“Eminem’s Biggest Albums Have Never Been Re-Released and in This Day and Age That’s Incredible”

What makes music GOOD? Well, it catches on like wildfire. High school kids rap the lyrics while getting stoned in their parents cars. The term “stan,” from one of the songs, is added to the Oxford English Dictionary [1]. And, arguably, controversy ensues [2].

I was thinking of the closest earthly parallel to The Marshall Mathers LP [3] and it would probably honestly be Outkast’s Stankonia. Though not quite matching Eminem in popularity, Stankonia is an album that jettisons hip-hop to the mainstream, to the apex of worldwide popularity and to the “Best Album” category at the Grammys [4]. It’s full of wit. It’s rude. It’s a dose of real life. And it’s gregarious, pumping out some songs like “So Fresh, So Clean”; “Ms. Jackson” and “B.O.B.” that are still very popular and widely played to this day. These would correspond, of course, roughly, with “Stan”; “The Way I Am” and “The Real Slim Shady” [5]; the first three singles released from The Marshall Mathers LP. 

But Stankonia furnishes a “Deluxe Version” on Spotify and the MMLP and The Eminem Show, Eminem’s third and fourth albums [6] and two biggest-selling albums, don’t.  Granted, this fact in itself seems pretty foolish given the gargantuan, already “deluxe” stature of Stankonia both in terms of anatomy and impact on our culture. 

It seems, though, like the default strategy, certainly these days, and almost like a compulsive knee-jerk reaction, in the current landscape of the industry: it’s been 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, what have you, since our release: time for some anticlimactic demos, b-sides and live versions! And indeed, there is one contributor calling for Eminem’s material to be “remastered” and given “deluxe” treatment, this discussion surfacing on a Reddit page. His headline reads “Eminem should re-release his first three albums remastered and in deluxe editions” and underneath he explains his logic as “the quality would be better and it would sound like it came out today!” The very first reply, then, which has received exactly three times as many likes as the initial prompt (69 to 23), then, reads “those albums were made under the direct influence of dre and… were mastered perfectly. there’s no ‘remastering’ business needed.” Although he might have some semblance of a point, this statement does contain the fallacy associated with the extant “remastered” version of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, which, though produced earlier in his career, did still come during his “solo” days which followed his tenure with his initial group, N.W.A. So it’s the same portion of his career, more or less. 

And, of course, I don’t think anyone, at least anyone who grew up around when I did (Eminem dropped right when I started high school), would fail to see the fallacy in that initial Reddit prompt. First of all, let’s be clear: these songs still sound dope as fu** and aren’t dated at all. The beat to “The Way I am,” for instance, is both gratifyingly full and intricate, beginning with that ambient tape hiss recording, and proceeding through a gamut of sounds including elegant church bells, all flanked by that boisterous, relentless bass sound. This isn’t just the work of some small fry programming on Fruity Loops are some novice newbie to the game not knowing what he was doing. Also, I think I speak for everyone my age when I say I’d PREFER my music sounding like the turn of the century to said music taking the mold of Fetty Wap or Machine Gun Kelly. 

Another element curtailing The MMLP and The Eminem Show from getting a second treatment is that, at hip-hop’s heart, such retreading and sonic renovation is antithetical to the art form. The recording of hip-hop, that is, is not a complicated endeavor, such as it is with rock. Typically, the only outside channel is the vocals, the rest being programmed and even visually documented and exacted on the producer’s computer program, contrasted roughly with rock, which typically entails the miking of drums, bass and guitar, at a very minimum [7]. So, at least by comparison, there’s really no excuse for not getting it right the first time. 

And of course, Dre did get it right. You see it right there on that Reddit: there’s simply no demand for any reissue of this stuff. I mean, it’s already such a full load, too. Most people are proud of themselves for being ABLE to listen to all of The Marshall Mathers LP straight through and not have to go grab a tissue from the bathroom or a swig of brandy. Still, in this day and age, when pressure from record labels for “remasters” and “deluxe editions” seems pretty much overwhelming and unavoidable, it’s an undeniable victory for these two LP’s [conversely, there is indeed available a deluxe version of The Slim Shady LP (1999) on Spotify] that they still stand in their original skin as authoritative and conclusive, sonically, musically and culturally. Of course, Universal might also just look at that 66 million in sales between the two and think, eh, seems like we came out a little bit ahead on those ones. Even the lion knows when it’s full, sometimes. 

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[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marshall_Mathers_LP.

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[2] I’m reminded of that old news analyst fart depicted in Hype! throwing some fresh-baked shade at “grunge” musicians: “Are they contributing anything to the society they’re taking so much from?”, as if those million-gajillion people were forced to buy their music against their will. 

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[3] Now, in all fairness, The Eminem Show is actually the “bigger” album — has sold two million more copies worldwide (34 to 32), of course in spite of its having been in existence, too, for two fewer years. I choose, however, to handle the MMLP (the one after all that has prompted a sequel album) here for this discussion, because to me it made the bigger impact on music at the time.

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[4] Outkast would get nominated for Best Album in ’02 and would win Best Rap Album outright at the same ceremony. The identical case is true for The Marshall Mathers LP in ’01.

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[5] There’s an interesting portion in the Wikipedia article on the MMLP that talks about how initially both “The Way I am” and “The Real Slim Shady” were absent from the tracklist, whereupon the record company complained that there wasn’t a clear hit single anywhere on the album. ’Nem went on to pen “The Way I am” as a result and then “The Real Slim Shady” subsequently, as a kind of offshoot of that representing a sort of postmodern, perverted bent toward the kitsch, nonetheless. His exact words are transcribed in the Wiki, anyway. 

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[6] Here, of course, I’m counting Infinite (1996) as Eminem’s first album, a project that isn’t featured on my trusty godhead-Big-Brother depot Spotify and which wasn’t produced by Dre or released on the Universal label Interscope. 

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[7] Perhaps this is part of why The White Stripes and Black Keys, both of whose records sound pretty much perfect to this day, preferred working with just guitar and drums as instruments. 

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