Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [14]
In 2000, the American mood was also growing skeptical of the government and the good-times high began to dissipate as the economy turned downward. The country watched as Bill Clinton renamed the Oval Office and O.J. Simpson evaded a murder charge. Eminem was a joyous irreverent Bronx cheer, be it in the face of the marketed, pre-fab talent of teen pop or the authority of and blind belief in society’s leaders. It was solace to fans who found nothing for them on MTV and nothing but lies on the evening news. From the beginning, Eminem’s music was as hard to ignore as a turned-on television and every bit as saturated with images. How could a generation bombarded with sound bites and jump-cut visuals since birth not be immediately drawn to him?
The playful, vicious stylings that caught the world’s attention on The Slim Shady LP skewed darker on The Marshall Mathers LP, released May 23, 2000. One week later, Eminem was arrested outside of the Hot Rocks Cafe, a Warren, Michigan, nightclub, for allegedly pistol-whipping a man he caught kissing his then wife, Kim Scott. Less than twenty-four hours before that event, Eminem brandished an unloaded gun at Douglas Dail, tour manager for Insane Clown Posse, a schlocky white Detroit rock-rap group whom Eminem had mocked onstage and off for quite some time. The famous was turning infamous, as the rapper’s new album too closely predicted his life.
Despite his brushes with the law and the curse of the sophomore slump (in which an artist follows an amazing debut with a rushed, less-than-stellar follow-up), Marshall Mathers thrived. On his second album, Eminem evolved into a grade-A pop instigator—the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and a top-notch lyricist like Rakim rolled into one—who delved deeper into his own pathology and commented on the taste of celebrity he’d had in the past year. The snapshot of Eminem’s private life hinted at on The Slim Shady LP grew into a detailed collage on The Marshall Mathers LP. Gone is the predominant mood of The Slim Shady LP, the gleefully violent zaniness. The Marshall Mathers LP is rarely as perversely upbeat. It exudes a raw darkness, at once a challenge to and defense from the eyes of the world Eminem had begun to feel on him. The antics of his debut had won him the class-clown attention he craved; for better and worse, he now had more than he needed.
The Marshall Mathers LP, more than Eminem’s debut album, anticipated and assumed—and rightfully so—the fame and infamy that followed. The theme of the album isn’t a closer look at Marshall Mathers the man, as the title would suggest, but an explanation, criticism, and visualization of how and why he is the most misunderstood man in America. Eminem points out his deliberately inflammatory ways but he also portrays himself, Slim Shady, and Marshall Mathers as he would soon be seen by the mainstream—as one and the same, a moral criminal, a menace in the eyes of the nation, not as an artist but as a Pied Piper whom the kids love and the parents fear. In this sense, the album is aptly titled: After its release, Marshall Mathers was the man held accountable.
The Marshall Mathers LP sold nearly two million copies in the first week of its release, nearly breaking *NSYNC’s 2.25 million record. It debuted at number one, blowing Britney Spears’s Oops! … I Did It Again out of the top spot it had held on and off for nearly five months. At number twenty-nine the same week was The Slim Shady LP, enjoying its eighty-fourth week among the Top 200 records sold in the nation. In the following two months, eight million copies of The Marshall Mathers LP would be sold and the mainstream media would begin to comment, realizing this wasn’t a novelty. Only a year after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed twelve students and one teacher in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, mainstream culture was still searching for scapegoats in society. People were not ready for an artist so directly confrontational as to rap about his stolen machine guns and black trenchcoats