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YMMV / Eminem

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Those for and against him alike can't quite figure out whether he "really means it" or not. He's generally more intelligent and sensitive than his loudest detractors would admit, but still angrier and sicker than his younger fans' parents would like.
    • Some of his more outlandish and outrageous lyrics and songs reach the point of parody, whether they are or not is debatable.
  • Archive Panic: In 2014, Spin ranked all Eminem songs, both as a lead and featured artist, excluding the skits. How many songs were back then? 289, and that number has since been growing.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: Many agree that he has had one, though it is contested when it started and ended (if it even has ended). A few common citations:
    • Some see The Eminem Show as a downplayed example of this, with many regarding it as being OK but a mile away from the glory of The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP.
    • Some critics consider Eminem's Gangsta Rap phase in 2003 (when he was hanging out with G-Unit) as another example of this, as his gangsta persona didn't suit his background, childish personality and unintimidating physical appearance (especially when next to 50, a legitimate hood gangsta who survived being shot). The songs he wrote in this period are mostly Diss Tracks and violent boasts, and tend to lack the self-deprecating and confessional personality of his earlier material (and that would return on Encore!). Due to the large amount of production he did in this era, he even started recycling melodies from older songs.
    • Encore!, Curtain Call, The Re-Up, and the speculative King Mathers era, up until his overdose - a Creator Breakdown where his pill addiction, writer's block and (from 2006) grief over the murder of his best friend Proof was leading him to output a lot of puerile grossout comedy with lower than usual technical abilities, vaguely offensive accents and a hyper-depressive, Torch the Franchise and Run tone. During this time (first at the end of the otherwise Shady-dominated Encore!, then in the Curtain Call single "When I'm Gone", he killed off Slim Shady, afterwards adopting a more generic hip-hop Glam Rap persona that he'd previously stood out for avoiding.
      • Traditionally this period is extended further to include Relapse, which also has grossout comedy and accents and was seen as outdated in 2009, but Relapse has been Vindicated by History for correcting many of these trends, displaying some career-best technique and bringing Slim Shady back from the dead. However, many still reject it for being too bleak and meaningless, especially in comparison to the silly and confessional Encore! and Recovery that border it. (Eminem himself has said that, while he doesn't think Encore! is his best work, he considers it much better than Relapse.)
      • Some view Encore! as a worthy return to the humour of The Slim Shady LP (a few prominent critics consider it better than The Eminem Show), but set the cutoff at Curtain Call, not being willing to accept "FACK".
    • Recovery through Revival, a Creator Recovery period in which Eminem was a lot happier. His music shifted to a pop-focused, Rap Rock feel and his image switched to a more apologetic, self-affirming and vaguely churchy persona that verges on Good Is Boring, while retaining enough Vulgar Humor to irritate anyone who thinks homophobic slurs and rape jokes are off limits (a common opinion in The New '10s). This period also saw Eminem shifting to a much more technical, speed-focused and Hurricane of Puns-laden style which began to overpower his songwriting and beat-riding, particularly by the time of Revival.
      • The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was part of this creative period and is generally regarded positively. However, many find it good despite his artistic direction at the time, rather than because of it.
      • Some find Recovery and The Marshall Mathers LP 2 good, and set the beginning of the period at around SHADYXV, the first indication of the writer's block Eminem experienced from 2015-2017, which contains numerous songs in which Eminem fears he's lost all connection with the real world and no longer has any pain left to rap about.
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: Relapse was Eminem's first new studio album after a prolonged Creator Breakdown, and fans and critics expected it to be a confessional Concept Album that continued the increasingly mature persona he'd developed on his last few albums. While it was indeed a Concept Album, it was instead a Horrorcore release revolving around a Serial Killer version of Slim Shady, featuring various unidentifiable accents and leftfield beats with Slasher Movie-influenced lyrics. While the result sold well off of Eminem's brand recognition, topping the Billboard 200 and being certified triple-platinum in the US, its poor reception resulted in Eminem cancelling plans for a sequel and shifting to a Pop Rap style on Recovery and Revival.
  • Award Snub:
    • The Marshall Mathers LP got awards left and right and is widely regarded as one of the best rap albums ever. Yet when it came time to award the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, it had two acclaimed rock albums to combat: Steely Dan's Two Against Nature and Radiohead's Kid A. The Academy chose the Steely Dan album as a Consolation Award for the legendary yacht rock act, even though Steely Dan, who weren't fully satisfied with Two Against Nature, said Eminem should have received the award instead.
    • This happened again with The Eminem Show. When it once again came time for the Grammy for Album of the Year to be handed out, it had not only fellow rapper Nelly's Nellyville to combat, but the Dixie Chicks' Home, Norah Jones' debut album Come Away with Me and Bruce Springsteen's The Rising as well. The Academy chose Come Away with Me, apparently because it was a safer choice than a hardcore hip hop album, a raunchy Pop Rap album, a feminist bluegrass album or a 9/11-inspired heartland rock album. (Eminem apparently cried about the snub, and was comforted by Springsteen.)
    • Inversely, he often wins awards in rap categories by default. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 getting the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2015 is often considered more of a lifetime achievement award for him than a genuine mark of the album's being the best of the year, though people tend not to complain about it too loudly due to his only real competition in his category being the much despised Iggy Azalea. Relapse also won the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2010 despite its exploitational lyrical content, a confused critical response and Eminem cringing about it almost immediately. Eminem also mocked MTV Europe for giving him Best Hip-Hop several consecutive years in a row, acidly commenting that he already knows he's white and they don't need to remind him.
  • Awesome Ego: "Had a dream, I was king. I woke up, still king."
    • "Long as I have a mike, I'm Godlike / So you and me are not alike / Bitch I wrote Stan "
  • Awesome Music: No doubt about it. His complex lyrical skills aren't the only thing that makes his music great; there's a lot of songs of his with downright remarkable instrumentals and beats. Special mentions go to "Lose Yourself", "'Till I Collapse", "Rap God", "Berzerk", "FACK" (lyrical content aside), and "Bagpipes From Baghdad".
  • Bottom of the Barrel Joke: A feature of Em's period of pill-addled writer's block was the increasing use of unfunny, over-the-top grossout and Fan Disservice material in place of what had once been witty and poetic Lightmare Fuel. A few good examples are the gerbil-stuffing doggerel of "FACK", the Shady verse on 50 Cent's "Peep Show" which is about him kidnapping strippers and then shitting on them, and forcing a woman to huff his farts and become dependent on colostomy bags in "Ballin' Uncontrollably". Unusually, he got out of the writer's block by pushing it so gross that it started to verge into horror, which eventually became Eminem's artistic direction, releasing the Horrorcore Slasher Movie Concept Album Relapse after healing from his drug problems.
    • There's a few examples of this in Eminem's earlier discography, too, with an obvious example being the hook for "Under The Influence" - "You can suck my dick if you don't like, my shit, 'cause I was high when I wrote this, so suck, my dick!". (This was on the same album as "Stan".)
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • "The Kids". The song is all about Eminem turning up as a supply teacher at a school and teaching children about the dangers of drugs... the most dangerous of which is the fact that they poison squirrels.
    • Near the start of "Lose Yourself", he includes the lyric "Mom's Spaghetti" in the midst of describing someone's nervous breakdown. It's meant to connect with the previous line, "There's vomit on his sweater already" as just a way of saying that the rapper in question threw up his mother's spaghetti that he ate earlier. This was lost on many, however, and the perceived randomness of the line has caused it to go memetic.
  • Bile Fascination: This is how he got a lot of his early audience, since he started his career in that transition period where people were getting tired of Gangsta Rap but hadn't fully embraced crunk/glam rap yet. He tended to alternate between Black Comedy and songs about killing women, and stuff you could dance to or was meant to be remixed.
  • Common Knowledge: It's an extremely common belief that he always "yells and screams" his rhymes. While he is well-known for the extremely angry delivery he can display, the truth is that his diction, voice pitch, and rapping style has always been varied - there are way more than a few songs in which he raps in a mellower or normal tone, both on his older and newer material. The only releases where he truly constantly raps like this are The Re-Up and Recovery.
  • Condemned by History: When Recovery was first released, it was seen as a solid comeback and an improvement over both Encore! and Relapse. However, it has garnered criticism over time for its commercial-sounding production and lack of variation. It's not at all hard to find people who view it as his worst album. This holds true for a handful of people even after the release of Revival, which is generally considered to be his weakest record since Encore!.
  • Contested Sequel: All of Eminem's albums after The Marshall Mathers LP are debated bitterly by critics, ranging from a mild but notable debate over whether The Eminem Show is too uncontroversial and commercial or his great masterwork, to a much nastier debate over whether his post-overdose material is worth even acknowledging the existence of.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Many of his jokes are of this sort. In fact, he outright admitted he was trying for this with the Christopher Reeve impersonation on "Medicine Ball."
    I guess it's time for you to hate me again
    Let's begin, now hand me the pen
  • Critical Dissonance: Both Encore! and Revival are widely considered by critics and fans to be the lowest points of Eminem's career, with both having the worst critical reception of any of his albums. Despite this, both albums debuted at #1 in many countries and the former has went 4x-platinum by the RIAA in the United States.
    • Encore! actually got pretty solid reviews from most commercial outlets. While there were some complaints over the Album Filler issues, the less technical rapping and the Potty Humor, it usually scored strong 3s, with a few voices (Robert Christgau in particular) saying it was better than The Eminem Show.
    • Critics gave mixed reviews to Relapse, calling it a grossout sensationalist album with creepy accents. Fans mostly loved it, and came to love it more the more Eminem cringed about it.
    • Critics also gave negative reviews to Kamikaze, calling it a spoiled, immature and disgraceful album that proved Eminem was an out-of-touch relic. Eminem's fans were just delighted to hear Em dropping his poppy, earnest persona and getting back to what originally made him big - insulting people.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Despite his rude behavior, his extreme harshness towards others, and his homophobic and sexist lyrics (at least, how a lot of people interpreted them to be), he was still one of the top artists of the '00s and loved by teenage girls. He isn't at all villainous, however he is a controversial figure to most who just can't understand the overlooking.
    • He lampshades this in the lyrics for "The Real Slim Shady":
    Feminist women love Eminem
    Chicka-chicka Slim Shady, I'm sick of him
    Look at him, walking around, grabbing his you-know-what
    Flippin' the you-know-who
    Yeah, but he's so cute though
  • Epileptic Trees: There's an absurd conspiracy theory floating around that he actually died during his three-year absence from the public eye and that the Eminem we see from 2009 onward is actually a clone. Because, you know, the stress of losing your best friend, addiction, and a near-fatal overdose totally doesn't change you.
  • Epic Riff:
    • "Lose Yourself"'s simple but catchy and expressive guitar riff became somewhat of a staple for beginner guitar players.
    • Eminem's simple but hyperkinetic hook and verse on "Forgot About Dre" is a standard piece for people trying to learn how to rap.
    • "Rap God" is also a common rapper practice piece, albeit a more advanced one. The speed-rap section in particular - which sounds extremely impressive, but is not the most technically difficult part of the song (beyond breath control) - is something every intermediate rapper has tried to master.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Eminem fans vs. the fans of pretty much anyone who has ever feuded with Eminem, including Juggalos, Cage fans, Everlast fans, Esham fans, etc.
    • Thanks to Kamikaze, you can now say there's one between his fans and those of Trap Music.
    • There is also one with Imagine Dragons fans after Dan Reynolds slammed Eminem for using a gay slur.
    • Eminem's feud with Canibus is a one-sided case. Eminem fans tend to not care about the Canibus beef, but Canibus fans are obsessed with it.
    • The rivalry with Machine Gun Kelly is similarly one-sided. While many of Eminem's fans joke that Eminem dissed Kells so hard he had to change genres, Kells's fans generally either were fans of Eminem already, or got into his music after "Killshot" turned them onto him, so don't tend to be hostile.
    • This gets pretty ugly with fans of Mariah Carey, as she says she was never romantically involved with Eminem note , and Eminem responded with threatening to release revenge porn of the two of them note . A lot of Lambs, who believe Mariah's version of events, view Stans as being misogynists because of supporting him in his Gaslighting. (In reality, even several other big-name rappers who were fans of Eminem were freaked out by his behaviour and told him to cool it.)
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Some of his fans prefer to forget anything that he did after Encore!.
  • Fountain of Memes: Lots of his lyrics and songs are very memeable, even the less ridiculous ones.
  • Franchise Original Sin: The majority of things critics complain about in his post-overdose work were present from 1997-2002, such as: his immature and Class Clown-to-Wangsty Mood-Swinger personality, his nasal voice, his wobbly and pitchy singing, his excessive use of Take That, Critics! and Accentuate the Negative, his self-obsessed subject matter, his stale pop culture references, his production being either highly commercial or overly eccentric, Glurgey pop choruses, overworked lyrics concentrating on technical fireworks over musicality, his use of voices and accents, and his use of slurs as Vulgar Humor. The biggest difference is that, in the early 2000s, he was the biggest celebrity in the culture, had a much more unstable personality, and was seen as a dangerous event - now that decades have passed without him ever brainwashing the youth of America into killing people he doesn't seem as scary.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Has its own page.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: In his earlier years on a major label, he would regularly trash the notion of himself as a positive role model. Later in life, he would go on to adopt three children, kick a drug habit that had its grip on him for longer than he'd been signed, and found a charity for disadvantaged youth.
  • He Really Can Act: A lot of critics were impressed by Em's acting skills in 8 Mile.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Eminem's shots at Moby in the third verse in "Without Me" provide two examples.
      • Em claims that "nobody listens to techno!" Not only was techno popular in the decade before the song's release in 2002 (as Moby's Play (1999) was a gigantic success even then), and not only would Kesha, Lady Gaga and other techno-based artists grow widespread fame in the years following, but the very year the song came out, Kylie Minogue and her electropop hit "Can't Get You Out of My Head" dominated charts worldwide — as did Moby with "We Are All Made of Stars."
      • Eminem specifically threatens that Moby will "get stung by Obie [Trice]", which is hilarious in its own right given that Moby remains a successful and well-liked musician whereas Obie Trice's career never took off and he's only really remembered for his appearance in "Without Me" or some of his other collabs with Eminem and other Shady Records artists.
      • He also calls Moby old, which took on a new dimension in 2019 after Moby elicited controversy by bizarrely claiming that he had been in relationships with Natalie Portman, Christina Ricci, and Lana Del Rey during the early 2000s — all of whom were more than a decade younger than him.
    • Also, Eminem is dressed up like Robin in the music video for "Without Me". 13 years later, the Robin of Batman: Arkham Knight has a Comic-Book Fantasy Casting when he looks like Eminem in the similar look and feel.
    • Becomes equally hilarious as the "Rapmobile" in the "Without Me" video is a Lamborghini Murcielago (Spanish for "bat"). In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne himself would drive a Murcielago.
    • In "My 1st Single," Eminem suggests The Source would be so low as to find journalistic merit in child pornography. In 2004, this was a horrible accusation to make of anyone. In 2016... not so much.
    • In Skylar Grey’s “C’mon Let Me Ride”, Eminem says “I’m the cousin of Godzilla”. Skip to 2020, now he has a song called Godzilla!
    • All of his songs that mention weird beards, such as "Business" ("‘Til we grow beards, get weird and disappear / Into the mountains, nothin’ but clowns down here"), "Deja Vu" ("He’s acting weird again, he’s really beginning to scare me / Won’t shave his beard again and he pretends he doesn’t hear me"), and "Berzerk" ("Grow your beard out, just weird out") became this as of June 2017, when Eminem himself started growing a beard to the surprise of many people. As of 2020, he still sports it, so it's safe to say many are used to it now.
    • "The Real Slim Shady" contains a Take That! to Tom Green. The song would later play over the credits of Freddy Got Fingered.
    • In "I'm Back", the bravura passage at the end of the second verse ("miiind with no sense-in-it, friiied schizo-phrenic, whose eyeees get so-squinted, I'm bliiind from smoke in-'em-with myyy windows tinted, with niiine limos rented, doin' liiines of coke in 'em with a bunch of guys hoppin' out all hiiigh and indo-scent-ed...") ends with a big gasp for air. Funny in 2000 - hilarious considering just how much more technical Eminem would get over the years. As early as 2002, "White America" and "Lose Yourself" contain far more complex passages that he manages without audible effort. And once you've heard his post-2010 material like "Rap God", "Vegas" and "Godzilla" (or even his not-ultra-technical cuts like "Untitled", "Cold Wind Blows" or "Venom"), on "I'm Back" he sounds like he hasn't even finished warming up. The gasp therefore goes from a Badass Boast into amusingly contrived overreacting.
    • Eminem did an interview with MTV in 1999 where he made fun of speed rapping ("I was like, drlbldrlbldrlbldrlbl... I thought that the faster you rapped, the better you was") and joked with the interviewer that when he had nothing left to say, that was when the love songs would come out. By 2004 (his retirement album) he was starting to make Masochism Tango-themed love songs which became a consistent theme in his later career. By the mid-2010s and early 2020s, he would arguably be most famous for his hyper-technical speed rapping (which is often criticised as pointless).
    • "The Real Slim Shady" infamously has the line "Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records". A little more than twenty years later, Will Smith hurled expletives towards Chris Rock at the Oscars after slapping him (although Smith has used profanity in some of his movies as well).
      • The subsequent line is "You think I give a damn about a Grammy? Half you critics can't even stomach me, let alone stand me." "The Real Slim Shady" would end up winning a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance.
    • Similarly, "Rap God" mentions Eminem inducting Run–D.M.C. into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and says "The only hall of fame I'll be inducted in is the alcohol of fame, on the wall of shame."; this line would become hilarious after Eminem himself was inducted into the RRHOF in 2022.
    • In 2000, Eminem put out a Ken Kaniff skit on his own album The Marshall Mathers LP featuring Kaniff receiving enthusiastic oral sex from two men at the same time, who Kaniff refers to as J and Shaggy, the names of the two members of Insane Clown Posse. 19 years later, ICP themselves released "Be Safe", in which the actual Shaggy gets so into his rap that he blurts out, "I might suck a dick—", followed by a Record Needle Scratch as Shaggy realizes what he just rapped and then says, "—uh, I would never suck a dick!"
  • Ho Yay: Memorably in the Dr. Dre song "What's the Difference", "I love you dawg." Though he did mean it in a father-son sort of way. Him and 50 Cent though...
    • Also in "My Dad's Gone Crazy", "All this time me and Dre have been fuckin' with hats off!" ...in a song in which he unfavorably compares retiring as a musician to a lifetime of performing cunnilingus.
    • Retroactively taken to new levels with Proof in several songs on Recovery, most notably "You're Never Over". Apparently they had pet names for each other...
    • "Just Lose It" is full of Accidental Public Confessions.
    Now I'm gonna make you dance
    It's your chance
    Yeah, boy; shake that ass
    Oops, I mean girl
    Girl, girl, girl...
    • Both "Stan" and its follow up "Bad Guy" has this with both Stan and Matthew's obsession with Eminem. Also cross with Foe Yay Shipping considering their subject matter. What worse is that Matthew starts off in "Stan" as a 6 years old.
    • Not to mention "Lighters":
    And pardon me if I'm a cocky prick but you cocks are slick
    Who you dicks try to kid, flipped dick, you did the opposite
    You stayed the same, cause cock backwards is still cock you pricks
    I love it when I tell em shove it
  • Hype Aversion: More cynical listeners believe Eminem's success is 30% talent and 70% because he's white, and that critics (initially) treat him as if he single-handedly invented hip-hop.
    • In some interviews (and stated in "White America") he kinda agrees with that cynical opinion.
    • Even today, he still seems to hold this opinion. In a 2020 interview with fellow emcee Crooked I, Em stated that despite both his high sales and respect amongst rap fanatics, he still "feels like a guest" in the hip-hop scene. He implies that he thinks this because he believes his popularity makes him more prone to being a Gateway Series to the genre than anything, and that not many people take the time to understand his craft because the reason he loves what he does is different from the reason surface-level rap listeners check him out, that reason being his respect for the genre. He even goes as far as saying that whenever he looks up a list of someone's favorite rappers, he thinks the authors "don't know what they're talking about" if artists far lesser-known than him aren't listed.
  • It Was His Sled: Everyone knows the twist from "Stan".
    • And by now, the reveal of whose perspective "Bad Guy" is from has shown up in every review of The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • Many of Eminem's guest verses on songs have helped make them more popular, such as "I Need A Doctor" by Dr. Dre or "Smack That" by Akon. Inversely, two of his songs ("Love The Way You Lie" and "The Monster") only became hits because of Rihanna.
    • Some would simply listen to the (aptly-titled) "Godzilla", for Eminem's last-30-second, rapid-fire verses that arguably topped the one he did on "Rap God."
  • LGBT Fanbase: He has a significant LGBT+ following for a guy who infamously used homophobia as shock comedy around the Turn of the Millennium; part of it is because these jokes expressed anxiety about homosexuality/masculinity that many gay men could relate to feeling before they came out. Eminem's constant statements that out of character he supported queer people, and his collaboration with Elton John, helped. (The fact he was a bottle-blond Pretty Boy who wore earrings and posed naked for Rolling Stone also helped.) He also crossdresses as female characters in many of his music videos, all of whom are camp icons (Britney Spears, Madonna, his mother). A lot of his music is also influenced by Camp media such as Teen Pop, musical theatre, Self Empowerment Anthems, superhero fiction, and Slasher Movies, and his collaborations with other gay icon stars like Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Sia, Jessie Reyez and Young M.A. have led to significant crossover. He also scooped up a large number of Machine Gun Kelly fans, who are often LGBT+, due to their beef, which Eminem himself admitted was extraordinarily homoerotic.
  • Memetic Badass: Eminem is this to his fans, who consider him untouchable and relish every instance of Em ending a beef with a savage diss track. This consequently has also led to a meme where Eminem is portrayed as being afraid of dissing fictional musicians as a way of illustrating how hardcore those musicians are (mostly from Anime & Manga and Western Animation).
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Where the fuck is Kanye when you need him? Snatch the mike from 'em, bitch, Imma let you finish..."
    • In some corners of the internet, 'stan' and 'stanning' are terms for hardcore fanning. Mostly used in jest.
      • A lot of those places have been using it so long that the original meaning/origin is often completely unknown to people.
      • Many rappers have referred to Eminem's "Stan", like Nas on "Ether" (you a fake, a phony, a pussy, a Stan) and Lupe Fiasco on "Lu Myself" (Like Stan, I'mma stand till it answers me).
    • Rearranging the lyrics of "Lose Yourself"; in particular, spamming the line "Mom's spaghetti".
      • "Snap back to reality" Explanation
    • Guess who's back...back again? [X] is back. Tell a friend.
    • You Reposted in the Wrong NeighborhoodExplanation
    • "Now this looks like a job for me." Explanation
    • "Still waiting for 'My Salsa'."Explanation
    • "One of the few rappers Eminem was too afraid to diss" / "Top 10 rappers Eminem was too afraid to diss" Explanation
    • "Your booty is heavy duty like diarrhea" Explanation Became an Ascended Meme when he spoke about it in his now-famous 2020 interview with Crooked I, acknowledging the mockery he received for the line.
    • "Bornana" Explanation
    • "Rap God" is probably the single most common background song for clips showcasing someone with a Motor Mouth. This has since been eclipsed in 2020 by the "#GodzillaChallenge".
    • "Something's wrong. I can feel it." Explanation
    • "That's an awfully hot coffee pot." Explanation
    • For some reason, "FACK" is making rounds on TikTok.
    • "Eminem is Sauron" Explanation
    • "Hi, kids! Do you like violence?" Explanation
    • Eminem throwing a rat/"Woe, plague be upon ye"Explanation
  • Memetic Troll: Eminem is legendary for gleefully and effortlessly taking the piss out of anyone and everyone who gets in his way. His entire "Slim Shady" persona is a testament to his ability to piss off personal enemies and Moral Guardians alike with zero fucks given.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Eminem has become something of a mascot for white trash America despite the fact that his kayfabe portrays white trash culture as a race of promiscuous, pill-addicted bigots from broken homes, stuck in dead-end jobs, forever on the verge of Going Postal or becoming Serial Killers. Eminem positions himself as an Escapist Character for the poor and dispossessed, and he's written multiple songs granting his alter-ego Slim Shady to his listeners as a name for the cathartic feelings of rage and pain they can release by listening to his music. Eminem's outspoken anti-racist views and inspiring, Friend to All Children persona in his songs outside of kayfabe also make him rather a positive figure as well and help keep his audience aware that they're in on a self-deprecating joke.
  • Misaimed Fandom: In The New '10s, "stan" became a slang term for an obsessed fan, which was worn by some people as a badge of honor. Eminem's "Stan" song is criticizing this exact kind of obsessed fan by showing how pointlessly self-destructive such celebrity worship truly is. The titular Stan in the song kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend over his obsession with Eminem, and all while Eminem was planning on writing back to Stan anyways.
  • Mis-blamed:
    • Despite popular belief, he did not face much racist harassment from Black hip-hop audiences, who often underestimated him based on his appearance, but were supportive of him as soon as they realised he could actually rap, even defending him from racist personals in the '97 Rap Olympics by booing so loud as to drown out his opponent for making white-people jokes. (As Eminem himself notes in "White America" - "when I was underground, no one gave a fuck I was white".) A few people held he was a white appropriator, but they were outliers and not the general view in the 90s hip-hop scene. Eminem did experience racist assaults by Black people, but they were just local bullies who did not know or care he was a rapper. The racism he experienced in hip-hop was mostly from other white people, with white label executives preventing him from getting signed numerous times because of his race, and white audiences chanting 'wigger' and 'Vanilla Ice' at him and pelting him with bottles at his early shows.
    • Encore!:
      • The content and rapping style on Encore! has been attributed to Eminem's abuse of Ambien at the time, including by Eminem. However, Eminem writes in his book The Way I Am that he had been freestyling the material due to an attempt to recapture the humour and spontaneity he had with Dr. Dre while recording The Slim Shady LP, as well as to push himself to improve as a rapper (particularly because of how much he admires Jay-Z, who can write entire songs by freestyling). His 2003 material also shows inklings of the stylistic direction he'd adopt on Encore!, particularly his three Invasion freestyles which show him beginning to incorporate crunk and snap influences in his delivery, a fake Southern accent, and belching, all recorded at a time when he was still on probation and facing regular drug tests that prevented him from being able to abuse medication. While it's obvious Eminem's Ambien addiction was a factor on the lowered technical ability on the album, the audible slur in his voice and the woe-is-me content, Encore! ended up the way it did due to purposeful artistic decisions that were not all the fault of the zolpidem clogging up his brain.
      • Encore! turning out the way it did is also often blamed on several of the tracks intended for the album leaking, forcing Eminem to hurriedly record replacements - fans tend to assume the serious songs on the album were the "real" songs and the silly ones were the replacements. What actually happened was that the leaks gave Eminem the opportunity to revise the entire track list for the album, with many of the album's beloved serious tracks like "Evil Deeds", "Mosh", "Mockingbird" and "Like Toy Soldiers" also coming out of his freestyling sessions with Dre. Another reason he'd wanted to revise the track list had been because he was sick of the beefs he was involved in with Benzino and Ja Rule - the original track list for Encore would likely have been disses aimed at them.
    • Eminem's Creator Backlash to Relapse and his cancellation of Relapse 2 is sometimes based on the idea that a bad fan and critical reception to the album spooked him (50 Cent has said as much). Relapse's reception wasn't that bad - while there were some intense reactions from his own fanbase and some disappointed reviews, it was mostly liked, was the highest selling rap album of the year, and netted a Best Rap Album Grammy. Em himself has always maintained that he changed direction on Relapse 2 on his own. The turning point was a block of sessions in Honolulu where his producer Denaun Porter persuaded him to start dropping the creepy accent he was using and imagine he was a young MC at an open mic, leading to him producing much more playful, technical material that he felt was much better than what he'd been doing before. Around this time, his writing finally exhausted the Serial Killer incarnation of Shady he'd used on Relapse, with the character developing into a more 'mundane' Lower-Class Lout persona with subject matter about drinking, dancing, brawling, driving and bullying his girlfriends. Dr. Dre then withdrew from the project to focus on his doomed album Detox, causing Eminem to find other producers, largely from the pop-rap world; this had the effect of getting him back in touch with the outside world, and he began wanting to make more confessional, meaningful material that fit his happier state of mind instead of relying on shock-comedy. The highlights of Relapse 2 that still used Dre production, Slasher Movie-Horrorcore subject matter and accents ended up on a Relapse Updated Re-release called Relapse: Refill, with Eminem admitting that, although they no longer fit the new project, he was still proud of the songs and wanted them to be heard; the ones that fit the new direction were bundled up with some new songs and ended up on a new album called Recovery.
  • Narm:
    • "Mom's spaghetti".
    • "Have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have. I've been protested and demonstrated against". It's arguably made worse by his pouty tone while he raps those lines.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was already being seen as increasingly irrelevant by 2004. However, Robert Smigel cited "Ass Like That" as giving Triumph's career a boost, even though it was a song entirely about dissing him, allowing him to continue to reappear during the later part of the 2000s and intervene in political events in the late 2010s.
  • Older Than They Think: People who got pissed at Eminem's political position against Donald Trump in Revival seemed to have forgotten Trump is not the first President Em dissed in his tracks; "Square Dance" from The Eminem Show and "Mosh" and "We As Americans" from Encore! are jabs quite dedicated to George W. Bush. His music video for "My Name Is", the song that made him famous, contains a diss aimed at Bill Clinton.
    • The deep-throated angry delivery he used all throughout Recovery has often been cited as "the Recovery voice". However, he actually first rapped like this a few years prior on The Re-Up, which was recorded in 2005-2006.
    • One of the main issues of Relapse is the constant overuse of accents, but those actually started near the end of 2004's Encore!, when the songs such as "Rain Man", "Big Weenie", and "Ass Like That" started getting really goofy. Em stated on a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone that every day he had a pocketful of pills, and he would just go into the studio and fuck around.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Eminem was responsible for making white-rappers to be taken seriously after Vanilla Ice and other one-hit-wonders made them into a joke, as he was also praised for his technical ability and highly offensive and disturbing lyrics.
  • One-Scene Wonder: His guest appearances have a habit of outshining the host artist, like in Drake's song "Forever".
    • Or on "Drop the World" from the Lil Wayne rock album Rebirth. Most people, including Wayne's die-hard fans, weren't fans of the album, except for the song Em was on.
      • His appearance in "That's All She Wrote" on T.I.'s "No Mercy" album was viewed the same way do to the huge online sales for that track alone compared to the rest of the album.
    • His duet with Jay-Z, "Renegade", is the most literal example of this trope: Em's the only guest on the whole album. This was even lampshaded by Nas during his feud with Jay, saying "Eminem murdered you on your own shit!" The ironic thing is that his verses were prerecorded before Jay-Z got a hold of the track. It was originally supposed to be a Royce da 5'9" songnote .
    • His cameo in The Interview is one of the more memorable scenes in the film.
  • Parody Displacement: "Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?" is actually derived from the 1960s/70s game show To Tell the Truth's catchphrase "Will the real [person's name] please stand up?", used to reveal the true mystery guest. The song itself contains a few lines that parody a couple of contemporary songs like "The Bum Bum Song" and "The Bad Touch", which have largely been forgotten today.
  • Presumed Flop:
    • Encore! is believed to be the bad album that knocked Eminem off his imperial phase, as it was made during a hugely damaging Creator Breakdown that almost killed Eminem, and would face Creator Backlash a few years later. It went 4x Platinum, is one of the fastest selling albums in history, and got favourable reviews from critics (with a few critics, notably Robert Christgau, considering it better than The Eminem Show, and Nick Hasted considering it a worthy sequel that was equivalently good). It was only seen as bad compared to Eminem's other albums, with most of the negative reviews reacting to Eminem's overexposure, the potential racism of his beef with Michael Jackson now that racist old raps of his had been discovered, and a desire for him to clear out for the hot new thing.
    • Relapse was hit with Creator Backlash almost as soon as it came out, its followup album Recovery is Eminem's official Career Resurrection, and Relapse has a reputation for being an underappreciated Cult Classic, so it's assumed a flop. However, it was met with mixed but positive reviews, was the top selling hip-hop album of 2009 (it went Platinum within eight weeks and is currently 2x Platinum), and won a Grammy for Best Rap Album.
  • Production-Related Period Piece: The distinctive accent and lyrical content of Relapse Shady, plus Eminem abandoning it almost immediately, means that several of Eminem's features, mixtapes and leaks make very little sense out of the context of this era. Some post-2009 Relapse Slim material include "Things Get Worse", a BoB collab from 2011 (which must have confused people coming to it after having a hit with the much tamer "Airplanes"), and "Discombobulated", a 2020 track based on a 2009-era verse and hook Eminem found and decided to complete.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Hearing him on the same song as Hayley Williams. Considering the popularity of the song, however, maybe not.
    • On that note, a song featuring Bruno Mars? As shown on the song itself ("Lighters"), it's quite a big contrast.
    • Most examples of this (him working with Fun., with P!nk!, with Akon) etc. are proof that Tropes Are Tools.
    • The general fan consensus regarding Revival. While people such as Skylar Grey and X Ambassadors are familiar collaborators to most, fans were particularly shocked to see the likes of Alicia Keys, P!nk, Kehlani, and especially Ed Sheeran on the track list, with not a single rap artist appearing as a guest star. Aside from Phresher, although he doesn't actually rap. Many people have also said the fact he and Ed Sheeran worked twice again after that is also quite strange.
  • Sampled Up: Results tend to be Awesome, as shown by:
  • Seasonal Rot: Apparently, there are some who think Eminem's music was better before he kicked the drug habit.
  • Sequel Displacement: Go ask someone what Eminem's first album was.note 
  • Signature Song: "Without Me", "My Name Is", "The Real Slim Shady" and his quintessential album track "'Till I Collapse" for the post-Infinite period, "Lose Yourself" for the post-The Eminem Show period and overall.
    • As for signature song parts: Rap God and Godzilla for their respective sections where Em raps over 10 syllables per second, becoming very popular internet challenges (the former even netted him an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records).
  • So Okay, It's Average: Most of his work after the extremely divisive Encore! is this with the possible exception of his early-2010's period besides the overwhelmingly negative reception of Revival and generally positive reception of The Marshall Mathers LP 2. While they're very lyrical and competently produced, most music critics agreed that Eminem's novelty and shock-value has long worn-off and aren't as special or as boundary-pushing as they were decades prior.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • Eminem was compared to Elvis Presley in the press — a fellow superstar from a white-trash background who became the focus of intense controversy and censorship by mainstreaming Black music. Eminem proudly (and not so proudly) took this part of the persona on, declaring himself "Rap's Elvis" in "Ricky Ticky Tock" and comparing himself to him in many songs and videos.
    • Eminem is also a Darker and Edgier version of Beastie Boys, a white rap group who also used a comedic Rap Rock style and loved to wind up Moral Guardians with their over-the-top heel personas.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: For the fans who were disappointed in Encore! and Relapse, Recovery was a significant step forward in quality. Given how poorly Eminem thought of the albums himself in some Recovery tracks, he feels the same.
    • Kamikaze is generally considered a big improvement over the very controversial Revival. Bonus points for being a literal surprise, in that it was suddenly dropped with no hype or marketing leading up to its release.
    • Even those who weren't won over by Kamikaze generally agree that Music to Be Murdered By was pretty solid. For reference, Anthony Fantano, who has been very critical of Em's late 2010s efforts, agreed that it was a decent listen and a step in the right direction....which was then followed by him giving Side B a lower score.
  • Unintentional Period Piece:
    • "Murder, Murder" off The Slim Shady EP. The second stanza sees him looting a house for, among other things, a Nintendo 64 (to sell it at triple the price once shops run out) and some Beanie Babies.
    • "The Real Slim Shady" is quite obviously a product of its time, with references to Pamela Anderson, Tom Green, Fred Durst, and Will Smith's musical career.
    • "Mosh" is a protest song that was released as a single prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, and its lyrics heavily reflect that. Mention is made of Bin Laden still being considered a terrorist threat, Em voices frustrations about the Bush administration by saying that then-president George W. Bush should go fight in the Iraq War as a way to "impress daddy" (George Bush Sr.), and the final lyrics are of Em saying "Mr. President! Mr Senator!", referencing the candidates of the 2004 US election (the aforementioned Bush, and Senator John Kerry). The music video even had two versions made (mainly just with different endings) and both are also equally as dated. The first one, released before the election, shows people showing up to vote between Bush and Kerry, and then the second version, released after the election, shows protesters breaking into the US Capitol Building while Congress is in session, with signs saying stuff like "Down with Bush!"
    • His use of the term "wigger" in "The Way I Am" certainly dates it to the early 2000s, as the term has fallen out of use since then.
    • "White America" references Total Request Live in its chorus, firmly planting it in the early 2000s.
    • "Without Me" references Dick Cheney, how the FCC tried to take him off MTV (which has long since died out due to Network Decay and the internet), and then makes a series of Take Thats to artists who haven't been relevant in years, specifically Chris Kirkpatrick, Limp Bizkit, and Moby (even stating the latter as being 36-years-old). All of this screams 2002, the year "Without Me" was released.
      • Moreover, one of the pot-shots issued at Moby was the lyric "Nobody listens to techno". It was pretty accurate in 2002, when Electronic Music was a very niche thing in America (to the point that American DJs and electronic musicians had to go abroad to find success). Come to The New '10s, where EDM became a major genre and has permeated several different genres, EDM DJs are in high demand, and EDM festivals can pull in crowds numbering at over 100,000. Moby himself later noted in a 2016 interview how that particular lyric would be Hilarious in Hindsight later on. In 2013, even Eminem (whose dislike of techno was, apparently, sincere) would capitulate, releasing the techno-infused EDM rap "Rap God", which would become one of his Signature Songs.
    • "Ass Like That" mentions Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen who haven't been very mainstream in several years, plus they're mentioned to be young adults, and even more noticeably mentions Hilary Duff is underage (she was 17 at the time).
  • Values Dissonance: Eminem was always controversial among politicians, religious leaders, and overly strict parents. Yet, in the 2020's, he's also garnered some backlash from Gen-Z'ers for his liberal use of homophobic slurs and sexist remarks. To his credit, Em has toned these down considerably on his more recent albums.
  • Values Resonance: For better or worse, a song like "Stan," about a person who religiously obsesses over the personal life of a celebrity only to lash out when he doesn't get what he wants out of it, works very well in the age of social media, which not only allows but encourages people to virtually stalk, communicate with or even slander their favorite celebrities, as well as collectively hang onto literally every word they say as either gospel or leverage against them. It's even worse for the new generation of self-established internet personalities and web-based content creators who have even less of a buffer between themselves and their audience and are therefore even less equipped to deal with fame and the toxic people it attracts, resulting in many of suffering from irreparable damage to their mental health. And none of this is helped by the songs massive Misaimed Fandom of people who call themselves "Stans" as a form of pride in their obsession over their favorite celebrities.
    • And other Unintentional Period Piece songs can find resonance even today. His blasting of the hipocrasy of the US government and the country as a whole on "White America" has, to some, seemed prescient.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • While controversial, there is a growing movement of appreciation for 2004's Encore!. It met mixed reviews for its Album Filler issues, in particular a run of six puerile comedy songs surrounded by dark love songs, earnest antibeef tracks, child abuse anecdotes and political polemic. Eminem also simplified his lyricism, freestyling most of the tracks in the aim of recapturing the spontaneity of his early work, and taking influence from then-popular snap and crunk music. However, Encore! has undergone Values Resonance - its shock comedy is based on Toilet Humour and satire of entertainment industry sexual abuse, which is transgressive and obnoxious without targeting gay people and women like on earlier albums, and the serious songs showcase a mature, non-toxically masculine and politically conscious Marshall more in line with modern sensibilities than the violent, slur-spewing brat of The Marshall Mathers LP. The Dr. Dre production has aged well, and the cartoony voices and funny gimmick songs gave the album a second life in lipsync skits when TikTok took off. Retrospectively, Eminem's admission in 2010 that Encore! had been made in the grip of an Ambien addiction recontextualised it as a Lightmare Fuel addiction album, highlighting the album's coherent suicide theming (even people who hate the album tend to view the album packaging and photoshoot as Em's best). Eminem's 2010s turn towards extreme, crafted technical flows also makes Encore!'s spontaneity and sense of play more striking and interesting.

      In 2010, Spin.com described the album as "a stunning portrait of a meltdown - especially at some of its dumbest moments. Eminem hopscotches between different accents and personas, repeating, interrupting, and contradicting himself... a virtuoso exploration of identity slippage". Billboard rated it his third best album, putting it (as well as rap-geek-favourite The Marshall Mathers LP 2) above the generally canonised top-3 entry The Eminem Show. XXL put Encore! as his 7th best (above the initially-respected Recovery) noting that it's aged well, and pointing out "Yellow Brick Road", "Mockingbird" and "Like Toy Soldiers" as standouts. Complex put Encore! as his fifth best solo studio album (eighth including a compilation, a bootleg and an indie release) and praised its Trolling Creator attitude, describing it as "schizophrenic awesomeness" and "the most 'Marshall' music ever". Another Encore! fan is Danny Brown, who told Complex it was his favourite Eminem album, remarking on its over-the-top aesthetic and uncomfortable dark humour and saying he learned a lot about rapping from it, particularly the song "Rain Man", which he considered a masterpiece. Eminem himself wrote about all this in "Careful What You Wish For":
      Every CD, critics gave it a three, then three
      years later they go back and re-rate it.
      Then called The Slim Shady LP the greatest,
      the Marshall Mathers was a classic,
      The Eminem Show was fantastic,
      but Encore! just didn't have the caliber to match it.
      I guess enough time just ain't passed yet
      A couple more years, that shit'll be Illmatic
    • Eminem's Horrorcore album Relapse is now often considered better than Recovery, sometimes MMLP2, and occasionally even his 1999-2002 trio of albums, despite being hit with Creator Backlash almost as soon as it came out. Initially slammed for its bizarre accent rapping, alienating content, outmoded comedy single and excessive celebrity namedropping, its reputation started to improve after its late-2009 Updated Re-release Relapse: Refill, which added multiple songs considered among Eminem's career best. It was helped further by the rise of playlists, mitigating the album's desensitising content by allowing listeners to fall in love with each song individually, and the album's championing by Tyler, the Creator, who cited Relapse as a major influence on his albums Bastard and Goblin. Once Eminem responded to the backlash to the album by cancelling Relapse 2, switching to a softer image and poppier sound, Relapse was then treasured by his fandom as the last of Em's albums in his original Dre-produced "shock-rap" style.

      Its present fans appreciate its ballsy anti-commercial Horrorcore approach (while still having enjoyable Glam Rap and Ode to Intoxication cuts), the depth of the Medical Horror Slasher Movie concept, and the eccentric Dr. Dre beats (most of which were Detox rejects) which have aged better than the production on Recovery and The Marshall Mathers LP 2's more radio-friendly cuts. Rap geeks also consider Eminem's beat-riding on Relapse a technical high point for him, as he used the weird beats as fuel for Constrained Writing, which helps some fans appreciate his inventive use of accents to force impossible rhymes. As of 2020, Eminem softened his opinion towards the album, as he looked back positively on the album for the 11th anniversary of its release, and also emulated his Relapse rap style in Revival's "Framed!" and on Music to be Murdered By: Side B (Deluxe Edition) on the song "Discombobulated" (though he noted he still thinks Encore! is better). Complex called Relapse: Refill Em's 6th best solo studio album, praising how the accent and character work expresses anxiety and dissociation, and concluded that even when Eminem doesn't know who he is, there's nobody else quite like him.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Recovery was designed to be one after the poor reception to Encore! and Relapse. Whether he succeeded is up for debate.
    • The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was this to those who were unsatisfied with Recovery's more somber tone and sometimes heavy-handed lyrics, instead opting to go back to the more slightly more wicked and slick tone of The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, while still retaining the lightning-fast flow he showcased in Hell: The Sequel and parts of Recovery.
    • Within only hours of its release, Kamikaze was praised near-universally as a drastic improvement over Revival.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: He has been criticized over and over for his vulgarity in music, and how it reaches to children, but the fact of the matter is no matter how colorful and cheery his voice may sound (although not so much anymore, though his later songs have him using a more cheerful voice) his songs ARE NOT for them. He even talks about it in his songs.

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