Registered with enough righteous anger to transform the no-name rapper into a commercial juggernaut, cementing his position in the hip-hop pantheon. Even now, it’s a song that practically begs you to dislike it, seemingly repelling listeners with cartoonishly graphic images of Shady stapling his high-school teachers testicles together one minute and killing his absentee-father the next - yet, it’s through this perversion that Eminem’s found his real talent as an MC: taking Middle America’s most repressed feelings of indignation and blowing them up to darkly comic dimensions. Lead single “My Name Is” served as Eminem’s fresh introduction to the world, with his intentionally irritating vocal delivery and eye-catching lyrics (“ Got pissed off and ripped Pamela Lee’s tits off / And smacked her so hard I knocked her clothes backwards like Kris Kross”) serving as his new default modus operandi. Dre took a chance on the impoverished white boy (who at the time still lived in a trailer park with his mom) and took Em’s newly created character to even greater malicious heights, on 1999’s The Slim Shady LP. Dre, who had just founded the already fledgling Aftermath Records. Em’ dabbled with portraying this new alter ego slightly on his 1997 follow-up, The Slim Shady EP, which earned him the attention of former-NWA member and Death Row Records escapee Dr. Instead of giving up, Mathers got mad, and in retaliation crafted the nastiest persona he could imagine: the sadistic, misogynistic, and overall villainous Slim Shady. Titled Infinite, it featured relatively uninspired production, unmemorable bars delivered with a mimicked Nas-flow, and lazy attempts at crafting wannabe radio hits - it was a major flop, both critically and commercially. After signing to independent label Web Entertainment, he was about to finally get his shot with the release of a debut record that was destined to make or break the young MC. Under the moniker of Eminem, he had been making waves in Detroit’s underground battle rap scene for about half a decade, supporting his family with various odd jobs with the hope his dedication would one day pay off.
"Evil Twin" is more or less a direct attack at Shady's persona in 2000, a different character than exists in his own mind now, and contains his most telling lines of the whole album: "Sometimes I listen and revisit them old albums/Often as I can and skim through all them bitches/To make sure I keep up with my competition/Hoarder of beats, hoarder of rhymes/Borderline genius who's bored of his lines/And that sort of defines where I'm at and the way I feel now.In the winter of 1996, Marshall Mathers put everything on the line.
But for the most part, the way he addresses his own demons-particularly on "Bad Guy" and album closer "Evil Twin," both of which see him battling alter ego Slim Shady-see Em delving into his intense issue within himself, a dichotomy which only he can articulate with such an uncomfortable clarity. There are still problems with some of his lyrical content: the overt homophobia is still there, even though it's addressed (albeit briefly) on album opener "Bad Guy," and at this point it feels pointless to take issue with the violent content in his words.