Every Eminem Album, Ranked: Critic’s Take (2024)

• Revival

  

  Year: 2017

  Released four years after The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Revival finds Eminem creatively unmoored and culturally adrift. Taking at least partial inspiration from Jay-Z’s introspective 4:44, Em silences the alter-egos and takes a hard look at his place in the rap game and in the lives of those who mean the most to him. His rapping remains technically impressive, as on the Beyoncé-assisted “Walk on Water” where he grapples with entering the twilight of this career and fans no longer checking for him the way they once did. “It’s true, I’m a Rubik’s, a beautiful mess /At times juvenile, yes, I goof and I jest/ A flawed human, I guess/ But I’m doing my best to not ruin your expectations,” he raps over somber keys. But mostly, the album fails to move past what feel like empty gripes from an artist who, by all accounts, should be proud of the career he’s had.

• The Marshall Mathers LP 2

  

  Year: 2013

  It’s daunting to make a sequel to what many consider your best album, but the greats try anyway. Nas (Stillmatic), Jay-Z (Blueprint 2 & 3) and Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt II) are just few who have tried to recapture the magic of their classic LPs. Eminem joined the bunch in 2013. With Rick Rubin at the helm, Em used MMLP2 to try and reassert his place in the rap pantheon. Sure, the album before this was a massive commercial success that worked to reposition Eminem amongst a new class of rappers, but perhaps he wanted to show that he was more than “just” enormous pop records; that he was still mad hip-hop. That point comes through loud and clear on tracks like “Berzerk,” which sounds like something Rubin made back when he was running Def Jam back in ’85. And, Em being Em, of course there’s the sure-shot radio play in “The Monster,” featuring Rihanna. But, overall, the album failed to live up to the creative heights of the original and lacked the intense clarity of focus of Recovery.

• Infinite

  

  Year: 1996

  To the amazement of many, before Slim Shady there was just Eminem, a prodigiously talented rapper from Detroit who had a knack for clever internal rhymes schemes. There was no outsized personality or crazy capers to kidnap and kill pop culture figures. Before Slim Shady, there was no Dr. Dre on the boards — just Eminem and Denaun Porter, who together created a suite of beats that sounded, well, much like what was happening elsewhere in rap in 1996. Even Em’s flow and voice seemed borrowed — if you close your eyes and listen to the title track or “313,” you might think you’re listening to an unreleased AZ or Masta Ace album. Infinite, when taken on its own, is an impressive work that probably would not have made a superstar out of Eminem. But when put with the rest of Em’s albums, it gives great insight into the raw materials that went into making the man who would become Slim Shady.

• Encore

  

  Year: 2004

  Eminem considers this his worst album, but he’s wrong. Yes, the run of songs on the back half of the album that starts with “Big Weenie” and ends with “Ass Like That” is terrible. All of those songs are some of the worst he’s ever committed to tape. Despite that, Encore — which was supposed to be the rapper’s final album — features some of Em’s strongest and most personal songs to date. From “Toy Soldiers” where he laments the many beefs he and his Shady/G-Unit crew found themselves in during the mid-’00s to “Mockingbird,” his loving ode to his children, Encore works as an earnest rumination on the things that really make Eminem tick.

• Relapse

  

  Year: 2009

  A lot happened between the release of Encore In 2004 and Relapse in 2009. For one, Eminem’s best friend and closest collaborator, DeShaun “Proof” Holton was murdered in 2006. The loss of his longtime friend had a debilitating effect on Em, pushing him deep into drug addiction, to the point where he almost died after a 2007 overdose. Afterwards, Em says he had to learn how to rap again. So, locked in a studio with Dr. Dre for two months, Em worked to piece back together the skill he worked so hard to hone over the years. The resulting project is the most fantastical album he’s made since The Slim Shady LP. There is a song where he plays a serial killer, a song where he fantasizes about abducting pop stars, a song where he threatens Mariah Carey’s then-husband Nick Cannon, and an incredible song where he goes into great detail about the depths of his drug addiction. It’s a dark album that, unlike The Slim Shady LP, sounds and feels as dark as its content.

• Music to Be Murdered By

  

  Year: 2020

  Inspired by director Alfred Hitchco*ck’s 1958 spoken-word album of the same name, Em’s 11th solo LP saw the Detroit MC again open his studio to the wider rap world. The list of guest rappers and producers is broader here than on any of his albums, save Recovery. In addition to his hometeam of Dr. Dre, Royce da 5’9″, Luis Resto, Skylar Grey and Mr. Porter, Em solicited the talents of Juice WRLD (to whom he also dedicated the album), D.A. Got That Dope, Don Toliver, Anderson Paak, Q-Tip, and Young M.A. The theme only loosely ties the album together, but it doesn’t really matter: Em is rapping his ass off all throughout the set, while creating spaces for new rappers to do their thing without it feeling as if they’re being subsumed into ShadyLand. And, like the best Em albums, there’s a variety of song types to appease all corners of his fanbase. The biggest knock against it? Its length. Eminem has a lot to say about a very finite amount of topics; he doesn’t need 20 tracks to get those points across.

• The Death of Slim Shady (Coupe de Grace)

  

  Year: 2024

  It’s taken him nearly a decade, but Eminem finally appears to be comfortable with his position as an elder statesmen in rap. As the title suggests, Em’s 12th album is a funeral service for one of rap’s most infamous characters. To say goodbye, he creates the most Slim Shady album since Relapse. There’s the requisite playful pop single in “Houdini,” which debuted at No. 2 on the Hot 100, there’s “Brand New Dance” which picks up where “Cum on Everybody” and “Drug Ballad” left off, and there’s even a “Guilty Conscience 2.” Where this album differs, though, is Eminem coming to grips with the idea that there’s no place for Slim Shady in 2024, and working as a bridge to the new generation — with standout verses by JID, Big Sean, and Baby Tron. The Death of Slim Shady feels like the album Eminem’s been trying to make since Recovery. Now that he’s finally knocked it out, it’s exciting to think about what he does next.

• Kamikaze

  

  Year: 2018

  Released with no promotion, Kamikaze came less than a year after the release of Revival, an album that made critics and pundits question whether or not Eminem still had it and whether he was good enough to compete with all the new talent dominating the game. Em answers those critiques quite directly, taking aim at radio hosts, journalists, and other rappers. The lofty heavy themes of the last album are gone — instead, the overarching idea here is that Eminem can still rap better than any rapper anywhere. He tapped popular producers like Tay Keith, Boi-1da, and Mike Will Made-It to prove that he could crush their beats, just like the new crop of rappers. But the standout tracks come when Em chills with the chest-pounding and gets personal — like on “Stepping Stone,” where he explains why his longtime group D12 had to break up, or the Jesse Reyez-featuring “Good Guy,” which details a romantic relationship turned sour.

• Recovery

  

  Year: 2010

  When people think about the most impactful Eminem albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP usually come to mind. But Recovery should be mentioned in the same breath as those classics. Released after the mixed response to Relapse, the album acted as a sort of reset for Eminem. Now sober, he sounded clear-eyed and focused. Recovery doesn’t sound like a man trying to reclaim past glories — instead it sounds like an artist excited for his present and amped for his future. The boisterous “Not Afraid” is the big-tent track here, but the album is littered with songs that, for any other artist, would be career-defining hits. For example, he went to toe-to-toe with prime Lil Wayne on a Just Blaze beat. That’s legendary in itself. Then there’s the monster hit, in the Alex Da Kid-produced “Love The Way You Lie,” which featured a massive hook from Rihanna, back when she was still regularly making music. When taken all together, the album acts both as an end to one era of Eminem’s career and the start of the one we’ve been in now for the past five albums.

• The Eminem Show

  

  Year: 2002

  By all accounts, Eminem was the biggest rap star, if not pop star, in the world after the release of the The Marshall Mathers LP. For the follow-up to that gonzo, bug-eyed acid trip on wax, Eminem toned the rhetoric down and ramped up the musicianship. Em handled a large chunk of the production himself (along with longtime collaborator Jeff Bass) and dipped deep into his classic rock bag for samples and inspiration. “Without Me” handles the cartoonish first-single duties, before the more personal and grounded tracks take over. “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” “Sing for the Moment,” and “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” are all rock-tinged compositions that deal with subject matter Em would only let Slim Shady joke about on previous albums. “White America,” the album opener, gave listeners his unvarnished thoughts on the state of affairs in America, while “Superman” and “Halie’s Song” gave updates on the state of his intensely guarded private life. By all accounts, Em’s fourth album was the best show on earth.

• The Slim Shady LP

  

  Year: 1999

  Many mistakenly refer to The Slim Shady LP as Eminem’s first album and it’s easy to see why. This is the album that introduced Eminem, and his alter ego, to the world as we know him today: wildly irreverent, immensely talented, and very, very upset. Vacillating between improbable fantasy and stark realism, The Slim Shady LP gave glimpses of a gifted songwriter who studied the rap greats the way Kobe studied Jordan. The wild swings in emotion, sentiment and subject matter are startling. From reliving childhood bullies to lamenting his lack of success, Eminem bobs and weaves like Mayweather in the 5th over a set of beats so bizarre no other rapper would know what to do with them (that’s probably why the only guests are Dr. Dre and longtime friend Royce da 5’9″). Just think: On what other album could songs like “My Name Is,” “97 Bonnie & Clyde,” and “Rock Bottom” exist on the same tracklist? Only this one.

• The Marshall Mathers LP

  

  Year: 2000

  Where do you begin with The Marshall Mathers LP? Written largely during a trip to Amsterdam, Eminem was fielding calls from Dr. Dre, who was back in California cooking up beats deranged and tough enough to hold together Em’s combustible lyrics. While Dre and Mel-Man handled production for the first half of the album, Eminem worked with Jeff Bass to build the second half of the project. Eschewing the futuristic G-Funk of the west coast and the vibrant soul sampling of the east coast, TMMLP sounded like nothing else. It carried on the demented carnival ride aesthetic of TSSLP, but pushed the bar further with infusions of pop-rock (“Stan”) and horrorcore (“Remember Me?”).

  The beats are fire, but the bars steal the show. As a newly minted superstar who was still trying to prove himself to the wider hip-hop world, Eminem still had something to prove. His wit was razor sharp and his lyrical dexterity was second-to-none. The few guest features — Sticky Fingaz, Snoop Dogg, Bizarre — do admirably well, but they all distract from the main attraction that is Eminem. The lewdness of TSSLP is balanced with scathing social commentary, which saw Eminem attacking everything from pop stars to U.S. presidents in equal measure. He was mad at the world, but unlike in albums from later in his career, he was able to forge his emotion into needle-sharp barbs. “Stan”, produced by the legendary 45 King, has now seen its title become a noun and a verb, but back then it was simply one of the most ingenious pieces of songwriting to ever come out of the genre.

  The success also tells the story of TMMLP. It sold1.78 million copies in its first week, and has since sold over 10 million domestically and over 25 million worldwide. It’s the definitive Eminem album, the one by which all others are measured. If you’ve never listened to Eminem and are looking for a place to start, begin with this.

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