Eminem (real name Marshal Mathers) is known worldwide as one of the first white emcees to be loved, accepted and embraced by the hip-hop community and is now considered among the best in the industry with regard to lyricism. With so many iconic songs, it is hard to deny the Detroit rapper’s talent and the impact he has made on the genre as a whole.
His music remains some of the most memorable creations in all of hip-hop, and to this day, Eminem has the second highest-selling hip-hop album of all time with his album, The Eminem Show, certified diamond, with over 27million sales and 3billion streams. Kanye’s 11 albums combined have sold a total of 35million. So, for one album, The Eminem Show is one of the best-selling albums in the world.
Eminem burst onto the scene at the turn of the millennium and was a titan of the 2000s. However, by the 2010s, his relevancy and perceived power in the culture were waning as his lyrics and beats struggled to change with the times.
Between 2006 and 2009, Mathers began to face hardships that led to his abuse of prescription drugs, including Valium, Vicodin and Xanax. As such, he is very critical of the music he released during this period and has openly admitted he hates some of the material he made.
In 2010, Mathers released his seventh album, Recovery, which saw him thrust back into the limelight. With guest appearances from stars such as Rihanna and Lil Wayne, it was a project the Detroit artist made to restore his credibility after 2009’s Relapse.
With producers such as Just Blaze crafting tracks like ‘Cold Wind Blows’ and ‘No Love’ in an interview on his radio station Shade45, the emcee spoke about his approach to making the album, explaining, “I definitely feel like I’m in a little different space right now. With the last record, it had a lot to do with me getting sober and just my eyes being open again and my brain went into overdrive.”
He proceeded to express he wanted his 2009 body of work to be “zany”, explaining, “With Relapse, I was just trying to prove to myself that I could do it again. It was a [reintroduction] and what made me in the first place with the zany, loony, ridiculous sh–. I felt like a lot of that album, I kind of wanted to [spit] rapid fire and [do] punch lines.”
Although the album may have been Zany, since his 2010 interview on Shade45, Eminem has publicly admitted that he now “cringes” when he hears Relapse and considers it a stain on his discography.
You can hear Recovery below.