352. Eminem, "The Slim Shady LP"

 


When I was a kid - ok, maybe older than "kid," maybe "adolescent," like I'm thinking 12 or 13? - I used to draw these little comics for other kids at school.  I was kind of an awkward kid and wasn't really into playing sports or stuff like that but these comics were a big hit and my first taste of media fame.  I wish I could say they were intelligent or thought-provoking but they were really just gross-out shit.  Like I would come up with the grossest stuff a 12-year-old boy could think of and draw it up and make a story out of it, and it would be like 5 or 6 pages and man, my target demo - other 12 or 13-year-old boys - really liked it.  Stuff like arms getting chopped off and force-fed to their former owners and animals ripping people apart and I don't know, it was just me trying to gross out the other kids, which they fucking loved.  If my school had a Billboard, my Gross Comics would have gone diamond.  They were passed around and I was doing like commissions by the end, where a kid would describe the disgusting scenario he wanted and I would do it up.  In the end, I think the school found out about it and suggested to my parents that my talents would be better directed elsewhere.

This album is Eminem's version of that.  Shot through with the most juvenile, disgusting, repulsive lyrics imaginable, it's clearly designed as a big fuck you to polite society, with Beats by Dre, literally. Want some underage date rape?  He's got you (from "Guilty Conscience"):

Now listen to me, while you're kissin her cheek
And smearin her lipstick, I slipped this in her drink
Now all you gotta do is nibble on this little bitch's earlobe...
(Yo! This girl's only fifteen years old
You shouldn't take advantage of her, that's not fair)
Yo, look at her bush... does it got hair? (Uh huh!)
Fuck this bitch right here on the spot bare
Til she passes out and she forgot how she got there

Or how about a father cooing in baby talk to his child about killing the child's mother?  ON IT (from "'97 Bonnie and Clyde"):

And mama said she wants to show how far she can float
And don't worry about that little boo-boo on her throat
It's just a little scratch - it don't hurt, her was eatin
Dinner while you were sweepin and spilled ketchup on her shirt
Mama's messy isn't she? We'll let her wash off in the water
And me and you can pway by ourselves, can't we?

Ugh, whatever.  It might be disturbing if it weren't so juvenile.  Anyway, Eminem is unquestionably a talented rapper, and luckily his albums got better, and I'm hoping one of the better albums is on this list, because I don't love this one.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Gotta say no on this one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more