YMMV / The Marshall Mathers LP

• Award Snub: The album got awards left and right and is widely regarded as one of the best rap albums ever. Yet when it came time to award the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, it had two acclaimed rock albums to combat: Steely Dan's Two Against Nature and Radiohead's Kid A. The Academy chose the Steely Dan album, apparently because it was a safer choice than a rap album or an experimental rock album.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "The Kids". The song is all about Eminem turning up as a supply teacher at a school and teaching children about the dangers of drugs... the most dangerous of which is the fact that they poison squirrels.
• Crosses the Line Twice: That would be an understatement.
  Shut up, slut! You're causin' too much chaos
  Just bend over and take it like a slut — okay, Ma?
  "Oh, now he's raping his own mother
  Abusing a whore, snorting coke
  And we gave him the Rolling Stone cover?"
• Draco in Leather Pants: Lampshaded in the lyrics for "The Real Slim Shady":
  Feminist women love Eminem
  Chicka-chicka Slim Shady, I'm sick of him
  Look at him, walking around, grabbing his you-know-what
  Flippin' the you-know-who
  Yeah, but he's so cute though
• Even Better Sequel: The Slim Shady LP was met with critical acclaim, and had the breakout hit "My Name Is", but this album is widely considered one of the best albums of all time, let alone in rap.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Given that "Stan" was probably a least partially inspired by Marshall's experiences in a mutually abusive relationship with Kim, it's hard to listen to the line "I just drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?" come up again after Kim tried to take her life in 2015 via drink driving. She even mentioned in an interview that she drank a "fifth of Malibu".
  • Speaking of which, Kim also attempted to take her life after the first time she heard the song named after her.
  • Depending on how you view it, "Stan" itself is this considering how in recent years, fans have embraced the term "Stan" and made it a term when discussing fan topics (ex. "We stan X", ect ect).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In 2011, Dido named her first born son Stanley. Apparently it just happened to be her favourite boy's name, though she doesn't mind people assuming she named him after the song as she really enjoyed that period of her life.
  • "The Way I Am" predicts that Eminem will never be able to top the success of "My Name Is." By the time "The Way I Am" was released as a single, Eminem had already topped "My Name Is" with "The Real Slim Shady," a top ten hit in the United States.
  • "The Real Slim Shady" infamously has the line "Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records". A little more than twenty years later, Smith hurled expletives towards Chris Rock at the Academy Awards after slapping him.
  • The skit "Ken Kaniff" features Kaniff receiving an enthusiastic blowjob from two men who he identifies as "J and Shaggy", the names of the two members of Insane Clown Posse. 19 years later, ICP themselves released Flip the Rat, containing a song called "Be Safe", where the actual Shaggy gets so into his rap that he blurts out, "I might suck a dick—" followed by a Record Needle Scratch, as Shaggy realizes what he just rapped, then corrects himself, "—uh, I would never suck a dick!"
• It Was His Sled: Everyone knows the the twist from "Stan".
• Memetic Mutation: In some corners of the internet, 'stan' and 'stanning' are terms for hardcore fanning. Mostly used in jest. This has been so omnipresent for so long, that it's transcended Eminem's fandom and the hip-hop community, and the majority of people who use the term have no idea where it comes from. Additionally, many rappers have referred to Eminem's "Stan", like Nas on "Ether" (You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan) and Lupe Fiasco on "Lu Myself" (Like Stan, I'mma stand till it answers me).
• Misaimed Fandom: "Stan" became a pejorative term to describe sick, obsessed fans... and also by fans themselves to describe their fandom.
• Nightmare Fuel: Kim. Just…Kim.
  • The song starts off sweet with Em talking to Hailee, but then it switches abruptly to Em '''screaming''' at Kim and revealing that he murdered the man that Kim was cheating on Em with, as well as their four year old son, all because she cheated on him. He then proceeds to take her on a car ride into an outdoor area near a river and slit her throat.
  YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME! NOW BLEED, BITCH, BLEED! BLEED, BITCH, BLEED! BLEEEEEEED!
  • The hook is already chilling enough, but according to an interview with producer Jeff Bass, the hook was going to be sung by somebody like Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. Imagine how much creepier the song would get if that actually happened!
• Parody Displacement: "Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?" is actually derived from the 1960s/70s game show To Tell the Truth's catchphrase "Will the real [person's name] please stand up?", used to reveal the true mystery guest. The song itself contains a few lines that parody a couple of contemporary songs like "The Bum Bum Song" and "The Bad Touch," which have largely been forgotten today in the United States at least.
• Sampled Up: Though "Thank U" actually was pretty successful, it is not nearly as well remembered as "Stan".
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The entire album is a huge time capsule of the early 2000's and is filled with so many references to contemporary acts, ongoing controversies, and topical events like Columbine, that anyone listening to it today without context will pretty much require reading the Genius pages for the songs included to understand it.
  • "The Real Slim Shady" is quite obviously a product of its time, with references to Pamela Anderson, Tom Green, Fred Durst, and Will Smith's musical career.
  • "The Way I Am" dates itself to the early 2000s both due to its use of the term "wigger" - which has fallen out of use since then - and its reference to The Columbine High School massacre.

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