History Music / Encore

* JailbaitTaboo: "Ass Like That" mocks Music/RKelly's predation of teen girls, and the adult obsession with barely legal starlets like the Olsen Twins, Jojo and Creator/HillaryDuff (who was apparently [[ActuallyPrettyFunny delighted]] by the shoutout). "My 1st Single" has a verse touching on the public obsession with the virginity of Music/JustinTimberlake and Music/BritneySpears.

* JailbaitTaboo: "Ass Like That" mocks Music/RKelly's predation of teen girls, and the adult obsession with barely legal starlets like the Olsen Twins, Jojo and Music/HillaryDuff (who was apparently [[ActuallyPrettyFunny delighted]] by the shoutout). "My 1st Single" has a verse touching on the public obsession with the virginity of Music/JustinTimberlake and Music/BritneySpears.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: [[invoked]] At the time Eminem made ''Encore'', he'd told the press he'd quit drugs and "Big Weenie" mocks the idea of Eminem needing drugs to create, saying his haters want to see him out of his mind on a drug addiction and dying. Unfortunately, in reality, ''Encore'' ''was'' created on drugs, and he would check himself into rehab for the first time not long after. (He would eventually get clean in 2008.)

* DenserAndWackier: Differing from the disturbing violence of previous albums, ''Encore'' is filled with free-associating, goofy TrollingCreator humour that seeks to confuse and annoy the audience rather than scandalise them.

* BoastfulRap: "Never Enough".

* IronicNurseryTune: "Evil Deeds" goes through versions of "Mama Had A Baby And Its Head Popped Off" and "Mary Had A Little Lamb" to reflect Slim being born an insane, hated child.

''Encore'' is known for its CerebusRollercoaster content. The midsection of the album is PissTakeRap. Slim raps more like a cartoon ever before, repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowingOutTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, morphing into a gay homophobic pastor or [[DenserAndWackier escaping censure by becoming a German hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, [[Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman]], getting death threats from Creator/ChristopherReeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and ''literally'' recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). But on either sides of the silly bit of ''Encore'', the 31-year-old Eminem displays growing maturity -- apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird", and delivering the showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. Wilder still, the album contains ''love songs'', arguably the most shocking thing on the album to 2004 audiences who considered him an arch-misogynist. And Eminem, who had done intensive vocal coaching with Roger Love in 2003, experiments with singing entire songs for the first time, as well as trialling slurry melodic flows that prefigure "mumble rap" by nearly a decade.

''Encore'' is the fifth studio album by Music/{{Eminem}}, released on November 12, 2004. The album is a sequel to ''Music/TheEminemShow'', featuring similar lyrical themes about Eminem's fame and chaotic personal life, the political situation, and HorribleHollywood, but expanding the remit to cover Eminem's new life as the mogul of Shady Records, the fallout of his beefs, his regrets over the misery he caused, and provide a swan-song for Slim Shady. With a somewhat TroubledProduction plagued by leaks and Eminem's [[CreatorBreakdown drug addiction]], and getting mixed reviews, it is considered to be the album that ended Eminem's golden age, to the extent that Eminem himself apologised for the album in 2010's ''Recovery''. Nevertheless, it has a cult following for its lunatic, freestyled rapping, nihilistic and giddy BlackComedy, and stirring ballads and [[BoastfulRap chestbeaters]] that -- most shocking of all -- introduced a ''mature'' Eminem to audiences for the first time.

''Encore'' is known for its CerebusRollercoaster content. The midsection of the album is PissTakeRap. Slim raps more like a cartoon ever before, repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowingOutTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, morphing into a gay homophobic pastor or [[DenserAndWackier escaping censure by becoming a German hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, [[Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman]], getting death threats from Creator/ChristopherReeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and ''literally'' recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). But on either sides of the silly bit of ''Encore'', the 31-year-old Eminem displays growing maturity -- apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird", and delivering the showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. Wilder still, the album contains ''love songs'', arguably the most shocking thing on the album to 2004 audiences who considered him an arch-misogynistic. And Eminem, who had done intensive vocal coaching with Roger Love in 2003, experiments with singing entire songs for the first time, as well as trialling slurry melodic flows that prefigure "mumble rap" by nearly a decade.

Since 2002, hip-hop had changed. The dominant styles were hooky snap and {{crunk}} from [[SouthernRap the South]], Commercial GangstaRap starring Eminem's own protégé Music/FiftyCent, and the new critical darling of Music/KanyeWest, whose everyman persona and soulful production could not have been further from Eminem's psycho-brat persona and plastic-classical sound. The material on ''Encore'' is influenced by the new trends -- looking to Ye when chipmunking kitchy-pop samples in "Like Toy Soldiers", looking to snap with repetitive writing, telling gangland tales in "One Shot 2 Shot", and -- most significantly -- [[UnexplainedAccent affecting a crunkish Southern accent]]. While Eminem had dabbled in accents in ''The Eminem Show'''s "Square Dance" and "Superman", by ''Encore'' Em was firmly in his "accent phase"; he would continue to explore the creative possibilities of [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent stupid accents]] in the next few years, culminating in 2009's ''Relapse''.

Since 2002, hip-hop had changed. The dominant styles were hooky snap and {{crunk}} from [[SouthernRap the South]], Commercial GangstaRap starring Eminem's own protégé Music/FiftyCent, and the new critical darling of Music/KanyeWest, whose everyman persona and soulful production could not have been further from Eminem's psycho-brat persona and plastic-classical sound. The material on ''Encore'' is influenced by the new trends -- looking to Ye when chipmunking kitchy-pop samples in "Like Toy Soldiers", telling gangland tales in "One Shot 2 Shot", and -- most significantly -- [[UnexplainedAccent affecting a Southern accent]]. While Eminem had dabbled in accents in ''The Eminem Show'''s "Square Dance" and "Superman", by ''Encore'' Em was firmly in his "accent phase"; he would continue to explore the creative possibilities of [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent stupid accents]] in the next few years, culminating in 2009's ''Relapse''.

* BeleagueredAssisant: In "Ass Like That", Triumph-Slim calls for his lawyer to keep the cops from hauling him off, but then discovers he's too busy dealing with Music/MichaelJackson suing him for "Just Lose It".

* BeleaguredAssisant: In "Ass Like That", Triumph-Slim calls for his lawyer to keep the cops from hauling him off, but then discovers he's too busy dealing with Music/MichaelJackson suing him for "Just Lose It".

* BeleaguredAssisant: In "Ass Like That", Triumph-Slim calls for his lawyer to keep the cops from hauling him off, but then discovers he's too busy dealing with Music/MichaelJackson's lawsuits.

* YoureJustJealous: "Big Weenie" has Slim tell this to Benzino.

* BiggusDickus: "''My weenie is much bigger than yours is. Mine is like sticking a banana between two [[LeastRhymeableWord oranges]].''"

** "Yellow Brick Road" finishes with him reminding everyone that he was wrong to insult Black women because "''no matter what color a girl is, she's still a... [[LastSecondWordSwap so,]] let's go back]]''".

* SparkOfTheRebellion: In "Mosh", Eminem fantasises about starting a revolution, in which his music provides "''provid[ing] just enough spark''" to allow the people to rise up against the corrupt government and end the war.

* HorribleHollywood: A main theme this time around is rampant sexual abuse and perversion within the entertainment industry and how it's both exploited and covered up. "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" reference Music/MichaelJackson's child molestation charges, Creator/PaulReuben's arrest for public masturbation, and Music/RKelly's repeated sexual abuse of underage Black girls. "My 1st Single" parodies the obsession with Music/BritneySpears's virginity.

''Encore'' had the biggest selling debut in hip-hop history, but has had a complicated legacy. Fans commonly regard it as one of Eminem's worst, and Eminem is ''still'' apologising for it. However, Music/DannyBrown cites it as his favourite Eminem album and a major influence on his style, particularly the song "Rain Man". Other surprising fans of ''Encore'' include Music/TheRollingStones' drummer Charlie Watts, Rosie O'Donnell, who was influenced by "Evil Deeds" in her book ''Celebrity Detox'', and Eminem's old nemesis Music/{{Moby}}, who was willing to set his differences aside to praise "Mosh". Eminem's [[TechnicianVersusPerformer virtuosic and perfectionistic]] later work has also led to ''Encore'' [[VindicatedByHistory gaining retroactive praise]] for its spontaneity -- Slim would not be heard [[{{Improv}} going off-the-top]] on an album again until 2018's ''Kamikaze''.

---

''Encore'' is the fifth studio album by Music/{{Eminem}}, released on November 12, 2004. The album is a sequel to ''Music/TheEminemShow'', featuring similar lyrical themes about Eminem's fame and chaotic personal life, the political situation, and HorribleHollywood, but expanding the remit to cover Eminem's new life as the mogul of Shady Records, the fallout of his beefs, and provide a [[AdultShockComedy gross]] swan-song for Slim Shady. With a somewhat TroubledProduction plagued by leaks and Eminem's [[CreatorBreakdown drug addiction]], and getting mixed reviews, it is considered to be the album that ended Eminem's golden age, to the extent that Eminem himself apologised for the album in 2010's ''Recovery''. Nevertheless, it has a cult following for its lunatic, freestyled rapping, nihilistic and giddy BlackComedy, and stirring ballads and [[BoastfulRap chestbeaters]] that -- most shocking of all -- introduced a ''mature'' Eminem to audiences for the first time.

2004 saw Eminem in a difficult situation. After ''Film/EightMile'' [[HypeBacklash mainstreamed him]] beyond his typical audience, he had [[RatedGForGangsta lost his shock value]]. The charts, which during Eminem's rise had been dominated by angsty NuMetal and assembly-line TeenPop that made him a breath of fresh air, were now filled with hooky snap and crunk from [[SouthernRap the South]], Commercial GangstaRap and GlamRap starring Eminem's own protégé Music/FiftyCent, and the new face of Music/KanyeWest, whose boyish everyman persona and soulful production could not have been further from Eminem's brat persona and plastic-classical sound. All of these musical trends would, nevertheless, influence the material on ''Encore'' -- chipmunking kitchy-pop samples, telling tales of gun battles, and -- oh dear -- [[UnexplainedAccent the affectation of a Southern accent]], something Eminem had dabbled in on his ''The Eminem Show'' songs "Square Dance" and "Superman" but that began to severely influence his style around this point. Eminem would continue to explore the creative possibilities of [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent stupid accents]] in 2009's ''Relapse''.

Eminem's reputation had also been dinged as the result of a [[BattleRapping beef]] with his self-declared archnemesis Benzino, the editor of ''The Source'' magazine. Trying to smear Eminem as a closet racist sent by the industry to 'steal' hip-hop, Benzino had spread recordings of a teenage Eminem performing two racist songs. Eminem's friends at the time explained the tapes were an injoke, Benzino was written off as a jealous loser by the hip-hop community at large, and Shady Records attempted to claim copyright on the tapes in order to prevent them being spread further. However, ''Encore'''s lead single, "Just Lose It", would face the ''wrong'' kind of controversy -- its playful disses at Music/MichaelJackson, then in the news for child molestation charges, was regarded by many Black musicians and commentators to be a potentially racist swipe against the world's most successful Black musician. The song being a [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks formulaic retread]] of "Without Me" and "The Real Slim Shady", recorded under protest, didn't help much.

Could it get worse? Well, there was also the leaks -- a CD Eminem had burned for his brother Nathan, with tracks for the album that would later become ''Encore'', was stolen and turned into a bootleg mixtape, forcing Eminem to scrap the original tracklist (which had been mostly {{Diss Track}}s). Getting it into his head that he needed to recapture the spontaneity of his ''Music/TheSlimShadyLP'' days, Eminem holed up in a studio in Orlando with Music/DrDre, and recorded a large number of songs written mostly by freestyling (rather than his typical method of working them out on paper).

''Encore'' ended up becoming a CerebusRollercoaster. The midsection of the album is filled with comedy songs, using ToiletHumor to disgust the audience (rather than political incorrectness), with Slim repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowingOutTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, lecturing Dre as a gay homophobic pastor, [[DenserAndWackier distracting his critics by becoming a German hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, [[Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman]], getting death threats from Creator/ChristopherReeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and, uh, literally recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). Yet the now 31-year-old Eminem also displays higher ideals -- encouraging his fans to vote out George Bush in "Mosh", apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird" and delivering the stadium showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. Even among the goofy songs, "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" are both satires of a depraved HorribleHollywood that normalises abuse of children. Wilder still, the album contains ''love songs'' -- old-hat in a post-"Love The Way You Lie" world, but in 2004, the most shocking thing on the album. Even if the rapping is peculiar, Eminem's ''singing'' is markedly improved from ''The Eminem Show'', benefiting from the intensive vocal coaching he'd done with Roger Love in 2003.

''Pitchfork'' loathed ''Encore'', but Robert Christgau, The Dean of American Rock Critics, reviewed it higher than ''The Eminem Show''. Fans often regard the album as Eminem's worst, but it has defenders, particularly Music/DannyBrown, who praises the album's sickly dark humour and claims the absurdist song "Rain Man" as a benchmark for what he tries to achieve in his own rapping. Other surprising fans of ''Encore'' include Music/TheRollingStones' drummer Charlie Watts (who apparently tried to force Mick Jagger to listen to the toilet noises), Rosie O'Donnell, who cited "Evil Deeds" as a personal favourite, and Eminem's old foe Music/{{Moby}}, who was willing to set their differences aside to praise "Mosh". Eminem's [[TechnicianVersusPerformer ultra-technical, more serious]] late career work has also led to ''Encore'' being more positively appraised; it's Eminem's sole album in which he's 1) rapping as the original incarnation of Slim Shady, 2) is funny, 3) isn't being homophobic or killing women, 4) is rapping over Music/DrDre beats, and 5) isn't treating the work as a technical showcase of hyperspeed flows, homophones and triple-entendres. Despite this, it has faced some CreatorBacklash, with Eminem admitting later, "I'm happy with about half of that album... I think it's better than ''Relapse''".

''Encore'' is the fifth studio album by Music/{{Eminem}}, released on November 12, 2004. The album is a sequel to ''Music/TheEminemShow''. With a somewhat TroubledProduction marred by leaks and Eminem's CreatorBreakdown, and considered to be the album that ended Eminem's golden age, it nevertheless has a cult following for its lunatic, freestyled rapping, nihilistic and giddy BlackComedy, and stirring ballads and inspirationals that -- most shocking of all -- displayed a ''mature'' Eminem to audiences for the first time.

While Music/DrDre and Mike Elizondo (Dre's session bassist) remember the ''Encore'' recording session as a positive experience, describing a motivated and playful Eminem flexing his songwriting genius and keeping everyone laughing with his antics, Eminem's memories of the recording session are darker. After coming off probation for his 2000 assault charge in 2003, Eminem -- no longer subject to random drugs testing -- developed an addiction to Ambien. Depressed and trying to hide the extent of it from his friends and family, he wrote most of ''Encore'' while gobbling handfuls of pills, and his flow on the album is slurred, disjointed and dissociated, with unintuitive meters and tortured PainfulRhymes.

''Encore'' ended up becoming a CerebusRollercoaster. The midsection of the album is filled with comedy songs, using ToiletHumor to disgust the audience (rather than political incorrectness), with Slim repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowingOutTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, lecturing Dre as a gay homophobic pastor, [[DenserAndWackier distracting his critics by becoming a German hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, [[Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman]], getting death threats from Creator/ChristopherReeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and, uh, literally recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). Yet Eminem had now hit his 30s, and displays higher ideals -- encouraging his fans to vote out George Bush in "Mosh", apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird" and delivering the stadium showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. Even among the goofy songs, "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" are both satires of a depraved HorribleHollywood that normalises abuse of children. Wilder still, the album contains ''sincere love songs'' -- old-hat in a post-"Love The Way You Lie" world, but in 2004, the most shocking thing on the album was hearing Slim tell a girl "''You are the ink to my paper, what my pen is to my pad / The moral, the very fiber, the whole substance to my rap / You are my reason for being, the meaning of my existence''". Even if the rapping is peculiar, Eminem's ''singing'' is markedly improved from ''The Eminem Show'', benefiting from the intensive vocal coaching he'd done with Roger Love in 2003.

2004 saw Eminem in a difficult situation. After ''Film/EightMile'' [[HypeBacklash mainstreamed him]] beyond his typical audience, he had [[RatedGForGangsta lost his shock value]]. The charts, which during Eminem's rise had been dominated by angsty NuMetal and assembly-line TeenPop that made him a breath of fresh air, were now filled with hooky snap and crunk from [[SouthernRap the South]], Commercial GangstaRap and GlamRap starring Eminem's own protégé Music/FiftyCent, and the new face of Music/KanyeWest, whose boyish everyman persona and soulful production could not have been further from Eminem's brat persona and plastic-classical sound. All of these musical trends would, nevertheless, influence the material on ''Encore'' -- chipmunking kitchy-pop samples, telling tales of gun battles, and -- oh dear -- the affectation of a Southern accent, something Eminem had dabbled in on his ''The Eminem Show'' songs "Square Dance" and "Superman" but that began to severely influence his style around this point.

Eminem's reputation had also been dinged as the result of a [[BattleRapping beef]] with his self-declared archnemesis Benzino, the editor of ''The Source'' magazine. Trying to smear Eminem as a closet racist sent by the industry to 'steal' hip-hop, Benzino had spread recordings of a teenage Eminem performing two racist songs. Eminem's friends at the time explained the tapes were an injoke, Benzino was written off as a jealous loser by the hip-hop community at large, and Shady Records attempted to claim copyright on the tapes in order to prevent them being spread further. However, ''Encore'''s lead single, "Just Lose It", would face the ''wrong'' kind of controversy -- its playful disses at Music/MichaelJackson, then in the news for child molestation charges, was regarded by many Black musicians and commentators to be a potentially racist swipe against the world's most successful Black musician, as well as a [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks formulaic retread]] of "Without Me" and "The Real Slim Shady".

Could it get worse? Well, there was also the leaks -- a CD Eminem had burned for his brother Nathan, with tracks for the album that would later become ''Encore'', was stolen and turned into a bootleg mixtape, forcing Eminem to scrap the original tracklist (which had been mostly {{Diss Track}}s). Getting it into his head that he needed to recapture the spontaneity of his ''Music/TheSlimShadyLP'' days, Eminem holed up in a studio in Orlando with Music/DrDre, and recorded a large number of songs written mostly by freestyling (rather than his typical method of working them out on paper). While Music/DrDre and Mike Elizondo (Dre's session bassist) remember the ''Encore'' recording session as a positive experience, describing a motivated and playful Eminem flexing his songwriting genius and keeping everyone laughing with his class-clown antics, Eminem's memories of the recording session are darker. After coming off probation for his 2000 assault charge in 2003, Eminem -- no longer subject to random drugs testing -- developed an addiction to Ambien. Depressed and trying to hide the extent of it from his friends and family, he wrote most of ''Encore'' while gobbling handfuls of pills, and his flow on the album is uncharacteristically slurred, disjointed and dissociated, with unintuitive meters and tortured mid-word rhymes.

''Encore'' ended up becoming a CerebusRollercoaster. The midsection of the album is filled with comedy songs, using ToiletHumor to disgust the audience (rather than political incorrectness), with Slim repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowingOutTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, lecturing Dre as a gay homophobic pastor, [[DenserAndWackier distracting his critics by becoming a hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, [[Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman]], getting death threats from Creator/ChristopherReeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and, uh, literally recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). Yet Eminem had now hit his 30s, and displays higher ideals -- encouraging his fans to vote out George Bush in "Mosh", apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird" and delivering the stadium showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. Even among the goofy songs, "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" are both satires of a depraved HorribleHollywood that normalises abuse of children. Wilder still, the album contains ''sincere love songs'' -- old-hat in a post-"Love The Way You Lie" world, but in 2004, the most shocking thing on the album was hearing Slim tell a girl "''You are the ink to my paper, what my pen is to my pad / The moral, the very fiber, the whole substance to my rap / You are my reason for being, the meaning of my existence''". Even if the rapping is peculiar, Eminem's ''singing'' is markedly improved from ''The Eminem Show'', benefiting from the intensive vocal coaching he'd done with Roger Love in 2003.

''Pitchfork'' loathed ''Encore'', but Robert Christgau, The Dean of American Rock Critics, reviewed it higher than ''The Eminem Show''. Fans often regard the album as Eminem's worst, but it has defenders, particularly Creator/DannyBrown, who praises the album's sickly dark humour and claims the absurdist song "Rain Man" as a benchmark for what he tries to achieve in his own rapping. Other surprising fans of ''Encore'' include Music/TheRollingStones' drummer Charlie Watts (who apparently tried to force Mick Jagger to listen to the toilet noises), Rosie O'Donnell, who cited "Evil Deeds" as a personal favourite, and Eminem's old foe Music/{{Moby}}, who was willing to set their differences aside to praise "Mosh". Eminem's [[TechnicianVersusPerformer ultra-technical, more serious]] late career work has also led to ''Encore'' being more positively appraised; it's Eminem's sole album in which he's 1) rapping as the original incarnation of Slim Shady, 2) is funny, 3) isn't being homophobic or killing women, 4) is rapping over Music/DrDre beats, and 5) isn't treating the work as a technical showcase of hyperspeed flows, homophones and triple-entendres. Despite this, it has faced some CreatorBacklash, with Eminem admitting later, "I'm happy with about half of that album... I think it's better than ''Relapse''".

2004 saw Eminem in a difficult situation. After ''Film/EightMile'' mainstreamed him beyond his typical audience, he had lost his shock value, and hip-hop appeared to have moved past Eminem's [[HypeBacklash overexposed]] baiting. The charts, which during Eminem's rise had been dominated by angsty NuMetal and assembly-line TeenPop, were now filled with hooky snap and crunk from [[SouthernRap the South]], Commercial GangstaRap and GlamRap starring Eminem's own protégé Music/FiftyCent, and the critics' favourite hip-hop artist was now Music/KanyeWest, whose boyish everyman persona and soulful, innovative production could not have been further from Eminem's brat persona and plastic-classical sound. All of these musical trends would, nevertheless, influence the material on ''Encore'' -- chipmunking kitchy-pop samples, telling tales of gun battles, and -- oh dear -- the affectation of a Southern accent, something Eminem had dabbled in on his ''The Eminem Show'' songs "Square Dance" and "Superman" but that began on ''Encore'' to severely influence his flow.

''Encore'' ended up becoming a CerberusRollercoaster album. The entire midsection of the album is filled with comedy songs, using ToiletHumor to disgust the audience (rather than political correctness), with Slim repeating himself, rewinding the tape, [[ThrowAwayTheScript forgetting his lyrics]], clucking like a chicken, lecturing Dre in character as a gay homophobic pastor, [[DenserAndWackier distracting his critics by becoming a hand puppet]], antagonising his haters with sadistic stage hypnotism, yelling in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman, getting death threats from Christopher Reeve, and vomiting at the thought of his ex-wife (who had gone on the lam from a cocaine charge). Skits have Eminem playing with an electrolarynx and, uh, literally recording the sound of him taking a shit (Eminem considered this to be the "funniest, most fucked up" thing he ever did). Yet Eminem had now hit his 30s, and displays higher ideals -- encouraging his fans to vote out George Bush in "Mosh", apologising for the racist songs in "Yellow Brick Road", telling the story of his past poverty to his daughter in "Mockingbird" and delivering the stadium showstopper power ballad "Like Toy Soldiers" about walking away from his beefs. What's more, the album contains ''sincere love songs'', which may not seem like much in a world after 2010's megahit "Love The Way You Lie", but in 2004, the most shocking thing on the album was hearing Slim tell a girl "''You are the ink to my paper, what my pen is to my pad / The moral, the very fiber, the whole substance to my rap / You are my reason for being, the meaning of my existence''". Even if the rapping is peculiar, Eminem's ''singing'' is markedly improved from ''The Eminem Show'', benefiting from the intensive vocal coaching he'd done with Roger Love in 2003.

''Pitchfork'' loathed ''Encore'', but Robert Christgau, The Dean of American Rock Critics, reviewed it higher than ''The Eminem Show''. Fans often regard the album as Eminem's worst, but it has defenders, particularly Creator/DannyBrown, who praises the album's sickly dark humour and claims the absurdist song "Rain Man" as a benchmark for what he tries to achieve in his own rapping. Other surprising fans of ''Encore'' include Music/TheRollingStones' drummer Charlie Watts (who apparently tried to force Mick Jagger to listen to the toilet noises), Rosie O'Donnell, who cited "Evil Deeds" as a personal favourite, and Eminem's old foe Music/{{Moby}}, who was willing to set their differences aside to praise "Mosh". Eminem's [[TechnicianVersusPerformer ultra-technical, more serious]] late career work has also led to ''Encore'' being more positively appraised; it's Eminem's sole album in which he's 1) rapping as the original incarnation of Slim Shady, 2) is funny, 3) isn't being homophobic or killing women, 4) is rapping over Music/DrDre beats, and 5) isn't treating the work as a technical showcase. Despite this, it has faced some CreatorBacklash, with Eminem admitting later, "I'm happy with about half of that album... I think it's better than ''Relapse''".

'Til I pass [[Music/FiftyCent 50]] back the baton, the camera's on, my soul is gone!\\