitome of all Limp Bizkit was in its cover, Significant Other is considered to be the Limp Bizkit album.

Also, Significant Other was one of the two albums I had gotten my hands onto because of a tendency that would later cause an unending album list that I've been trying to get through for the past ten or so years.  I am a naturally curious guy, so much so that it's often seen as being nosy.  It was my curiosity about a reference to one band that had gotten me to Korn, and that curiosity was just beginning to give me a workout.  It was established by then that I loved Limp Bizkit, and I had two albums, but I knew there was a third one, before Chocolate Starfish.  Since they weren't going to release a fourth fast enough for me, I decided to go back once again.

Significant Other is a different beast than its predecessor and successor.  It is a statement by the band that they are here to stay, and is a tour-de-force.  Although, to me, not better than Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$, it is one of their best efforts, and one of the most significant albums of its time.  The sound is more refined, its rougher edges trimmed to accomodate the shift, its glossier and clearer.  Wes Borland, Sam Rivers, John Otto, DJ Lethal, they all bring it, and Fred Durst ups his game.  But it wasn't just the cleaner production, the fact that there were more songs this time around, guest appearances that spiced it up (Aaron Lewis of Staind, Jonathan Davis of Korn, Method Man.) It was something quite else.

See, in a way, Significant Other is darker than its predecessor and its successor both.  It was more depressing, and this time sparing some space for autumn or rainy evenings.  I'm Broke may have been a song about money troubles, but was bitter.  No Sex, I couldn't even relate to, as I hadn't had any just yet (and wouldn't for years to come), but the messy room, tangled up bedsheets, forgotten cigarette burning in the ashtray imagery of it blew me away.  The Jonathan Davis spot of Nobody Like You was a tale of betrayal, and the delicious melodies brought on, that legendary chorus ("I've got a reason and I want to know") always got me where it hurts.  A Lesson Learned is a lament if there ever was one.  Hell, even Nookie isn't that much fun and games once you hear the creeping angst under the surface.

But two tracks take the cake with this one.  They were both on Side A of my cassette version.  The first was Don't Go Off Wandering.  This one was especially potent not only because of the darker tones captured with its chorus, or the way Fred sang the words ("You don't feel nothin' at all").  It was the verses.  Because in a way, I was a hopeless dreamer stuck in an adolescence I didn't understand or want.  The real world was too unfair, I guess, it seemed.  "Maybe there's more to life than it seems / I'm constantly running from reality / chasing dreams." I was.

The second such track was Rearranged.  Never mind that it was sort of quiet, laid-back, and a relationship song to boot, it was so deliciously sad, so eager to introduce me to a knot in my chest that I couldn't get enough.  The bridge was where it all went down, and since I didn't have the lyrics, I even misheard a line that got to me: "You think that everybody is a saint / I don't think that anybody is like you." Of course, context makes the actual line, "...that everybody is the same" fall into place, but in my head, the lines made perfect sense in isolation.

Within the context of the song, they made even greater sense.  I thought it was sung by a sinner, a monster that I perceived myself to be for the longest time - he had encountered a saint, someone whom had seen him, and accepted him as he was.  But he couldn't take that, he couldn't handle it.  The goodness, it was too much for him, so he rejected it, he said no.  Interesting that even then I thought misery was sometimes too comfortable to give up, and acceptance so alien that it would be unbearable.  I would shed this thought later in my life, but it took a lot to realize it fully.

What makes Significant Other fall short of being perfect is that there are feel-good songs in the album that both disrupt the flow* and serve no purpose.  Those were Just Like This, 9 Teen 90 Nine and Show Me What You Got.  Amidst hard-hitting hits like Trust? or No Sex or even the brainless, mind-numbing but undoubtedly fun Break Stuff* (which also had an anime AMV), these songs had no place and felt like they belonged to the scrap heap, perhaps to be released in a rarities compilation at a later date.  They don't hit as hard, they don't carry the mood, they're just sort of... there.  Softer and somehow seeming more radio-friendly, these bring the album down.

But despite its flaws, and despite how dated it might seem, Significant Other is a 2000 Brigader that is still enjoyable and fun.  Limp Bizkit would veer towards a weird direction in later years, never quite capturing the spark they had with their first two releases, but they would leave behind an interesting legacy.

The other tangent in the 2000 Brigade belonged to my favourite rapper, and for different reasons, obviously.

*Footnotes: 1- An album's flow was something I was beginning to grasp - that it had to go from song to song without odd ones out, or moments that would be breaks from the album's otherwise cohesive structure.
2- Break Stuff's video, along with many others, was parodied by Bowling for Soup in their video for Girl All the Bad Guys Want (off of Drunk Enough to Dance, 2002.) In the video, however, unexpectedly, Slipknot shows up, bottles the Fred Drust and then proceeds to stomp on him.  The video itself is hilarious, by the way.