The Eminem Show concept explained (a thread)

In my opinion the Eminem show is undoubtedly one of the best hip hop albums of the 2000’s. It is humorous, politically charged, and the flows are perfect.

Despite its large fanbase, I rarely see it get recognized for the unique concept album that it is, and in this thread I will be examining closely one of the albums I hold near and dear to my heart.

To understand the album, we first need to understand where Eminem got the idea for it. The album is loosely based off the Truman show, a movie from 1998 starring Jim Carrey. The movie itself is brilliant, it features Jim Carrey living out his life in front of the whole world.

He lives his life in front of a TV show, that he doesn’t know he’s on. When he was a baby, he was left an orphan by his parents, and a television network swept him up and decided to let him live out his life on live television 24/7, without telling him.

Throughout the movie he starts to discover that something is off, and I won’t go any further than that because I don’t want to spoil it for people that haven’t seen it. All that said, you get the point, person living life in front of an audience.

Eminem once said “My life felt like it was becoming a circus around that time and I felt like I was always being watched.” This was true, he was being watched, at the time of this album he was a part of more controversies than I can count, which is an integral part of the album.

He was sued by his mom (for 10 million dollars), he divorced his wife, whom he had a very rocky relationship with, and there were congressional hearings held to discuss his lyrics, at the time freedom of speech didn’t yet apply to music.

This was something Eminem was fighting for with his anti censorship anthems. It doesn’t end there either, there were even protests outside his concerts due to things that he said in songs. If you put all these things together, it’s easy to see why Eminem felt like Truman.

Throughout the course of the album, Eminem explains this through song. Each song on the album either references controversy he’s in, or represents a part of his life that had been put on a pedestal by the media.

The album opens with the Curtains Up Skit, which paints Eminem as a performer coming out to speak to a crowd. After that, the album starts out with a bang musically. ‘White America’ was a full blown attack on the United States government, as well as the white community.

He also dives into the problem with him being the face of hip hop at the time. The hook points out that he really isn’t that different from America’s white children, which is what scares the white parents. The track does a perfect job pointing out the obvious hypocrisies in music

On ‘Business,’ we get a dose of the satire, it has Em and Dre rapping as superheroes trying to eliminate bad lyrics from the rap game, when in turn just making fun of how ridiculous it is for people to be pretending like rap lyrics are the root of problems in the country.

The third song certainly takes a more introspective note, with ‘Cleaning out my closet.’ It deals primarily with Eminem’s issues with his mother, as well as his ex wife, Kim. He also mentions his father leaving him when he was a child.

It’s truly a dark song and served as a release for Eminem as he has kept this bottled up for awhile. It fits perfectly into the tracklist because it deals with the family aspect of his life that he felt was on display for everyone to see.

Square dance is a full on anti George Bush anthem, as he was in office at the time of release of this album. The hook of the song even has Eminem doing a fake Texas accent, making a mockery of George bush, as he’s from Texas.

There are also multiple bars in the song referring to Em’s issues with the military drafting process. During the time of this album President Bush was fighting in a lot of international conflicts that a lot of citizens felt were unnecessary.

The Kiss skit is an audio reenactment of what happened when Eminem saw his ex, Kim, kissing another man. He runs up to him and punches him, though the man refuted and said it was a pistol whip, which Eminem said was nonsense on the later track, Sing For the Moment.

Before he punches the man kissing his ex, he has an exchange in the car that is an essential part to the story in this part of the album. While joking with his friend he notes that the gun is empty.

I started running out of tweets so had to pack a few song breakdowns into images for the final leg of the thread.

Sing for the moment
Superman
Hailies song
Steve Berman Skit

When the music stops
Say what you say
My dads gone crazy
Curtains up

Final thoughts: Listening to this album is truly like watching a TV show about his life. You get to watch him deal with his fame, his dating life, how he feels about the controversy surrounding him, and more. There is a track for every single thing that was happening at the time.

Given all of the things that happened to Em at the time this really was the perfect album to release. He took a step in a more mature direction, while also keeping the flows and beats perfect. It was really an essential part of 2000’s culture overall.

Thank you so much for reading, this took a very very long time to write so RT’s appreciated! I hope you guys liked reading it!