Eminem arrived on a major label in February 1999 with a second self doing most of the talking. The Slim Shady LP hands its verses to that alter ego, a cartoon of the rapper who reaches for the worst available thing to say and then says it deadpan.

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine recruited him, and the sessions ran out of Ferndale, Michigan, with production split between Eminem, Dre and the Bass Brothers. Dre's beats are spare and clean: a low bassline, a nagging keyboard figure, a lot of open air around the voice. The space is the point, because the voice does all the work. "My Name Is" introduces the persona over a slack sing-song loop. "Guilty Conscience" stages Dre and Eminem as the two shoulder-voices arguing over somebody's bad idea. The rapping is nasal and exact, sliding from mumbled aside to full shriek inside a single bar.

The content is deliberately offensive, and that is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up: horrorcore violence played as slapstick, misogyny and homophobia in the punchlines, drugs as a running gag, and Eminem's own family used as raw material. Plenty of the outrage in 1999 was earned. The technique survives anyway, along with the total commitment to the bit. Go in knowing what it is.