His album sells just under a hundred physical copies. He's ignored by insiders and ostracized by the radio, which refuses to spin his songs: "Are you a white rapper? Go to rock n roll". His producers are dumping him. Having not recovered the money he had spent to record the album, Marshall Mathers finds himself in a precarious economic situation, worse than before. The boy cannot afford the apartment on the outskirts of Detroit, and is forced to return to live in the trailer park with his mother. Kim and her twin sister Dawn Scott ran away from home in their teens and, shortly after meeting Marshall, moved in with him in their mother's trailer for a couple of years, until their mother kicked them out because he left school at 17.
Kim Scott leaves Marshall and takes their daughter with her, the boy returns, alone, to the mobile home where he grew up. Very tired, completely desperate and with nothing left to live for, Marshall indulges in alcohol and drugs, attempting suicide with a cocktail of drugs. He comes out alive. When he recovers, he comes back pissed off, more focused and stronger than before. He has nothing more to lose. To vent all his anger, anguish and frustration, he invents the character of Slim Shady, his alter-ego, the other personality of his soul. The only people who gave him a chance to record something were Mark and Jeff Bass aka FBT Productions: Marshall returns to the brothers and manages to convince them to record more songs, with a completely different style than before.
It's like in Robert Louis Stevenson's book, "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886), the two personalities of Mathers are split between the good Dr. Jekyll, Eminem, and the evil Mr. Hyde, Slim Shady, to which the boy relies on the moment of truth. The same MC refers to Stevenson's book both in the intro, a masterpiece, and in the first song, "Low Down, Dirty". Also on the cover, which is another reference to that book, Marshall punches the mirror and shatters it: the cover represents the product well, it's simple, minimal, raw, angry, violent, direct, without grace, without frills. The production of the song is credited to Da Brigade, a duo formed by Mr. Porter & Kuniva, who creates a raw, bare and minimal beat, the drum hits hard and heavy on a desert background. Slim Shady enters the beat with energy and delivers three verses that are a manifesto of his talent.
There's everything, but more than anything else, the personality of the rapper emerges which had been tempered in his previous album. In "If I Had..." he stops playing Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers returns for a few minutes and delivers one of his best songs with a subdued and resigned style, on a dark and melancholy production by Mr. Porter and the rapper himself. Slim Shady returns to spit in "Just Don't Give a Fuck" with a syncopated style on a syncopated production, minimal boom bap with squeaky synth, will become one of the symbolic tracks of his career. Skit, which isn't accidental: a body is dragged and placed in the trunk of a car. From the title, it's not clear who he refers to, which becomes clear in the following LP, when the same skit is repeated after the song "Kim".
Track number six is "Just the Two of Us": sample from the homonymous song by Grover Washington Jr. & Bill Whiters, minimal production by the Bass Brothers, lean drum, cold and shiny delivery by Slim Shady. Marshall takes his daughter, unaware of Kim, to the studio and records a song about killing Kim herself. As well as other tracks on this EP, the track will be carried over to the next studio album, with a different title, "97' Bonnie & Clyde", a tribute to 2Pac. "No One's Iller" is a posse track featuring the EP's only accredited guests, Swifty McVay, Bizarre and Fuzz Scoota, on a simple effective production by DJ Head. Bizarre's verse is super-ill, fantastic. "Murder, Murder" shows the rapper's narrative skills, which he delivers with a calm and velvety style on an interesting instrumental, one of the best in this EP, DJ Rec did a great job with Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" sample. The radio versions of the songs "If I Had..." and "Just Don't Give a ****" follow.
Recorded in the spring of 1997, it was released the following December. 10 tracks, including two remixes, 37 minutes. The production changes from the jazz rap of the debut, into a more raw and minimal sound, without being overly gloomy. The music is professional, Paul Rosenberg is there to support him in the studio. The rapper completely renounces the topics addressed previously and devotes himself to topics that fall within the gangsta and horrorcore area, such as violence, murder, drugs, sex and mental health, in addition to the deteriorated relationship with his girlfriend. The product is easily classified under the horrorcore label, but without that typical darkness of the sub-genre. Published by the Bass brothers' Web label, 500 copies are printed, just over 250 are sold. Despite the LP of the same name released two years later, it's definitely worth listening to: here is the heart and hunger of him at its most raw and rough. 7/10.
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