Eminem - The Eminem Show
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Free Music Notes for The Eminem Show
Free Music Review: My updated review of "The Eminem Show"
Hit: 5 Stars
I first wrote a review of Eminem's "The Eminem Show" back at the end of 2002. When i wrote that review, i had only experienced listening to the album ALL the way through one time, so i didn't have the best perception of some of the tracks. Some that were my favorites then i don't like as much now, some that i hated then are really appealing now. My opions have changed for "The Eminem Show" and i now have an updated track-by-track review:1. Curtains Up (Intro) - Just someone walking onto a stage and tapping a mic, probably Em. Didn't give it any stars.
2. White America (5/5) - I still like this track. The same angry verses from Em. I'm starting to get wore out of this one, though, but the video (which i could only find via the internet) is pretty cool looking.
3. Business (5/5) - Last time i gave it 3 out of 5, this time i gave it 5! Once i totally listened to it, i loved it. The music is upbeat and Em has a very catchy flow on it.
4. Cleaning Out My Closet (4/5) - I don't remember what i gave this last time but this time i'm tired of it. The radio (as well as MTV, BET, and other video channels) wore me out of this really fast. It has an OK beat but not my favorite.
5. Square Dance (4/5) - Whatever i gave it last time, this time i seemed to like it better. The beat grew on me, and Em's raps sounded somewhat better.
6. The Kiss (Skit) - Didn't give it any stars cause it's just a skit. However, it's a realistic portration of what happened the day of the 'kiss'. Blends in with the next song well, too.
7. Soldier (3/5) - I'm still not really feeling this one. The beat is alright, but Em's raps are too mediocre.
8. Say Goodbye Hollywood (2/5) - I just really don't like this one at all. The flow is WAY too long and boring and the hook is just not that good.
9. Drips (w/ Obie Trice) (5/5) - Last time i didn't like it that much, but after a few very careful listens, i love this track. Although Obie spits the nastiest verse i've ever heard from him or Em, Em does a pretty good verse.
10. Without Me (0/5) - STILL, i can't stand this ANNOYNING SONG. Follow my advice from last time Em: KEEP YOUR AIRPLAY TO A MINIMUM OR NEVER RELEASE ONE OF THESE [bad]POP SONGS AGAIN!
11. Paul Rosenburg (Skit) - No stars, just an answering machine skit from Paul Rosenburg, i never cared for any of the Paul skits anyway.
12. Sing For The Moment (5/5) - The latest single (how many singles will be released from this album??). Last time i didn't like it that much, that's only because i didn't hear it but one or two times, now, i love it. Em spits some very personal raps over Aerosmith's "Dream On" (i didn't even know what that song in the background was until i read a review saying it was the Aerosmith song).
13. Superman (5/5) (w/ Deena Ray) - Another single (the video's not shown on MTV, but you can see it one the "8 Mile" DVD as a bonus feature), this one i gave 3 stars last time, this time, i love it. Em's raps are really good and it's just an all around catchy song.
14. Haile's Song (4/5) - Don't like it as much this time (i heard it on the radio! I didn't know this was a single. There was no video or anything about it either so i don't know why they played it on the radio.) This is Em's tribute to his daughter, Hailie, who appears later on the album.
15. Steve Berman (Skit) - The newest installment of the Steve Berman skits. Their always the same, Em goes in, Steve says how awful the album is. But this time, Steve gets a suprise as Em brings his gun with him.
16. When The Music Stops (4/5) - Catchier than it was the first time around, now it's a little better.
17. Say What You Say (w/ Dr. Dre) (5/5) - Still my favorite on the album! Maybe "Drips" and "Busisness", maybe even "Sing For The Moment" all come really close, but i love this track. The nonstop beat and Em with Dre dissing Jermaine Dupri, what else could you ask for?
18. 'Till I Collapse (w/ Nate Dogg) (5/5) - Still love it! Why was this not a radio single? With Nate Dogg, wouldn't you think it'd be a huge radio success? The clapping is really addictive and Em spits some really good lyrics.
19. My Dad's Gone Crazy (w/ Hailie) (5/5) - Still a nice, hilarious, song. With his daughter, Hailie, singing the chorus while Em knocks out the rest, it's a perfect song.
20. Curtains Close (Outro) - Supposed to be the 3rd Ken Kaniff skit in the series but is only him on stage singing.
That's my new (and improved) review of the "Eminem Show". Other titles i recommend for fans of this album are: "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" by 50 Cent, "8 Mile" (The Soundtrack) by Eminem and others, and the "Marshall Mathers" and "Slim Shady" LPS.
Free Music Review: Possibly His Best, I Can Play it Over and Over!
Hit: 5 Stars
This 3rd album by Slim could be his best, but I can't really decide because this has alot of good songs, but I liked the ton of controversial statements on his first two CDs, and its not close to as controversial on this CD. It easily beats Encore, but that's not that hard. I understand how hard it would be to make Encore, but it was still terrible. Here's my song by song review.
Curtains Up: A pretty good start although just a skit.
White America: 4/5 Great opening track, very controversial but the anger in it stands out and sounds great. I can listen to this song over and over. This song is not a masterpiece though.
Business: 3/5 An okay song, it gets repetitive pretty quick because of the repeating sirens in the beat and the rapping isn't GREAT.
Cleanin' Out My Closet: 5/5 I can't find any faults in this song, there is alot of emotion and sadness in this song. The video for this song (not included) is great too. This song really flows well and gets its point out.
Square Dance: 4/5 This song is pretty good, its not great but it is really catchy and a good combination of anger, happiness, adrenaline, and his "kiss my ass" attitude in this song.
The Kiss: Cool skit, it sets the stage for the next song.
Soldier: 4/5 Marshall trying to be gangster, its a good song but none of this is real and thats what most of his songs are about.
Say Goodbye Hollywood: 3/5 A song about him starting to finish up his career and how he is trying to balance his life. Not great, but it is kind of catchy.
Drips: 4.8/5 This song has so many swears and sexual subject matter, it's taken off the edited version, but I DONT CARE. The chorus is great and so is Slim's verse. The only reason this didn't get 5 is because Obie's verse isnt really that intresting, catchy, and its just about him having sex.
Without Me: 4/5 Really catchy and cool beat, nice work with the voice changes, a very good song just not great.
Paul Rosenburg: A skit about Shady running around firing his gun off and his manager trying to stop him. Pretty funny.
Sing For The Moment: 5/5 Great flow, good point, and the Aerosmith excert for the hook fits in perfectly.
Superman: 6/5 GREAT SONG! A slow and fast song about his relationship with women, it has a great hook, flow, and beat. I think it is easily the best song on the album.
Halie's Song: 4/5 A really touching song about Em's daughter, Halie Jade Mathers, and how she is keeping him together.
Steve Berman: A pretty pointless skit where Slim kills one of his sales reps.
When The Music Stops: 3/5 D-12 song, kind of hard to tell what this song is about but I know there isnt much point.
Say What You Say: 4.5/5 Really good song, Dr. Dre saved this song with his amazing beat and his raps in this song.
'Till I Collapse: 3.9/5 An okay song, the background is pretty good but the rapping is only okay.
My Dad's Gone Crazy: 5/5 Great song about how Em is crazy and nothing can save him. Really fast and cartoonish. Flows nicely.
Curtains Close: Funny skit about Ken Kaniff imitating "Without Me" where he sings "Ken is back, tell some men, rub my back, rub my back, rub my back"
This CD gets a five, even though it isn't perfect. I bought it in 2003, (not really an Eminem fan), I listened to it, the in depth songs like Cleaning out My Closet were the most interesting. I now am an Eminem superfan, not a groupie, but I'm like a Stan without all the suicide because of this album. I'm still listening to it 2 years later, and I have listened to it SO much. Definetely buy this album. I would pay 30 dollars for it, its so good as with all his albums with the exception of Encore. This CD is hard to compare to his first two, because it is still great, but doesnt have all of the controversy and wit from the first two, or the craziness or murder talk like the song Kim on the MMLP. BUY IT THOUGH!
Free Music Review: Different is better
Hit: 5 Stars
In case you didn't notice, the Marshall Mathers LP was VERY different from the Slim Shady LP. SSLP was a comical album, with lots of joking around, funny stories, and huge exaggerations... the only serious song on it was Rock Bottom. The Marshall Mathers LP, while still having some comical tracks (Kill You, The Real Slim Shady, Criminal...), was a much more serious album (Stan, The Way I am...). This trend continues with Eminem's third commerical solo album, The Eminem Show. While many of the fans of the Slim Shady LP are disappointed, this makes for an extremely solid album... so solid in fact, that I would rate it in the top five rap albums of all time.Many people have complained that there are no standout tracks on this album, like Stan from MMLP. This is because the overall quality of the album is so high, that the best songs ('Till I Collapse, Soldier, Cleanin' Out My Closet) don't stand out all that much. While 'Till I Collapse is the best song on the CD (and possibly one of the best rap songs ever created... I'm hardpressed to think of a better one), the number two spot could be shared by three different songs; Soldier, White America, and Cleanin' Out My Closet. Soldier is a fast, angry song, reminescent of 2pac's work. White America is a political song, with amazing flow and meaningful lyrics. Cleanin' Out My Closet is slow, well thought out, and painful to listen to because of how horrible some of the things he describes are.
Almost all of the rest of the songs on The Eminem Show are extremely high quality as well. Square Dance, Sayin' Goodbye To Hollywood, Superman, When The Music Stops, and My Dad's Gone Crazy are all amazing songs, all of which would be considered the best song on any above average rap CD.
Eminem also includes a few poppy songs (Without Me, Business) to keep him on MTV and keep the money rolling in. While not bad songs (some of the best stuff you'll see on MTV), they seem a little out of place on this CD... it's obvious he included them just to appeal to the mainstream crowd (nothing wrong with that... everyone needs money).
The only songs this CD could've lived without are Drips and Say What You Say. Drips, while sending a good message (don't have unsafe sex), garbles it with pointless vulgarity. The song would be better with more substance and less shock tactics (do we really need to hear feminine fluids compared with sour cream dip?). Also, Say What You Say seems thrown together at the last minute (both the beat and the lyrics), not living up to the extremely high quality of the rest of the album).
One last note: Hailie's Song. Eminem's singing debut. I've heard mixed responses on this one. I'll put it straight. While Eminem is not a horrible singer (he sings better than most men I know), he is DEFINITELY not professional level. If you are looking for pure listening value, the singing verses on this song will not satisfy... however, the EMOTIONAL value of this song is amazing. The fact that he would put a song where he sings (and, as he states in the song, knows that he can't do it very well) on a commercial album just for his daughter shows just how much love he has for her. Sometimes, the emotional value is enough to make it a great song. I personally love this song, and would put it in the top five songs on the album (which is saying a LOT on this album). However, because the song is so dependant on emotional value (which a lot of people don't recognize), I won't even put it on the list, because 90% of people will be angry about it's placement.
As I stated earlier, this CD is an amazingly solid CD (eleven out of the fifteen songs on it would be considered AT LEAST extremely good by an average, unbiased rap fan). Couple that with the fact that the very top songs on it are some of the best rap songs ever created, and you have one of the top five rap CDs of all time, and DEFINITELY the best since Biggie's death (I'm not saying that any of Biggie's CDs were the best, I'm just saying that the CDs that have come out since are of lower quality).
Free Music Review: Righteous Anger - Shady's Back
Hit: 5 Stars
In his earlier days (all the way back in 1999), it was easy to dismiss Eminem and his Slim Shady alter-ego as over-the-top, convoluted attempts to be funny. Detractors tended to focus on his anti-gay, anti-women lyrics (although they are not any different than most other hip-hip/rappers' words), and his proponents set their sights on Em's amazing rhyming ability and a sense of the harmonious, rhythmic flavor of hip-hip that escapes most high-paid artists. On his first disc, The Slim Shady LP, Em ranted and raved at the world and made a lot of money for doing it. On his second, The Marshall Mathers LP, Em dealt with fame and controversy, although his raving still came across more as funny than anything else (Elton John agreed to play with Eminem despite protests from GLADD because he "got the joke," according to the rapper).Enter Em's third major studio album, The Eminem Show. Despite the title and the initial single, "Without Me," The Em Show turns its focus away from Eminem somewhat in favor of tackling some enormous issues. After the typical skit introduction - a series of real/fake speeches cobbled together from different awards shows where Em won something - Em raps right into White America, a heady, accusatory song that puts him directly at odds with his main detractors: white suburbanites whose experiences are much different than Em's own. Forth on the CD is "Cleaning Out My Closet" (also used in the trailer for Em's upcoming film 8-Mile). The song lives up to its name: he manages to exorcise the ghosts of his hateful attitude towards both his mother and his ex-wife, attributing some of his anger to a father that left before Em was a year old and a hypochondriac mother who projected her psychosomatic diseases onto Em. He raps about venereal disease on "Drips" (an excellent argument for safer sex) and conformity in "Soldier" before returning to himself in "Without Me," before heading off into skitland later in the album. Also notable are the semi-tender ballad "Hallie's Song" (he warns you beforehand that he can't sing), and "Superman," which has nothing to do with the comic hero and everything to do with unreasonable relationship expectations.
Perhaps its making too much of Eminem to say that his lyrics are inspired; one cannot deny, though, that his anger at his situation and the crummy things that have happened in his life simmers right beneath the surface of this album, more of a middle-finger to the world than to specific people, as his earlier efforts were. Em risks inviting comparison to Rage Against the Machine (not that doing so would be a bad thing), and although his anger could use solid direction, it's clear that his heart is in the right place - just because crummy things happen doesn't mean they SHOULD, and sometimes the only way to stop these things from happening in the future (or to call attention to the fact that they are happening now) is to drag them out of dark little holes where society likes to stuff them, bring them out in the open, and make them as shocking as possible. Pure schlock-shock, a la Marilyn Manson, is out of style, and Em wisely stayed away from that on The Eminem Show. Instead, he has crafted a burning arrow of rage and leveled it straight at the heart of hypocritical America.
He may not be Gandhi, but Eminem is more of an activist than, say, Martha Stewart. Rap is the language of the underprivileged, and Em reminds us that being poor does not equal being black, and even the poorest of the poor have souls that need saving. It's almost sad that it took the musical equivalent of a speeding train to raise this kind of awareness. Every time Em goes on TRL, listeners can finally laugh WITH him at the sheer stupidity and hypocrisy of it all.
Final Grade: A-
Free Music Review: Standing Ovation 4 The Eminem Show
Hit: 5 Stars
I'm not a big fan of hip hop or rap (BTW, is there a difference between the two?). My daughter introduced me to Eminem's music. She' 13, and we have really different taste in music. Eminem was just another Vanilla Ice, I guess I thought if I thought about him at all. Then, I saw the Grammy show which paired Slim and Elton John, and I was just blown away. Wow, what a clever song this is. And, I didn't see what the hullabaloo about this guy was.A long while later, my daughter picks up the latest CD, The Eminem Show. I heard "My Dad's gone Crazy". I thought the kid sounded so cute. And the line where Em sings, "It's like my mother always told me nanananananana". I laughed out loud. That's exactly what we parents sound like when we're lecturing our kids. That's what they hear! And then, I couldn't get Halie's part out of my mind. "I think my dad's gone crazy"... Loved it.
The next invasion to rent space in my head was Cleaning out my closet. I was struck by the contrast between the verses and the chorus. Em's pretty hurt from his mom, I thought. And then the chorus, "I'm sorry Mama". I don't know what Marshall was intending but it struck me that this song is deeply ambivalent and the contrast between the verses and the choruses demonstrate this ambivalence quite dramatically. He loves his mother, but he's angry and hurt from stuff in their past. The video is similarly moving.
I started telling people they had to hear Eminem's stuff (as though I'd discovered him! though, in my demographic, he's not as appreciated as he is with the teens. In my opinion, and I normally only listen to accoustic music, he's a BRILLIANT writer/poet, and his music is so insanely catchy, *that* should carry the warning label. Warning: After hearing one time, prepare to allow these songs to pop up in your head.
It was only later that I saw the words to some of his earlier stuff. I don't like the song where he's imagining Kim in the trunk. part... but the way he directs the song to Halie feels squicky. I mean, I believe him when he says he doesn't let her listen to his music, but at some point, she's going to hear that song and Kim *is* her mother.
White America is a funny tune, full of boast and bluster. Eminem thinks he's so cute. Well, apparently the teen girls do too. I think he's funny and very, very clever. But, not exactly someone who seems to have much rapport with women.
Poor Eminem. He cant' seem to catch a break, unless you count being a HUGE SUPERSTAR "catching a break".
Square dance demanded equal time and for a few days, it was all about "Do see do now... " over and over in my head. That song strikes me as musically and lyrically being so unsophisticated, and it's and intentional effect and quite effective. As he sings the goofy, by infectious, "So come on down.. " he's talking about some serious [stuff], like war and drafting boys at 18 and again, with the "Don't be scared now, there ain't nothin' to worry about." the counterpoint is clear. Listen up kids, and think.
Drips is too crude and lude for my taste. ... Maybe, I'm missing the point on that one.
Saying Goodbye to Hollywood seemed like a farewell song to my daughter who worries that this is our Emmy's last album. "Come on, get real, honey. What's he gonna do if he turns his back on the fame and fortune? Flip burgers? Not likely.
The rest of the CD is very listenable... very good. His sweet sensitive side is the most appealing one he has. He should let people see that and leave the crude shock stuff for lesser artists.
He's no Ice Tea... He's the real java!