1. Curtains Up

2. White America

3. Business

4. Cleaning Out My Closet

5. Square Dance

6. The Kiss

7. Soldier

8. Say Goodbye Hollywood

9. Drips

10. Without Me

11. Paul Rosenberg

12. Sing For The Moment

13. Superman

14. Hailie's Song

15. Steve Berman

16. When The Music Stops

17. Say What You Say

18. 'Till I Collapse

19. My Dad's Gone Crazy

20. Curtains Close

Rolling Stone

With The Eminem Show , Eminem just may have made the best rap-rock album in history. And that's not only because he reworks Aerosmith's "Dream On," on "Sing for the Moment." The Eminem Show is a hybrid theory of Jay-Z's hyperconfident The Blueprint , Staind's pained Dysfunction and Tupac's anti-hero masterpiece All Eyez On Me . The Eminem Show has the self-assurance of an artist at the top of his game and the game, the understanding that the music world is hanging on his every word and the willingness to shock even the most jaded ears.

Appropriately enough for a man closing in on thirty, The Eminem Show finds Eminem more mature and focused, if not kinder and gentler. "Without Me" -- like his "The Real Slim Shady," the leadoff single from 2000's The Marshall Mathers LP -- is a fun-loving, barb-laden romp on which he flits from one topic to the next like a bumblebee with ADD. But Em isn't saying things just to get you mad here. This time he's rapping because the world has pissed him off, not the other way around. "If y'all leave me alone, this wouldn't be my M.O.," he says on "My Dad's Gone Crazy."

On The Eminem Show, Eminem is no longer pulling the race card just for laughs. "I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley," he raps. "To do black music so selfishly/And use it to get myself wealthy." He's being a little harsh on himself: After all, the only white folks really doing white music are strumming harps and blowing bagpipes. But as always, Em's most potent weapon is his ability to counter his critics by accepting his vulnerabilities and turning them into song fodder.

Em produced or co-produced most of the album, and he's quickly becoming an expert beatmaker. Every track has some sort of melodic edge; songs such as "White America" and "Cleanin Out My Closet" feature electric-guitar rhythms fraternizing with hip-hop-sensible drum patterns. "Soldier" and " 'Till I Collapse" are all paranoid horror-movie instrumentation bottomed with arena-rock grandeur. He's learned so much so well as a producer that Dr. Dre's three contributions ("Business," "Say What You Say," "My Dad's Gone Crazy") are hard to pick out without production credits.

On the rock-fueled "White America," he confesses that "if I was black, I woulda sold half." But even as he remains acutely aware of his position as a big-time white rapper, Eminem fully enters the fray of mainstream hip-hop on The Eminem Show. He's moved on from dissing Everlast and Britney Spears and is unafraid to take on credible black MCs now, dissing Canibus on "Square Dance" and egging on Dr. Dre against Jermaine Dupri on "Say What You Say." On "Business," Em names himself the gatekeeper of hip-hop and obliquely claims to be the best rapper alive: "The flow's too wet/Nobody close to it/Nobody says it, but everybody knows the shit." His way with words and his sheer honesty can make topics that would otherwise seem so last week sound new. "Say Goodbye Hollywood" is the standard mo' money, mo' problems fare given new life; "Drips" is hip-hop's most poignant visit to the STD clinic since Ice Cube's 1991 song "Look Who's Burnin'."

Predictably, the three women in Eminem's life figure big on The Eminem Show. His divorce from Kim Mathers fuels the slow Southern bounce of the hypermisogynist "Superman," and his relationship with his estranged mother creates "Cleanin Out My Closet," possibly the record's most powerful moment. Amid a list of atrocities and venomous threats, he shows glimmers of remorse before delving back into unchecked anger, much as he did on 2000's "Kim." "See, what hurts me the most is you won't admit you was wrong," he raps before blasting, "but how dare you try to take what you didn't help me to get?/You selfish bitch, I hope you fuckin' burn in hell for this shit."

Em's love for his daughter, Hailie, produces his singing debut, the tender "Hailie's Song." The tune's sweet message is stronger than the music, as Em reaches for notes that don't exist. A more effective moment comes when Hailie herself shows up to kick-start the chorus of the ridiculously catchy "My Dad's Gone Crazy." It's a guilty pleasure, knowing that Hailie's participation in the song is probably going to earn her a couple of years of therapy: The song begins with Hailie walking in on her dad as he inhales lines of coke.

As unlikely a role model as Em is, he has decided to take on the U.S. government -- more proof, during this era of post-9/11 patriotism, that he truly follows his own course. On "White America," Em threatens to march on Capitol Hill, urinate on the White House grass and burn the star-spangled banner, and he attacks current and former vice-presidential wives Lynne Cheney and Tipper Gore. On "Square Dance," he announces, "Yeah, the man's back/With a plan to ambush this Bush administration/Mush the Senate's face in/Push this generation of kids to stand and fight/For the right to say something you might not like." Finally, in his own scattered way, in his own mind, at least, Eminem is fighting for something a little bigger than himself. The Eminem Show makes it clear that Mr. Just-Don't-Give-a-Fuck still won't leave. He can't leave rap alone. The game needs him.

All Music

It's all about the title. First time around, Eminem established his alter-ego, Slim Shady — the character who deliberately shocked and offended millions, turning Eminem into a star. Second time at bat, he turned out The Marshall Mathers LP, delving deeper into his past while revealing complexity as an artist and a personality that helped bring him an even greater audience and much, much more controversy. Third time around, it's The Eminem Show — a title that signals that Eminem's public persona is front and center, for the very first time. And it is, as he spends much of the album commenting on the media circus that dominated on his life ever since the release of Marshall Mathers. This, of course, encompasses many, many familiar subjects — his troubled childhood; his hatred of his parents; his turbulent relationship with his ex-wife, Kim (including the notorious incident when he assaulted a guy who allegedly kissed her — the event that led to their divorce); his love of his daughter, Hailie; and, of course, all the controversy he generated, notably the furor over his alleged homophobia and his scolding from Lynne Cheney, which leads to furious criticism about the hypocrisy of America and its government. All this is married to a production very similar to that of its predecessor — spare, funky, fluid, and vibrant, punctuated with a couple of ballads along the way. So, that means The Eminem Show is essentially a holding pattern, but it's a glorious one — one that proves Eminem is the gold standard in pop music in 2002, delivering stylish, catchy, dense, funny, political music that rarely panders (apart from a power ballad "Dream On" rewrite on "Sing for the Moment" and maybe the sex rap "Drips," that is). Even if there is little new ground broken, the presentation is exceptional — Dre never sounds better as a producer than when Eminem pushes him forward (witness the stunning oddity "Square Dance," a left-field classic with an ominous waltz beat) and, with three albums under his belt, Eminem has proven himself to be one of the all-time classic MCs, surprising as much with his delivery as with what he says. Plus, the undercurrent of political anger — not just attacking Lynne Cheney, but raising questions about the Bush administration — gives depth to his typical topics, adding a new, spirited dimension to his shock tactics as notable as the deep sentimental streak he reveals on his odes to his daughter. Perhaps the album runs a little too long at 20 songs and 80 minutes and would have flowed better if trimmed by 25 minutes, but that's a typical complaint about modern hip-hop records. Fact is, it still delivers more great music than most of its peers in rock or rap, and is further proof that Eminem is an artist of considerable range and dimension.