YMMV / The Eminem Show

• Award Snub: When it once again came time for the Grammy for Album of the Year to be handed out, The Eminem Show 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.)
• Crosses the Line Twice: Not quite as present here as The Marshall Mathers LP, but definitely present. In particular, "My Dad's Gone Crazy" has the line "More pain inside of my brain, than the eyes of a little girl / Inside of a plane aimed at the World Trade" on an album that came out less than a year after 9/11.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In "Cleaning Out My Closet", Eminem raps about how his father had walked out on him and his mother when he was little, with such lyrics as "Wonder if he even kissed me goodbye? / No, I don't. On second thought, I just fuckin' wish he would die!" On June 26, 2019, Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. (Eminem's dad) died of a heart attack at age 67. He pretty much confirmed that he still thinks this way on the song "Leaving Heaven" from Music to Be Murdered By, where Em reveals that he didn't feel sorry for his dad's death, since he was never there for him. On a more positive note, he also says that if it weren't for his father's neglect, he wouldn't be the man he is today.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the third verse in "Without Me" Eminem takes a shot at Moby, claiming "Nobody listens to Techno!" Several years later, Kesha, Lady Gaga and other techno-based artists take over the charts, though techno was popular in the 1990s too, as Moby's Play (1999) was a gigantic success even then. Just as hilariously, the year "Without Me" came out (2002), Kylie Minogue and her electro-poppy "Cant Get You Out of My Head" take over the charts worldwide, as — of course — does Moby with "We Are All Made of Stars."
  • 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.
  • Additionally, near the end of the video is a sequence in which Eminem, dressed as Osama bin Laden, is chased down by D12, a group mostly comprised of black rappers, and forced to surrender. In 2011, half-black US President Barack Obama would actually succeed in tracking down and killing bin Laden.
• Ho Yay: "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.
• Memetic Mutation: "Without Me" spawned two over the years:
  • "Guess who's back...back again? [X] is back. Tell a friend." This particular one has been so enduring and spread so far past the Eminem fanbase that a good number of people first hear it without realizing it came from an Eminem song.
  • "Now this looks like a job for me," typically used as a punchline to jokes in which an individual offers to partake in certain acts, typically of the comedically heinous or semi-mundane variety.
• Narm: "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.
• Sampled Up: "Sing for the Moment" for Aerosmith's "Dream On".
• Signature Song: Originally, "Without Me" was the most recognizable song from the album, but, in recent years, "'Till I Collapse", despite never being released as a single, has tied it in popularity.
• Tough Act to Follow: This was arguably Eminem's most praised album in terms of fans and critics, as later albums (especially Encore and Revival) such as Relapse, Recovery, Kamikaze, and even Music to Be Murdered By were somewhat mixed to alright.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • "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 (even outclassing rap in terms of popularity) 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.

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