Stepehn Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

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. 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. To Eminem's credit, he decided to exploit that confusion on his masterful second record, The Marshall Mathers LP. 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. It is, however, a fairly brilliant expansion of his debut, turning his spare, menacing hip-hop into a hyper-surreal, wittily disturbing thrill ride. 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. The production is nearly as evocative as the raps, with liquid bass lines, stuttering rhythms, slight sound effects, and spacious soundscapes. There may not be overpowering hooks on every track, but the album works as a whole, always drawing the listener in. 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. As an artist, he's supposed to create his own world, and with this terrific second effort, he certainly has. 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.

Lizz Mendez Berry, Amazon.com

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up? On Eminem's sophomore album, he can't decide who he wants to be: the deranged pseudo-psycho of the Slim Shady LP, or a nice guy who just likes to rhyme about slicing and dicing his girlfriend ("Kim"). Of course, according to Eminem, he's just kidding. He refuses to take responsibility for the misogynistic, homophobic bile he spews, whining that he's the victim of people who don't get his unique sense of humor. It's good old America's fault if the kids aren't alright (Eminem blames bad parenting), and he's just capitalizing on Uncle Sam's dark side. On the Marshall Mathers LP, he's ambivalent about his fame, angry at his life, pissed off that people take him seriously, and fightin' mad at boy bands--and a lot of other white people. But the blue-eyed brat is acutely aware of his status as rap's resident alien: he has the most offensive mouth running, but never uses the "N" word. He gives lyrical love to tragic (black) legends like Tupac and Biggie while dissing white rappers hard. Even sitting duck Puffy gets the kid-gloves treatment. Of course, Eminem is an interesting, witty rapper, and there's some nice production on this CD, courtesy of Dr. Dre and others. But the hatred in Eminem's rhymes makes the album rotten at its core. And his protests that Slim Shady is just a persona become less convincing with each arrest. Then again, Eminem's got it hard: he's rich, famous, white, and male.

Chris Campion, Amazon.co.uk

His second album finds Eminem struggling to contain the pressures of success. And he's dealing it with it disgracefully. The Detroit rapper's multiple identities are more mixed up than ever, with Marshall Mathers fighting for prominence against his alter egos: Eminem, Slim Shady, Kenneth Kaniff and his public image. Don't be fooled by the album title: apart from the eponymous "Marshall Mathers" (which runs the lyrical gamut from maudlin to maniacal) you won't learn too much about "the real Slim Shady" here. As fiction bleeds into reality, Eminem aggravates the wound to increase the flow. The Dr Dre/Mel-Man productions on this record don't have the slap-happy bounce of those from the Slim Shady LP; all drums and bass, they're ghostly, minimised slabs of roto-funk. Except, of course for the gleefully self-referential single "The Real Slim Shady", for which Dre appropriately cuts in some of the picked-guitar from his own "Forgot About Dre". Eminem's own co-productions with F.B.T. veer from the bounce to the ounce of "Drug Ballad" to the full-metal jacket of "Kim", where you get to find out all the gruesome details of how Eminem's paramour ended up in the back of that trunk (from Slim Shady's "'97 Bonnie and Clyde"). And believe me, it ain't pretty. If anything there's a lesson to be learnt here: money, success, drugs, murderous intent, mental trauma and schizophrenia are all just as American as apple pie.

Big Sexy, Barnes & Noble

Teetering on the line between sadistic and brilliant, Eminem (a.k.a. Marshall Mathers III, a.k.a Slim Shady) once again establishes himself as rap's baddest boy -- no mean feat in a world where Ol' Dirty Bastard, Kool Keith, and Luther Campbell freak on the mic. On this supreme follow-up to his breakthrough THE SLIM SHADY LP, Eminem displays ever greater doses of creativity, ambition, and rhyme sensibility. When he's not taking venomous, hysterically funny pot-shots at his critics, squeaky-clean teen idols Christina Aguilera and 'N Sync, or his estranged mommy dearest, this mischevious MC is an ingenious storyteller, delivering cinematic masterpieces such as "Kim" (about his baby's much-maligned mother) and "Stan" (about a suicidal, obsessed fan). And while Slim Shady proves he can battle any MC rhyme for rhyme, as on the lyrical sparring session "B**** Please II," featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, and Xzibit, the album's real highlights occur when Em riffs on celebrity -- his own and others. On the abrasive "Who Knew" and the acoustic-guitar driven "Marshall Mathers" -- which give equal weight to his concerns about playing the twisted role model and his off-color cracks about paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve and slain fashion designer Gianni Versace -- Em comes across as the homo-phobic and chauvinist regular guy next door who merely wants to entertain his fans. Like Redd Foxx and Schoolly D before him, Eminem revels in pushing our politically correct buttons. With each insanely rude crack, you'll find yourself asking, Did he really say that? He did - and love him or hate him, that's exactly where his brilliance lies.

Personnel: Eminem, Snoop, Xzibit, Nate Dogg, Sticky Fingaz (rap vocals); Dido (vocals); Jeff Bass, Steve Berman, Paul "Bunyan" Rosenberg (spoken vocals); Mike Elizondo (guitar, keyboards, bass); Sean Cruise, John Bingham (guitar); Tommy Coster, Jr., Camara Kambon (keyboards); DJ Head (programming). D-12: Kon Artis, Proof, Kuniva, Swifty, Bizarre (rap vocals). Producers include: Dr. Dre, The 45 King, Mel-Man, F.B.T., Eminem. Engineers: Richard "Segal" Huredia, Mike Butler, Aaron Lepley.

THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. "The Real Slim Shady" won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP was nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for Album Of The Year. A Caucasian rapper from Detroit, a Dr. Dre disciple with bright blonde hair--by rights Eminem should be the biggest cheeseball in the hip-hop universe. However, his debut, THE SLIM SHADY LP, contained clever rhymes and even the occasional innovation. His sophomore effort, THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP, is about as subtle as a Detroit Devil's Night and proves Eminem's no fluke, but instead a most unlikely rap visionary. While his horror/shock rap can be repetitive, it's more often hilarious, as he and his Slim Shady character skewer anyone and everyone, notably the MTV-based world that surrounded him after the success of his first record. Few can come up with rhymes as consistently clever as this Motor City madman, and lines which will be repeated as long as this CD is spun. The most startling moment has to be "Stan," featuring haunting, ethereal guest vocals from Dido; an incongruously sublime track, it spins an o henry-meets-'60s teenage-death-song tale of obsessed fan worship gone terribly wrong.

Cheryl Botchick, CMJ New Music Report

Eminem's sophomore album is one vicious prank; anyone rushing to pick it up on the strength of its cartoonish, ubiquitous first single, "The Real Slim Shady," is hardly expecting a venomous bomb like this. The Marshall Mathers LP's protagonist is 100% Slim Shady, Em's "dark" and, quite frankly, severely fucked-up alter-ego. Musically, the album is a triumph, featuring the unmistakable production skills of his mentor Dr. Dre and liberal doses of Eminem's trademark nasal, rattling delivery and ingenious rhyme skills. Lyrically, Slim Shady's misogynist, psychotically violent hip-hop persona hits shocking new extremes, but perhaps Em's most astounding skill is hidden within the fury. Take this passage from "Kim," a song where Slim snaps and takes his girlfriend to a secluded area and kills her: "Bullshit, you bitch/ Don't fuckin' lie to me!" he hollers over her screams in the midst of a murderous jealous tirade, then immediately whips into comic relief with some run-of-the-mill road rage before he reveals the broken-hearted kid at the core of the entire miserable tale: "Kim? Kim?/Why don't you like me?" Are these lyrics "wrong"? Are they art? No matter which side you're on, you can't deny their searing honesty, and that's what makes Eminem one of pop music's most compelling artists.

James Poletti, DOT Music, June 2nd 2000

"You don't wanna f**k with shady cause Shady gonna f**kin kill you." So begins Eminem's second album and extended rant directed at the American moral majority, obsessive fans, teen pop stars and, y'know, pretty much anyone who isn't Eminem or his favourite producer Dr Dre.

But, as tiresome as these themes become, the skilful, though frequently distasteful, wit with which the young Detroit upstart delivers the rhymes keeps 'The Marshall Mathers LP' on it's toes. The album's second track, 'Stan', produced by The 45 King, gives an early insight into the changing world of Eminem. The song records a series of increasingly obsessive letters sent to our hero by a somewhat disturbed fan, culminating in the eventual written response from a paternal Eminem who warns against mistreating your girlfriend and investing too much in his own off the cuff lyrics. Which is good of him.

"How the f**k was I supposed to know?" asks Eminem on 'Who Knew', like a spoilt, indignant child who refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Conflicting with the sense of social responsibility that he carefully crafts on 'Stan', this seems to be his ultimate conclusion throughout an album's worth of dissing 'bitches', 'homos' and all the other targets of abuse that buzz throughout his little mind.

What's happening here is just the latest manifestation of what is often referred to as Dr Dre's 'marketing genius', though figuring out that upsetting a lot of old people and moral guardians leads to good sales in the youth market is hardly rocket science. The depressing thing is that this particular brand of controversy hasn't been stimulated by the image of KRS-1 staring out the window with a 9mm on 'By Any Means Necessary' or Public Enemy taking the institutional racism of white-owned American record companies to court on 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions'.

This is lowest common denominator hip hop, Dre's 'marketing genius' realising that the Beavis and Buttheads all over America who lap up Limp Bizkit's fusion of rock and rap are crying out for a dumbed down, stupid white rap icon - along with, it seems, our own British rock press. And here he is with no special respect for the often proud culture that he gleefully tramples under his self-obsessed rantings.

The production, however, is first rate, Dre proving that he really is on fire at the moment. Eminem's microphone skills are similarly beyond question – though a little too shouty on occasion. It's just that his self-indulgent and irritatingly stupid rants will prove too much for any audience that recognises irony in Beavis and Butthead.

Mike Ross, JAM! Music/Edmonton Sun, May 27th 2000

Anything less than his shocking, violent, sexist, vulgar, outrageous, hilarious debut album would be seen as going soft - and that would be death to this white trash-talking rapper.

Fans should therefore be pleased with The Marshall Mathers LP, a shocking, violent, sexist, vulgar, outrageous, hilarious sequel similar in almost every respect to Eminem's The Slim Shady EP. It's practically the same record, the musical equivalent of Quentin Tarantino's worst nightmare rendered by a convincing actor/rapper whose mood ranges from manic anger to homicidal insanity. Seriously, Eminem ought to make slasher movies - and put his twisted imagination to more "acceptable" use.

There is one new element: He's famous. So what you have here is a talented rapper and clever writer obsessed with himself and his celebrity, including the fact he was sued by his own mom. "Hi, mom," he says at one point, just one reference in a string of matricidal abuse far too vulgar to print. Bye, mom.

If Mr. Mathers ever thinks any horrible thing he doesn't rap about, it's not evident here. Producer and mentor Dr. Dre has crafted grooves that flow smoothly under Eminem's non-stop spew of self-absorbed invective. Along with school shootings, domestic disputes and Christina Aguilera, the theme of "I'm a poor, misunderstood rap superstar" surfaces repeatedly.

Samples: "You want me to fix up lyrics while the president (has sex)? ... I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn't, why would I say I am? ... Every time I write a rhyme, these people think it's a crime" and so on and on and on.

Before it runs out of steam and sinks into gratuitous guns 'n' thugs cliches, this album has a few bright spots. This guy may have an ego the size of Puff Daddy's legal bills, but he sure is entertaining at times.

This being said, M&M better delve into more interesting subject matter if he's going to grow as an artist. Otherwise, as he says, "Once you're hung from the drapes, it's curtains."

There is much to admire in misanthropy. No time for such petty factional concerns as racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, narcissism, xenophobia... the misanthropist is the real deal. An equal prejudice employer, he hates us all. Just don't hang out with him, that's all.
We are fortunate right now to live in a time of great misanthropy, and we are blessed with the smartest mouthpiece for that perfect loathing that maybe there ever was. His name is Marshall Mathers, you know him as Eminem and this is his second major album.

His first, of course, was 'The Slim Shady LP', an hilarious collection of scurrilous fictions based on the proposition that the grossest equals the mostest. Basically South Park times a million, 'Slim Shady' was a cartoon orgasm, high on the sheer audacity of turning a mirror to society and selling that grotesque reflection back to the very suburbs and ghettos from whence it came. A perfect parable of how the freaks shall inherit the earth, the more controversy stuck to the gloriously revved-up repugnancy of 'Slim Shady' like turd to a blanket, the more attention he gained and the more rekkids he sold. Surely this was the classic case of success being the sweetest revenge for all those years of broken homes and bully beatings.

Uh-oh. Not so. 'The Marshall Mathers LP' is real twisted shit - one long, disillusioned whine. Like that other great modern pop misanthropist, Robbie Williams, Mathers has discovered that there is no inner gratification in fame. On the contrary, celebrity status has just multiplied the opportunities for humankind to roll over and expose its ugly, self-serving underbelly, and magnified the fact that life is just one long letdown.

During the gruelling assault course of lyrical genius that pours itself into the 18 tracks on this album, Marshall Mathers is used, abused and betrayed by - deep breath - the press, his fans, his fellow rappers, pop music in general, the government, his mother, TV, his girlfriend, his friends, his record company, radio, other members of his family, God, his own fucked-up self... In other words, it's not a lotta laughs being Eminem.

Condense it to its essence, and misanthropy boils down to what Mike Tyson said on CNN: "People suck." And in taking Tyson's instinctual bon mot and spinning it into storytelling of breathtaking skill and dexterity, Marshall Mathers turns the torchlight on the deepest malignancy at the heart of our rotten society: rank, festering hypocrisy. "You want me to fix my words up/While the President's getting his dick sucked", he roars on 'Who Knew'. "Never knew I would ever get this big/I never knew I would affect this kid/I never knew I would get him to slit his wrists/ I never knew I would get him to hit this bitch..."

Mathers is pig-sick of the whole damn deal, being on the defensive all the time, justifying his talent, parlaying the blame. "I don't do black music/I don't do white music", he raps at one point. But, just as he defends himself from accusations that being a "wigga" is all that got him where he is, he knows the inverse to be true; he knows that the ugly racist facet of the major record company marketing machine is, in part, exactly what made him rich. And we have the audacity to slag him off. Our hypocrisy disgusts him. After all, he's just what we made him.

But for every OTT outpouring of rage (the super-brutal 'Kim' must have been deliberately designed unlistenable - his revenge upon his listener), Mathers still shows he is the stink bomb. 'Stan' is a wonderful short story, an astute study in extreme fandom, while his sideswipe at Puffy and Jennifer Lopez, 'I'm Back', proves he is still the daddy of outrage: basically, the Double-M says he would screw her even if she was his mother - without a condom - sire a son/brother and deny all responsibility. You gotta admire an imagination that misguided.

'The Marshall Mathers LP' may be the whitenoise of America's Most Unwanted, but it is also the product of a talent supremely Untouchable.

Steve Lowe, Q Magazine, October 2000

Eminem's debut album, '99's The Slim Shady LP, made you simultaneously laugh and worry for the world. Unfortunately, the pop phenomenon seems to have lost his pop. Hip hop follow-ups are often heavy on anti-fame woefulness, but nothing prepares you for the astonishingly sour tone of this album. The Bugs Bunny-gone-bad chattering and Doctor Dre's baroque beats are still in place but, like a schoolboy claiming innocence after being caught red-handed, Eminem now disingenuously feigns bewilderment at the outrage his first album instigated. One song, The Real Slim Shady, edges towards his former vivacity, but on tracks such as Criminal he simply, lamentably loses his cool. True, even misdirected, Eminem's disaffection sucks you in and the wholesale nihilism can still provoke shivers. But it all used to be more fun.

Toure, RollingStone, issue 844/845

Welcome to the summer of Shady. Where a very blond, white-trash homeboy from Detroit named Marshall becomes the king of hip-hop. It's like something out of science fiction.
Eminem's 1999 triple-platinum major-label debut, The Slim Shady LP, was a shot in hip-hop's arm, the grand entrance of a hurricane dressed as a Detroit kid with major-league skills and a potential mental disorder. This time out, he's more funny and much more scary. On The Marshall Mathers LP he hits you with the lyrical complexity and detailed narratives of Biggie, the hilarious, is-he-kidding-or-not button-pushing of Howard Stern, the disaffected angry-white-boy-ness of Fight Club and the fearless, kill-me-if-you-can energy of Tupac. He has a macabre imagination to rival Satan's and an incredible ability to create new rhyme patterns. He has a frightening proclivity to spit venom one moment and humor the next, and a never-ending slew of jaw-dropping punch lines. He is, simply, better than any other MC in hip-hop except for Jay-Z -- yes, better than Beanie Sigel, Pharoahe Monch, Snoop, Common, Prodigy, Xzibit, Redman, Big Pun and all of the Lox. It feels dangerous to think of a white boy nearing the aesthetic zenith of the celebration of black maleness called hip-hop, but just as blacks have to be twice as good to get ahead in life, to get ahead in hip-hop Eminem has had to be twice as ill.

Expect, during this summer of Shady, to hear Marshall Mathers following you around the hip-hop nation, flowing from boomboxes, trucks and lips the same way Dre's The Chronic, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx . . . and B.I.G.'s Life After Death once did. You may find Eminem popping out of your own mouth, because he's the most quotable MC alive, both consistently funny and ridiculously far over the top. He rarely uses the same rhyme pattern twice, and he changes his vocal style again and again on Marshall Mathers, often in the space of one verse -- he uses six different voices in one stretch of "Criminal." His feelings on Jennifer Lopez: "I'm sorry, Puff/But I don't give a fuck if this chick was my own mother/I'd still fuck her with no rubber." And life in Detroit: "That's why we're crowned the murder capital still!/This ain't Detroit!/This is motherfuckin' Hamburger Hill!/We don't do drive-bys/We park in front of houses and shoot/And when the police come, we fuckin' shoot it out with 'em, too!"

Expect, also, many of these tracks to become the beat of the summer. Dr. Dre and partner-of-late Mel-Man produced much of the album, while Eminem and his Detroit crew, F.B.T., handled most of the rest. The sound shifts between slick, bright, melodic funk that's so R&B-ish, you can dance to it ("Who Knew," "The Real Slimy Shady") and slow, driving, outrageous-bass hardcore raw hip-hop made for cruising in lowriders ("Amityville," "I'm Back"). Seven years after The Chronic and fourteen after the dawn of N.W.A, Dre is that legendary coach taking a third different team to a national title, still making your head hurt from all the nodding, still crazy dope after all these years.

Finally, this summer you'll also see Eminem become 2000's Luther Campbell or Sister Souljah, the rapper attacked in public for supposedly bringing our standards to new lows. His insistent, tiring gay bashing almost begs you to hate him: "I'll stab you in the head, whether you're fag or les/Or a homosex, a hermaph or a trans-a-ves. . . ./Hate fags? The answer's yes." This may just be grade-school bullshit, as Eminem claims, but it's bullshit nonetheless. But the man who pronounced that he was sent here to "piss the world off" knows that being hated is essential to his appeal. It creates a boundary between his fans and outsiders, whether they be parents or his much-maligned TRL peer Christina Aguilera.

But there's too much anger on The Marshall Mathers LP for it to be just a calculated scheme to win fans. Eminem is a kid who was brutally beaten up in school and raised by a mother who recently hit him with a $10 million defamation-of-character lawsuit for saying things like "A mother did drugs, tar, liquor, cigarettes and speed/The baby came out disfigured, ligaments indeed/It was a seed who would grow up just as crazy as she/Don't dare make fun of that baby/'Cause that baby was me. . . ./How the fuck you supposed to grow up when you weren't raised?" The album opens with "Kill You," in which he threatens Mom with guess what.

Things degenerate from there into the mountain of bile reserved for Kim, the mother of his baby and the star of the world's most public ongoing murder fantasy. The song named after her on Marshall Mathers is the prequel to the previous album's " '97 Bonnie and Clyde" -- in which Eminem speaks to his daughter, Hailie, as he dumps Kim's body in a lake. But where "Bonnie and Clyde" is a clever takeoff on Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us," "Kim" has Eminem screaming at his ex in an insane stream-of-consciousness hate spew. There's little humor to blunt the shock of the hellbent animosity of "Kim." What makes it powerful is that, of course, he doesn't just hate her. It's the most harrowing sick-love song since Guns n' Roses' "Used to Love Her."

Eminem could be the Axl Rose of hip-hop, a rage-filled, drug-addled, homicidal, charismatic talent and bona fide megastar. The Marshall Mathers LP is a car-crash record: loud, wild, dangerous, out of control, grotesque, unsettling. It's also impossible to pull your ears away from.

© Frank Steven Groen