The Eminem Show (2002)
The Eminem Show is a 2002 conscious hip hop album by Eminem.
By 2002 Eminem had stopped handing his records to someone else to shape. He produced most of his fourth album himself and called in Dr. Dre, Jeff Bass and Mr. Porter for the rest.
The Eminem Show came out on May 26, 2002 through Aftermath Entertainment, Shady Records and Interscope. Dr. Dre, who built the sound of the two albums before it, takes a supporting seat here and turns up as a guest voice instead. The rest of the guest list gathers the people around Eminem at the time: Obie Trice, D12, Nate Dogg, Dina Rae, his manager Paul Rosenberg, and his daughter Hailie Jade.
The writing moves with the credits. His previous two albums worked the frustration of life among America's underclass, and this one breaks hard from that subject matter. The family and business names in the liner notes hint at how far it travels from the earlier material.
It sits fourth in his studio run, and it is the album where he took the board himself rather than rapping over a sound someone else had built for him.
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A few thoughts on The Eminem Show
Start with The Defiant Ones, the documentary series on Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. It walks through the Aftermath and Interscope machinery that released this record, and Dre's move toward the executive chair explains why his name sits on the guest list more than on the production credits here. The Up in Smoke Tour catches much of the same crew on stage two years earlier, the live counterpart to those features. Stans follows the fandom that grew up around this stretch of his career. For reading, Decoded shows a rapper taking his own lyrics apart line by line, useful on an album this self-written, while Can't Stop, Won't Stop puts the era in order and Rollin' with Dre gives the view from inside Dre's camp.