“The Marshall Mathers LP” by Eminem | Album Review

Making the case that Eminem's sophomore album is a transcendent cultural text.

This album review throws it back to Eminem’s mainstream peak, a different time for rap and violence in pop culture.

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Genre: Hip-Hop, Hardcore

Label: Aftermath

Release Date: May 23, 2000

Vibe: 😰

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👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

It’s difficult to fully encapsulate how vital Eminem felt to pop culture back in 2000. At that time, he was more than a mercurial talent behind the mic. He was blowing the doors off rap stereotypes that hadn’t been upended or challenged to the same degree. It’s not like other emcees hadn’t woven complex, violent narrative webs before, but, to that point in history, no one had done it like the man born Marshall Bruce Mathers III. His storytelling was so unsettling, so darkly compelling, because of the language’s compromising nature. Whatever you think of him now, warts and all, there’s no denying he’s one of the greatest writers the genre has ever seen. Raw bar-spitting ability, too. There are few equals and, to this day, arguably none greater. In more than one sense, he’s hip-hop’s answer to Ernest Hemingway: a lightning rod for cultural criticism, prone to public displays of ugliness, and yet an indispensable, incalculably influential craftsman who pushed the art form forward like few had before him.

What makes it tricky to assess The Marshall Mathers LP is reconciling how much of the man made its way into the persona and what that means for his legacy in rap and pop music. He’s been described as a racist, homophobic, and misogynistic, not to mention a confessed domestic abuser. Despite all that baggage, he’s still adored by many label figureheads, critics, and hip-hop acts dominating the current zeitgeist. One example is Kendrick Lamar, who explained the following to Rick Rubin in 2016:

“I got my clarity just studying Eminem when I was a kid. How I got in the studio was all just curiosity. I had a love for the music, but it was curiosity. The day I heard The Marshall Mathers LP*,* I was just like, How does that work? What is he doing? How is he putting his words together like that? What's the track under that? An ad-lib? What is that? And then, Why don't you go in the studio and see? So I do that. Then it became, How's his words cutting through the beat like that? What is he doing that I'm not doing, now that I'm into it? His time is impeccable. When he wants to fall off the beat, it's impeccable. These are things that, through experience and time, I had to learn.”

There’s also the question of the color of Eminem’s skin, which I’d be remiss not to mention in the context of The Marshall Mathers LP. I wasn’t prepared for how wild that content rabbit hole would get and how many genuinely lizard-brained takes related Google searches would unearth. Some of my favorite takes include former BET Head of Programming Stephen Hill connecting Eminem’s cross-over appeal to Black exceptionalism during segregation (I’m not kidding), and this doozy from Alan Light back in 2002:

“[In] many ways, Marshall Mathers is becoming something like this generation’s John Lennon. While you sputter into your Pepsi Blue, consider the following: Lennon and Eminem were both subjects of pickets and protests; they both wrote songs about troubled relationships with their mothers; they both wrote about their strange public lives with their wives; they both wrote about how much they loved their kids. Lennon, of course, was able to find ways to use his voice to advocate for peace rather than just blasting away at litigious family members and various pop stars, but still, few other pop musicians since Lennon have found a way to render their private psychodramas into compelling art as effectively as Eminem.”

The music-buying public loves a psychodrama, at least the one Eminem and Aftermath were selling. Despite whispers that he’d be relegated to one-hit wonder status after the surprise success of “My Name Is,” The Marshall Mathers LP crushed expectations. It sold nearly 2 million copies in its first week, making it one of the fastest-selling albums in U.S. history. It also won two Grammys, was named as the best album of 2000 by multiple publications (including, predictably, Rolling Stone), and, as of this writing, has sold over 12 million copies stateside. Globally, that figure is north of 20 million. It’s one of rap’s greatest “out of nowhere” success stories. At the time, before there was a plethora of streaming channels and a constant deluge of music coming at you every second of every day, Eminem dominated macroculture conversation. He was a fixture on MTV (or, if you’re Canadian, MuchMusic) and cable news channels in equal measure. He was targeted at Senate hearings. Having his CD in your possession could’ve earned you a suspension at my school. Revered or reviled, it didn’t matter. Eminem was at the center of pop culture in 2000.

Plucked out of relative obscurity by Interscope in 1997 after Jimmy Iovine latched onto the Slim Shady EP as a proof of concept, Eminem was paired with veteran hitmaker Dr. Dre, whose pared-down, bass-heavy beats gave the rapper plenty of room to showcase his raw rhyming ability on the proper studio debut, The Slim Shady LP. I revisited that record for this write-up too, and what’s underdiscussed is how much heavy lifting Eminem’s rapping takes on. Tracks like “My Name Is” and “Role Model” are barely songs, more like clotheslines on which he could hang his shock-jock tongue-twisters for his neighbors to gape at. He didn’t care if you got it or not, either. "My album isn't for younger kids to hear,” he said following activist group outrage at his lyrical content. “It has an advisory sticker, and you must be eighteen to get it. That doesn't mean younger kids won't get it, but I'm not responsible for every kid out there. I'm not a role model, and I don't claim to be.”

After The Slim Shady LP, he went underground. Much of this album, which became a much-anticipated follow-up, was written and recorded in his home studio in Ferndale, Michigan. By all accounts, the environment was a cramped, dimly lit basement space he dubbed "The Shelter,” the air thick with stale cigarettes and fast food leftovers. That suffocating and electric atmosphere was the perfect incubator for the paranoid, visceral atmosphere that’s inescapable on this record. According to collaborators, Eminem was reeling from multiple parties taking aim at him and his newfound fame. He was navigating a troubled marriage, facing staunch criticism for his lyrics, and being sued by his mother. That tension would inform nearly everything on this album. He recorded it in just two months, a pace that makes the surgical precision of every sonic element that much more impressive. The soundscape, created primarily by Em, Dre, and the Bass Brothers, is simultaneously lo-fi and cinematic. It sounds like the walls were closing in on him.

It’s worth lingering on Dre’s contributions for a moment, because they frequently take a backseat to Eminem’s rapping in conversation. His fingerprints are all over this record, with tracks like “Kill You” and “The Real Slim Shady” infused with his signature bounce. However, there’s an edge to his production in Mathers that sets it apart from other work he’d done in the past. In between those kick drum thuds and snare hits, the beats are purposely sparse, making terrific creative use of the negative space they leave behind. Sometimes, those crevices are filled in with the most random samples or instrumentation, like the weirdo harpsichord on the latter song. I remember being floored by the choice when I first heard the track. Like, could they even do that? To this day, I’m not positive it totally works, especially when set against the aesthetic throughout the rest of the LP, but damned if it doesn’t burrow its way into your brain and stays there long after the song ends.

When it comes to his lyrical provocations, I’ve always thought Eminem has far more self-awareness than most pundits and fans give him credit for. His unflinching, occasionally upsetting songwriting disposition grapples with some of the ugliest aspects of a troubled mind, daring you to look away, similar to car crash footage replayed in slow motion. The most harrowing track on this album is easily “Kim,” a murder fantasy so vivid and horrifying that it reset the boundaries for what horrorcore could be in a hip-hop context. The echoing screams and choking sobs are all disturbingly real, to the point where you feel implicated in the action as a listener. On the flip side, you have “Criminal,” the closing track that’s a sneering send-up of the Slim Shady persona’s offensive bent. In a flurry of punchlines, Eminem openly mocks his detractors by regurgitating (or is it glorifying) seemingly every blanket criticism he’d received to that point in his career. As a double feature, they provide a fascinating contrast in self-examination—one is almost too raw to enjoy as entertainment, while the other is too cynical to dismiss as fiction. They do a good job of summarizing the paradox at the heart of Eminem’s appeal: sincerity and satire, violence and parody, all forced to do this chaotic dance as one.

If there’s a single reason to listen to The Marshall Mathers LP, it’s “Stan.” It’s not only Eminem’s best song but, irrespective of genre, era, or cultural movement, one of the most affecting pieces of music I’ve ever heard. The structure felt revolutionary at the time of its release: a full-on narrative poem in four distinct acts, all delivered entirely in character. The drama culminates in a self-referential twist that puts an exclamation point on a story that still has the ability to chill you to the bone. Eminem’s writing is incredibly detailed, taking its time to flesh out the protagonist’s unhinged mindset through misspelled tattoos and gradually escalating violence. According to the rapper, an alternate, even more explosive ending was written but ultimately scrapped, which I think would’ve been too over-the-top, even for this record. As is, it’s an undeniable masterpiece, one that dissects the artist-audience relationship for the digital age with such stark honesty that it created a whole new term for obsessive fandom. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that, in 100 years from now, budding artists will still be using “Stan” as both a study tool and a standard bearer for excellent world-building.

Despite the cultural firestorms it ignited, The Marshall Mathers LP has stood the test of time. It’s a blistering, confessional, and often confrontational text, but it never courted controversy simply for the sake of it. Instead, the despondency and paranoia it grapples with have only become more prevalent in the years since its release. The outrage machine he goes to war against has only intensified, entrenching itself across hundreds of digital platforms and, even if we should know better by now, arguably poisons more conversation than it did back in 2000. Eminem wasn’t just lampooning his haters—he was fixated on the mechanics of moral panics and how cultural institutions fan those flames because it’s more profitable than extinguishing them. They may be disquieting questions to ask, but that doesn’t mean they’re unworthy ones. Politicians denounced it, watchdogs protested it, and “experts” dissected it from every angle, yet none of that pearl-clutching dulled this record’s resonance. If anything, it made it stronger.

Of course, that level of cultural impact would be difficult for anyone to sustain over a career’s timeline, and Eminem is no exception. He’s had plenty of hits since The Marshall Mathers LP, but his stature as a hip-hop deity has waned. His attempts to bridge furious, technical rap with hooks that pander to the Top 40 crowd have mostly rung hollow, and his most recent albums often feel like overlong rebuttals shouted in a town square that no one occupies with any regularity (example: he’s confusingly gone on record as being anti-Trump and anti-pronuon). Still, when his name comes up in GOAT rapper conversations, The Marshall Mathers LP is the uncontested centerpiece. It represents the moment when everything clicked for him: form, ferocity, and fearlessness. Even his harshest critics have to acknowledge its brilliance and historical weight, especially since much of his commentary has become part of everyday life.

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