The Slim Shady LP

1	Public Service Announcement / Jeff Bass 0:33
2	My Name Is 4:28
3	Guilty Conscience 3:19
4	Brain Damage 3:46
5	Paul / DJ Paul Bunyon 0:15
6	If I Had 4:05
7	97' Bonnie & Clyde 5:16
8	Bitch / Zoe Winkler 0:19
9	Role Model 3:25
10	Lounge / Jeff Bass 0:46
11	My Fault 4:01
12	Ken Kaniff / Aristotle 1:16
13	Cum On Everybody 3:39
14	Rock Bottom 3:34
15	Just Don't Give A Fuck 4:02
16	Soap / Royce Da Five Nine 0:34
17	As the World Turns 4:25
18	I'm Shady 3:31
19	Bad Meets Evil / Royce Da Five Nine 4:13
20	Still Don't Give A Fuck 4:12

Barnes & Noble

Imagine a cross between Snoop Dogg and Buddy Holly and you've got Eminem -- post-gangsta rap's great white dork. With a wicked tongue, rhyme skills that would stun John Donne, and a flow that suggests Lenny and Squiggy more than Mike D or MCA, this son of the mean streets of urban Detroit might be the best white rapper of all time. His Dr. Dre-produced debut is a confrontational, offensive, undeniably funny update on the usual shock-rap shtick. On cuts like "My Name Is," "My Fault," and his hilariously grim response to Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us" ("'97 Bonnie & Clyde") his wit, imagery, and brilliant sense of comedic irony are unprecedented. Dre's production is hands off -- this is Em's show, folks -- and a little more musical richness might have made these 20 cuts fly by a bit quicker. Still, taken in regular doses, a few choice cuts at a time, this is the hip-hop breakthrough of 1999. Jon Dolan

All Music Guide

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. Stephen Thomas Erlewine