Eminem - Studio Albums Collection 1999-2013

Eminem is the best-selling hip-hop artist of all-time and the best-selling artist of the 2000s with US album sales at over 32.2 million during the decade. In total Eminem has sold 45 million albums in the United States as a solo artist and over 31 million digital singles. His worldwide albums and singles sales stand at more than 155 million. He has earned forty-two platinum certifications, five number one singles and six number one albums from the RIAA.








The Slim Shady LP is the second studio album and first commercial release from the American rapper Eminem. Recorded in Ferndale, Michigan following Eminem's recruitment by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the album features production from Dr. Dre, the Bass Brothers, and Eminem himself. The majority of the record's lyrical content is written from the perspective of the rapper's alter ego Slim Shady, whom the rapper created on Slim Shady EP (1997). The lyrics are noted for their over-the-top depictions of violence and heavy use of profanity.

Given his subsequent superstardom, culminating in no less than an Academy Award, it may be easy to overlook exactly how demonized Eminem was once his mainstream debut album, The Slim Shady LP, grabbed the attention of pop music upon its release in 1999. Then, it wasn't clear to every listener that Eminem was, as they say, an unreliable narrator, somebody who slung satire, lies, uncomfortable truths, and lacerating insights with vigor and venom, blurring the line between reality and parody, all seemingly without effort. The Slim Shady LP bristles with this tension, since it's never always clear when Marshall Mathers is joking and when he's dead serious. This was unsettling in 1999, when nobody knew his back-story, and years later, when his personal turmoil is public knowledge, it still can be unsettling, because his words and delivery are that powerful. Of course, nowhere is this more true than on "97 Bonnie and Clyde," a notorious track where he imagines killing his wife and then disposing of the body with his baby daughter in tow. There have been more violent songs in rap, but few more disturbing, and it's not because of what it describes, it's how he describes it – how the perfectly modulated phrasing enhances the horror and black humor of his words. Eminem's supreme gifts are an expansive vocabulary and vivid imagination, which he unleashes with wicked humor and unsparing anger in equal measure. The production – masterminded by Dr. Dre but also helmed in large doses by Marky and Jeff Bass, along with Marshall himself – mirrors his rhymes, with their spare, intricately layered arrangements enhancing his narratives, which are always at the forefront. As well they should be – there are few rappers as wildly gifted verbally as Eminem. At a time when many rappers were stuck in the stultifying swamp of gangsta clichés, Eminem broke through the hardcore murk by abandoning the genre's familiar themes and flaunting a style with more verbal muscle and imagination than any of his contemporaries. Years later, as the shock has faded, it's those lyrical skills and the subtle mastery of the music that still resonate, and they're what make The Slim Shady LP one of the great debuts in both hip-hop and modern pop music. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Public Service Announcement (Skit)
02. My Name Is
03. Guilty Conscience (Feat. Dr. Dre)
04. Brain Damage
05. Paul (Skit)
06. If I Had
07. 97' Bonnie & Clyde
08. Bitch (Skit)
09. Role Model
10. Lounge (Skit)
11. My Fault
12. Ken Kaniff (Skit)
13. Cum On Everybody
14. Rock Bottom
15. Just Don't Give A Fuck
16. Soap (Skit)
17. As The World Turns
18. I'm Shady
19. Bad Meets Evil (Feat. Royce Da 5'9')
20. Still Don't Gve A Fuck


Album Released: February 23, 1999












The Marshall Mathers LP is the third studio album by American rapper Eminem. The album was produced mostly by Dr. Dre and Eminem, along with The 45 King, Bass Brothers, and Mel-Man. Released a year after Eminem's breakout album The Slim Shady LP, the record features more introspective lyricism including the rapper's response to his sudden rise to fame and controversy surrounding his lyrics.

The album sold more than 1.76 million copies in the US in the first week alone, becoming the fastest-selling studio album by any solo artist in American music history. In 2001, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and was nominated for Album of the Year. The album was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2011 for shipping 10 million copies in the United States. By 2012, the album had sold 11,000,000 copies in the United States and more than 32 million copies worldwide.

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 basslines, 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. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Public Service Announcement 2000
02. Kill You
03. Stan (Feat. Dido)
04. Paul (Skit)
05. Who Knew
06. Steve Berman (Skit)
07. The Way I Am
08. The Real Slim Shady
09. Remember Me? (Feat. RBX And Sticky Fingaz)
10. I'm Back
11. Marshall Mathers
12. Ken Kaniff (Skit)
13. Drug Ballad (Feat. Dina Rae)
14. Amityville (Feat. Bizarre)
15. Bitch Please II (Feat. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, And Nate Dogg)
16. Kim
17. Under The Influence (Feat. D-12)
18. Criminal


Album Released: May 23, 2000












The Eminem Show is the fourth studio album by American rapper Eminem. It was the best-selling album of 2002 in the United States, with sales of 7.6 million copies. At the 2003 Grammy Awards it was nominated for Album of the Year and became Eminem's third LP in four years to win the award for Best Rap Album. On March 7, 2011, the album was certified ten-times-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, making it Eminem's second album to receive a Diamond certification in the United States. Since its release in 2002 the album has sold 10,500,000 copies in the United States and more than 30 million copies worldwide.

It's all about the title. First time around, Eminem established his alter ego, Slim Shady – the character who deliberately shocked and offended millions, turning Eminem into a star. Second time at bat, he turned out The Marshall Mathers LP, delving deeper into his past while revealing complexity as an artist and a personality that helped bring him an even greater audience and much, much more controversy. Third time around, it's The Eminem Show – a title that signals that Eminem's public persona is front and center, for the very first time. And it is, as he spends much of the album commenting on the media circus that dominated on his life ever since the release of Marshall Mathers. This, of course, encompasses many, many familiar subjects – his troubled childhood; his hatred of his parents; his turbulent relationship with his ex-wife, Kim (including the notorious incident when he assaulted a guy who allegedly kissed her – the event that led to their divorce); his love of his daughter, Hailie; and, of course, all the controversy he generated, notably the furor over his alleged homophobia and his scolding from Lynne Cheney, which leads to furious criticism about the hypocrisy of America and its government. All this is married to a production very similar to that of its predecessor – spare, funky, fluid, and vibrant, punctuated with a couple of ballads along the way. So, that means The Eminem Show is essentially a holding pattern, but it's a glorious one – one that proves Eminem is the gold standard in pop music in 2002, delivering stylish, catchy, dense, funny, political music that rarely panders (apart from a power ballad "Dream On" rewrite on "Sing for the Moment" and maybe the sex rap "Drips," that is). Even if there is little new ground broken, the presentation is exceptional – Dre never sounds better as a producer than when Eminem pushes him forward (witness the stunning oddity "Square Dance," a left-field classic with an ominous waltz beat) and, with three albums under his belt, Eminem has proven himself to be one of the all-time classic MCs, surprising as much with his delivery as with what he says. Plus, the undercurrent of political anger – not just attacking Lynne Cheney, but raising questions about the Bush administration – gives depth to his typical topics, adding a new, spirited dimension to his shock tactics as notable as the deep sentimental streak he reveals on his odes to his daughter. Perhaps the album runs a little too long at 20 songs and 80 minutes and would have flowed better if trimmed by 25 minutes, but that's a typical complaint about modern hip-hop records. Fact is, it still delivers more great music than most of its peers in rock or rap, and is further proof that Eminem is an artist of considerable range and dimension. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Curtains Up (Skit)
02. White America
03. Business
04. Cleanin' Out My Closet
05. Square Dance
06. The Kiss (Skit)
07. Soldier
08. Say Goodbye Hollywood
09. Drips (Feat. Obie Trice)
10. Without Me
11. Paul Rosenberg (Skit)
12. Sing For The Moment
13. Superman (Feat. Dina Rae)
14. Hailie's Song
15. Steve Berman (Skit)
16. When The Music Stops (Feat. D12)
17. Say What You Say (Feat. Dr. Dre)
18. 'Till I Collapse (Feat. Nate Dogg)
19. My Dad's Gone Crazy (Feat. Hailie Jade)
20. Curtains Close (Skit)


Album Released: May 28, 2002












Encore is the fifth studio album by American rapper Eminem. Its release was set for November 16, 2004, but was moved up to November 12 (coincidentally, exactly eight years to the day his debut album, Infinite, was released) after the album was leaked to the Internet. Encore sold 710,000 copies in its first three days, and went on to sell over 1.5 million copies in its first two weeks of release in the United States, certified quadruple-platinum that mid-December. Nine months after its release, worldwide sales of the album stood at 11 million copies. As of November 2013, the album has sold 5,343,000 copies in the United States.

Eminem took a hiatus after the release of his first motion picture, 8 Mile, in late 2002, but it never seemed like he went away. Part of that is the nature of celebrity culture, where every star cycles through gossip columns regardless of whether they have a project in the stores or theaters, and part of it is that Marshall Mathers kept busy, producing records by his protégés D12, Obie Trice, and 50 Cent – all hit albums – with the latter turning into the biggest new hip-hop star of 2003. All this activity tended to obscure the fact that Eminem hadn't released a full-length album of new material since The Eminem Show in early summer 2002, and that two and a half years separated that album and its highly anticipated sequel, Encore. As the title suggests, Encore is a companion piece to The Eminem Show the way that The Marshall Mathers LP mirrored The Slim Shady LP, offering a different spin on familiar subjects. Where his first two records dealt primarily with personas and characters, his second two records deal with what those personas have wrought, which tends to be intrinsically less interesting than the characters themselves, since it's dissecting the aftermath instead of causing the drama. On The Eminem Show that kind of self-analysis was perfectly acceptable, since Eminem was on the top of his game as both a lyricist and rapper; his insights were vibrant and his music was urgent. Musically, Show didn't innovate, but it didn't need to: Eminem and his mentor, Dr. Dre, had achieved cruising altitude, and even if they weren't offering much that was new, the music sounded fresh and alive. Here, the music is spartan, built on simple unadorned beats and keyboard loops. Some songs use this sound to its advantage and a few others break free – "Yellow Brick Road" is a tense, cinematic production, yet it fits the subject matter. Eminem has decided to chronicle what's happened to him over the past two years and refute every charge that's made it into the papers. This is quite a bit different than his earlier albums, when he embellished and exaggerated his life, when his relationship with his estranged wife Kim turned into an outlaw ballad, when his frenetic insults, cheap shots, and celeb baiting had a surreal, hilarious impact. Here, Eminem is plain-spoken and literal, intent on refuting every critic from Benzino at The Source to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who gets an entire song ("Ass Like That") devoted to him. While the album is a little long, it's worth a listen to hear the moments that work really well, whether it's full songs or flights of phrase. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Curtains Up
02. Evil Deeds
03. Never Enough (Feat. 50 Cent & Nate Dogg)
04. Yellow Brick Road
05. Like Toy Soldiers
06. Mosh
07. Puke
08. My 1st Single
09. Paul (Skit)
10. Rain Man
11. Big Weenie
12. Em Calls Paul (Skit)
13. Just Lose It
14. Ass Like That
15. Spend Some Time (Feat. Obie Trice, Stat Quo & 50 Cent)
16. Mockingbird
17. Crazy In Love
18. One Shot 2 Shot (Feat. D12)
19. Final Thought (Skit)
20. Encore (Curtains) (Feat. Dr. Dre & 50 Cent)

Bonus Disc:

01. We As Americans
02. Love You More
03. Ricky Ticky Toc


Album Released: November 16, 2004












Relapse is the sixth studio album by American rapper Eminem. It was his first album of original material since Encore (2004), following a four-year hiatus from recording due to his writer's block and an addiction to prescription sleeping medication. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2007 to 2009 at several recording studios, and Dr. Dre, Mark Batson, and Eminem handled production. Conceptually, Relapse concerns the ending of his drug rehabilitation, rapping after a non-fictional relapse, and the return of his Slim Shady alter-ego.

One of the most anticipated album releases of 2009, Relapse debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 608,000 copies in its first week. It produced three singles that attained chart success and has been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album received mixed reviews from most music critics, who were divided in their responses towards Eminem's lyrics. It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and more than ten million copies worldwide.

Eminem placed himself in exile shortly after Encore wound down, a seclusion initially designed as creative down-time but which soon descended into darkness fueled by another failed marriage to his wife Kim and the death of his best friend Proof, culminating in years of drug addiction. Em none too subtly refers to that addiction with the title of Relapse, his first album in five years, but that relapse also refers to Marshall Mathers reviving Slim Shady and returning to rap. Relapse is designed to grab attention, to stand as evidence that Eminem remains a musical force and, of course, a provocateur spinning out violent fantasies and baiting celebrities, occasionally merging the two as when he needles one-time girlfriend Mariah Carey and her new husband Nick Cannon. Strive as he might to make an impact in the world at large – and succeeding in many respects – Relapse is the sound of severe isolation, the product of too many years of Eminem playing king in his castle in a dilapidated Detroit, subsisting on pills, nachos, torture porn, and E! Daily News. As he sifted through junk culture, he also tweaked his rhyming, crafting an elongated elastic flow that contrasts startlingly with Dr. Dre's intensified beats, ominous magnifications of his thud-and-stutter signature. Musically, this is white-hot, dense, and dramatic not just in the production but in Eminem's delivery; he stammers and slides, slipping into an accent that resembles Paul Rudd's Rastafarian leprechaun from I Love You Man and then back again. His flow is so good, his wordplay so sharp, it seems churlish to wish that he addressed something other than his long-standing obsessions and demons. True, he spends a fair amount of the album exorcising his addiction – smartly tying it to his never-abating mother issues on "My Mom" – but most of Relapse finds Eminem rhyming twitchily about his old standbys: homosexuals, starlets, and violent fantasies, weaving all of them together on "Same Song and Dance" where he abducts and murders Lindsay Lohan, suggesting more than a passing familiarity with I Know Who Killed Me. The many, many references to Kim Kardashian's big ass and minutely detailed sadism can get a wee bit tiring, Relapse isn't really about what Eminem says, it's about how he says it. He's emerged from his exile musically re-energized and the best way to illustrate that is to go through the same old song and dance again, the familiarity of the words drawing focus on his insane, inspired flow and Dre's production. That might not quite make Relapse culturally relevant – recycled Christopher Reeve jokes aren't exactly fresh – but it is musically vital, which is all Eminem really needs to be at this point. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Dr. West (Skit)
02. 3 a.m.
03. My Mom
04. Insane
05. Bagpipes From Baghdad
06. Hello
07. Tonya (Skit)
08. Same Song & Dance
09. We Made You
10. Medicine Ball
11. Paul (Skit)
12. Stay Wide Awake
13. Old Time's Sake (Feat. Dr. Dre)
14. Must Be The Ganja
15. Mr. Mathers (Skit)
16. Déjà Vu
17. Beautiful
18. Crack A Bottle (Feat. Dr. Dre & 50 Cent)
19. Steve Berman (Skit)
20. Underground


Album Released: May 15, 2009






Because Eminem recorded far more material than he could use for one album and felt that he had to offer his fans more music after staying on hiatus for so long, fellow D12 member Swift confirmed that Eminem in fact had planned to put out two albums the same year, following with Relapse 2, in late 2009. According to Angela Yee's Shade 45 interview with Eminem on April 23, 2009, Relapse 2 was to be a continuation of Relapse. During the interview, Eminem confirmed: "It's extremely close to being finished, it just depends on how many songs I want to put on it." Eminem also explained the album was more "emotionally driven" than Relapse, which was, as he explains, "[just] rap records". Guest appearances were expected to come from the likes of Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, D12, Royce da 5'9", Lloyd Banks and Cashis. The album was subsequently pushed back for an early 2010 release, so Eminem decided to re-release Relapse as Relapse: Refill with seven new tracks, including the single "Forever" (originally on More Than a Game soundtrack) and "Taking My Ball" (released with DJ Hero), as well as five previously unreleased tracks. On its re-release, Eminem stated: "I want to deliver more material for the fans this year like I originally planned. Hopefully these tracks on The Refill will tide the fans over until we put out Relapse 2 next year."

On April 13, 2010, Eminem tweeted "There is no Relapse 2", thus announcing that the album has been scrapped in favor of his new project Recovery. While recording Relapse 2 and witnessing the mixed reaction of its predecessor among fans and critics alike, Eminem decided to throw away most of the recorded material and started from scratch. The result did not seem to him as continuation of Relapse but more of an individual project that deserved its own name. Eminem said: "I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year. But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves its own title." The now-renamed album debuted at number 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 741,000 copies in the United States. As of September 25, 2011, the album had sold 4,040,000 copies in the United States and was also the best-selling album of 2010 worldwide, earning a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album.

Eminem's expansion of his 2009 comeback Relapse is cleverly titled Refill, playing off the prescription pill artwork of the original album while offering precisely what it promises: another seven songs in the same vein as the original. Generally, these songs retain much of the carnivalesque horror show vibe of Relapse – when Slim Shady raps about "Buffalo Bill" it's not about the Wild West, it's the Silence of the Lambs – but the vibe is looser, helped in part by an increased Jamaican influence but largely deriving from Eminem's re-entry to the world. Unlike the bulk of Relapse, Refill doesn't sound like the work of a hip-hop Daniel Plainview – a mad genius locked in his mansion, forever stewing over his long-held obsessions – but sounds like an artist re-engaging with the world, trying new phrasing, opening up his music. Rather than a finished statement, this is experimentation, pointing the way toward what he'll do next time around, but there's one considerable exception: the new single "Forever," which has verses by Drake, Lil' Wayne, and Kanye West, and is none too coincidentally the one track in the entirety of Eminem's 2009 comeback that feels utterly modern. Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Forever (Feat. Drake, Kanye West & Lil Wayne)
02. Hell Breaks Loose (Feat. Dr. Dre)
03. Buffalo Bill
04. Elevator
05. Taking My Ball
06. Music Box
07. Drop The Bomb On 'Em


Album Released: December 21, 2009












Recovery is the seventh studio album by American rapper Eminem. Originally planned to be released as Relapse 2, the album was renamed to Recovery when Eminem found the music of the new album different from its predecessor.
Production of the album took place during 2009 to 2010 at several recording studios and was handled by various record producers, including Alex da Kid, Just Blaze, Boi-1da, Jim Jonsin, DJ Khalil, Mr. Porter and Dr. Dre. Eminem also collaborated with artists such as Pink, Lil Wayne, and Rihanna for the album. Recovery featured more introspective and emotional content than its predecessor and the theme of the album revolved around his positive changes, anxiety, and emotional drives. To promote the album, he performed the album's songs live on televised shows, at awards ceremonies, musical events and also headed The Recovery Tour. It spawned four singles; Not Afraid, Love the Way You Lie, No Love, and Space Bound.

With Recovery it becomes obvious that Eminem's richest albums aren't necessarily his most structurally sound, which isn't much of a surprise when considering the rapper's full-on embrace of flaws and contradictions. This lean, mean bipolar machine began life as Relapse 2, but when Shady decided he wasn't really Shady at the moment and that he was no longer keen on Relapse – or the last two albums as he states on “Talkin' 2 Myself” – it became Marshall Mathers time again, so damn any 11th hour issues. This results in an album where a shameless but killer Michael J. Fox punch line (“The world will stop spinnin’ and Michael J. Fox‘ll come to a standstill” from “Cold Wind”) is followed by a song with another, less effective MJF joke (“Make like Michael J. Fox in your drawers, playin' with an Etch-A-Sketch”), although that song is the lurching heavy metal monster “Won't Back Down” with P!nk, and it could be used as the lead-in to “Lose Yourself” on any ego-boosting mixtape. Following an apology for your recent work with a damnation of critics and haters is just sloppy; taking off the skits and then overstuffing your album by a track or two is undermining what's good; and the beats here are collectively just a B+ with only one production (the so good “So Bad”) coming from Dr. Dre. Add to that the detractor idea that being privy to the man's therapy sessions just isn't compelling anymore and the only persuasive moments remaining are the highlights, but fans can feed on the energy, the renewed sense of purpose, and Marshall doing whatever the hell he wants, up to and including shoehorning a grand D12-like comedy number ("W.T.P.," which stands for "White Trash Party") into this emotionally heavy album. It’s fascinating when Em admits “Hatred was flowin’ through my veins, on the verge of goin’ insane/I almost made a song dissin’ Lil Wayne” and then “Thank God I didn’t do it/I’da had my ass handed to me, and I knew it” before sparring with said Weezy on the Haddaway-sampling “No Love.” When the recovery-minded “Going Through Changes” gets back on the wagon by sampling Black Sabbath’s very druggy “Changes” it’s a brilliant and layered idea that’s executed with poignant lyrics on top. Add the man at his most profound (the gigantic hit “Not Afraid”) and his most profane (“You wanna get graphic? We can go the scenic route/You couldn’t make a bulimic puke on a piece of corn and peanut poop” from “On Fire”) plus one of thickest lyric booklets out of any of his albums and the fans who really listen are instantly on board. It may be flawed and the rapper’s attitude is sometimes one step ahead of his output, but he hasn’t sounded this unfiltered and proud since The Marshall Mathers LP, so to hell with refinement – bring on the hunger and spirit of 8 Mile. Reviewed by David Jeffries of allmusic.com

Track Listing:

01. Cold Wind Blows
02. Talkin' 2 Myself (Feat. Kobe)
03. On Fire
04. Won't Back Down (Feat. P!nk)
05. W.T.P.
06. Going Through Changes
07. Not Afraid
08. Seduction
09. No Love (Feat. Lil Wayne)
10. Space Bound
11. Cinderella Man
12. 25 To Life
13. So Bad
14. Almost Famous
15. Love The Way You Lie (Feat. Rihanna)
16. You're Never Over
17. Untitled


Album Released: June 18, 2010