The Eminem Show - Eminem
The Eminem Show Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 253 Ratings

  • Summary: Working once again with producer Dr. Dre, Marshall Mathers returns with his third album.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 20
  2. Negative: 1 out of 20
  1. He's playing the same old marshall vs shady real-or-fake game as usual and its as interesting and complex as it ever was.
  2. This is mainly an improvement on a brilliant formula.
  3. 60
    Behind the hype and the swagger, he's still baring enough of his soul for The Eminem Show to be compelling theatre. [Aug 2002, p.118]
  4. We're unlikely to hear another platinum-selling album in 2002 that sounds as tired and thoroughly played out as the fourth offering from the troubled young Marshall Mathers.

See all 20 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 4 out of 128
  1. Solid third album.

    Slim Shady LP introduced the world to Eminem, a crude, white maniac with exceptional rhyming skills. Marshall Mathers LP g
    ave the world Em's personal side while mixed with comic and satirical content. The Eminem Show is the retrospect of his career. After selling millions and millions of records, everyone wondered whether Eminem Show lived up to expectations. Yes it did.

    Taking more control over the production (Dre produced only 3 tracks), Eminem makes lyrical assaults on many including George Bush, rap critics, pop stars, Kim, and his mother. He goes from criticizing the common views against white rappers and to his success making keen observations that his color helped him gain fame. He criticizes the Bush administration in Square Dance for its decision to send soldiers to Iraq. He recalls his assault on a bouncer after he allegedly saw him kiss his wife. In Soldier, he recalls the violent rage in him before and during the attack but in Say Goodbye Hollywood, he regrets doing that saying that his wife would have cared less and that he could be imprisoned thus stalling his career and affecting his relationship with his daughter. In Sing For The Moment, he discusses how music has suddenly become an influence on kids because they can relate and how one should not take things so seriously. In Say What U Say, he and Dre declare war on Jermaine Dupri and Canibus.

    A couple of minor complaints are the repetition of content, namely rants against his mother and the whole Slim Shady antic on My Dads Gone Crazy. The songs Drips and Superman are unnecessary misogynistic rants against whores and should not have been included.

    Yet The Eminem Show succeeds because Eminem keeps it interesting. After all, he can't leave rap alone. The game needs him.
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  2. Another step forward! Less Slim Shady, which means less fun but also less stupid obscene jokes. Anyway; rap-technically he made his best work up to that time. The way he flows in Superman is actually the best I've ever heard! Awesome rhyming skills, great ambiguities and songs with more substance. Minus 1 point for the songs after 14, except 'Till I Collapse. All in all it's a very good rap album. Maybe his best, even. Expand
  3. The songs I did like, I really liked. However I hated most of the songs off this album and I dont think it was as good as his previous album was. It was ok though. Expand
  4. Mark
    4
    I find it interesting that everyone that gave this album a 10 has yet to master the English language.

See all 128 User Reviews