Explained Lyrics From SSLP And MMLP (Eminem:An Angry Blonde Book)

The Slim Shady LP

Still Don't Give Fuck

''This was my manager Paul's concept. He called me one day while I was
in cali, saying ''You need to do a Just Don't Give A Fuck part 2''. I
responded ''Yeah...still don't give a fuck''. He said ''Just make
it have the same feel''. He Told me this while I was in the middle of
writing another song. I forgot what song it was cause i was writing like
crazy when i got out to Cali. Especially after I got my deal, so I
wasn't tryin' to let it slip. I was constantly writing, recording, going
back home, and writing again. ''Still don't give a fuck'' was one of
the songs that i worked on during that massive writing period. The
drums on this are the same drums as on ''just don't give a fuck''. Only
difference was that we added a high hat all through it. Whereas in
''just don't...'' the high hat continues so it gives a little more drive
to it. To top it off, Jeff from FBT had this ill-ass guitar loop and I
thought ''this is it'' and then I came up with '' I'm zonin off of one
joint/Stoppin a limo, hopped in the window, shoppin a demo/ at
gunpoint.'' As a matter of fact, the same day we made the beat I once
again wrote the song and came with the hook. I wanted this song to sum
up the whole album. Basically what the song was saying is that no matter
what you say about me, or what you think i should do, or what you think
of me, of how i should sound or anything... I don't give a fuck. This
is me. I'ma be it and i'ma stay that way.

I'm Shady

This is a song I wrote in Kim's upstairs apartment. Oh, the memories. I
originally wrote this to one of Sade's tracks. I thought of the bass
line and we made the song. I already had the rhyme written, so we did
the track to the rhyme. Then I kind of fucked with Curtis Mayfield's
''Pusherman''. It's funny cause I didn't get the idea from mayfield's
song. I got it from Ice-T's ''power'' record. I didn't know Ice got it
from ''Pusherman''. I used the melody, but changed the words.

If I Had

''If I Had'' was off The Slim Shady EP. It was written when I was
stayin' at a friend's house. I was living with a couple of roommates at
the time. I wrote that shit the same week my car broke down. My fuckin
engine blew out and a bunch of fucked-up shit was happening all at the
same time. I wrote the song during the summer of 97, but I didn't record
it until that winter. That's when I recorded the whole EP in about two
weeks. Interscope heard it, liked it, and wanted to use it for the LP.

'97 Bonnie And Clyde

This little ''topic of discussion'' was also written in the summer of
'97. Again, during that time a lot of fucked-up shit just started
snowballin for me. It was also when Kim and I weren't really seeing eye
to eye and whatnot. See, we weren't together and she was using my
daughter, Hailie as a weapon against me and she wasn't letting me see
her. I originally wrote the song to get back at her so that she could
hear it. I didn't write the song thinking that I was gonna get a fucking
record deal and that this was a song that was going to be huge, or even
talked about. I mean, at the most I thought it would be talked about in
Detroit, but I didn't figure I was going to get a deal and go
nationwide with it. My original reason for making it was to piss her
off. I even went so far as to use Hailie for the vocal you hear on the
record. It was my little baby's first musical appearence. Regardless, I
think it's one of my favorite concept songs. Originally, DJ Head made
the beat. It didn't sound like the Bill Withers version anymore. Head
had the bass line going down like ''tunt-tu-tunt tunt tad dunt,
tunt-tu-tunt tunt tad dunt''. So it just clicked in my head instantly. A
song about just me and my daughter . The timing was perfect on it. I
got the beat, thought of the hook and what to write about. But I
thought, ''How can I make a song about Hailie?'' I didn't want to make
the shit corny or nothing, but I was also trying to piss Kim off. I put a
lot of my personal shit out there. But I don't care. See, It's like
every time somebody disses me, I'ma talk about them. It's kind of like
if you piss me off, i'ma respond in my songs. Okay, Kim, you're going to
piss me off? Then I'ma make you look stupid in front of all these
people. But I don't limit this attitude to just Kim... I mean anybody.

My Fault
The ''Lounge'' skit that goes before ''My Fault'' actually inspired the
mushroom song. Jeff from FBT and I were in the studio and we had just
knocked out a song, but we were trying to come up with more shit. Jeff
was just sitting there, fucking around, singing a song that went
something like '' I never ment to...'' Now, he never said, '' give you
mushrooms'' I finished it off and we both just started singin We wew
laughing and joking around and shit, until he went into this faster,
more up-tempo rendition. He started singing, ''I never meant to give you
mushrooms, girl, I never...''. And I just finished the hook off. It was
really late at night, so we just came back and knocked it out the next
day. We made the track first and then took it home and wrote to it. ''My
fault'' is actually sort of a story about one of my friends who had a
bad acid trip. But it was a dude, though. He was having a bad trip and
was talking about how he was worthless, how he didn't have a job and how
he was just fucked up. He was going through a depressed stage and
waseven crying. I told him ''Yo, it's okay''. So I thought, ''what if I
wrote it about a girl who's fucked up having a bad mushroom trip?''. It
was actually going to be a single. I had done a clean version of it, and
put it on the Celebrity Death Match soundtrack. Interscope didn't want
to release it as a single though, cause if I came with that after ''My
Name Is'' instead of ''Guilty Conscience'' I would've looked like a
fucking bubblegum artist. Two goody songs right back-to-back. That
probably would've fucked me up till this day. The song... not the
shrooms.

FUN FACT: Em does the voices of all characters in the song.


Rock Bottom

''Rock Bottom'' was (sigh) another song i done between the EP and
the LP. I didn't know when I wrote it that it was going to come out
that sad. I had actually meant it to be an uplifting song, but when we
were sitting around making the track, Head had a sample that we played
over that beat and it was just so sad. I said fuck it, let's go with
this one. Not suprisingly, I wrote it while I was going through a
fucked-up time. The night I recorded the song, I had taken a bunch of
pills, thrown up, and was just real fucking depressed. So I took a bunch
of codeine tablets. Problem was, I took too many of them shits and got
real sick. When I wrote the song, it was right before Rap Olympics
happened. It was during the week when I had gotten evicted from my
house. I was stayin across the street from where I used to live. It was a
street called Novara out in Detroit. I was staying with these two
roommates, and this dude told me that he had cheaper rent for me and
that I should come live with him. We said ''Okay he's got cheaper rent,
then fuck it, we'll move in his house''. So me and my boy went across
the street to live with him. We were paying our rent to him, but the
s.o.b was keeping our rent and wasn't paying the landlord. He took the
rent, saved up his own money, and bounced on us. So one day we come home
and all our shit's on the fucking front lawn. We never could catch that
motherfucker. Till this day, we haven't caught him. It was real fucked
period in my life (no suprise there), and I felt like I had hit ''rock
bottom''.

Brain Damage

''Brain Damage'' was actually a song that I wrote in between The Slim
Shady EP and the LP. I wrote it while I was chillin in this little
duplex that Kim was stayin in right before I went to Cali. I wrote the
first verse there and wrote the hook, but I was going to throw the song
out. I started throwing a lot of my songs away when we didn't get a
record deal. Then, when we got the deal, I was going over the first
verse and the hook like ''This shit is crazy. You know what? Let me
finish this''. I finished the second verse out in Cali in the little
apartment the label put me up in when I got my deal. I originally wrote
it to a scrap beat. Until a few days later, when I just started thinkin'
of the bass line in my head and the way that it should go. Then we did
the version you hear on the album. It's only two verses, one regular
lenght and the other fucking long-ass verse.

Guilty Conscience

Dre and I were in the gym one day, and we was talking about song
concepts and shit. Dre said that we should do a song together called
''Night 'n' Day'' where everything he was saying, I was saying the
complete opposite. So I thought about it, went home that same night and
wrote it. I came back a couple of days later and told him I had the
song, so he booked our studio time. The ill shit is, he did the beat
same day, so we recorded the song right then. I laid down some ''dummy
vocals'' while Dre learned his parts and we cranked it out... a week
later. We actually did the skit part first. We hired a announcer from a
talent agency to come in and do the part of ''Meet such-such''. We left a
time lenght of eight bars for each skit. The
announcer came in, did his thing, and we put the sound effects up
underneath. We told him his parts and what he had to say, and we made
the skit around what he said. Cool, huh?

The Marshall Mathers LP

Marshall Mathers

While putting together my second album, I kind of wanted to come up with
an ''I don't give a fuck'' part 3. Jeff from FBT was playing this
acoustic guitar track. He then started singing the hook ''Cause I'm just
Marshall Mathers''. It's ill, because every time we're fucking around
in the studio we seem to come up with the dopest shit. We'll fuck around
and be smiling while we're saying shit and i'll say ''Yo that's dope. I
should use that''. When I thought of the chorus I felt that what I
needed to talk about in the verses was just me and my opinions. So I
touched on everything the newest trends in hip-hop (which I'm not really
with), to ICP, to my mother, to my family members who don't know me and
always wanna come around. I wanted to just spit fire in each verse and
have the soft-ass innocent chorus. I think it captures the whole ''front
porch'' feel despite on the album's cover. When I recorded this I
decided to call the album The Marshall Mathers LP.

Criminal

After I did ''Marshall Mathers'' I felt like I still hadn't captured
that ''Still don't give a fuck'' feel. I played it for my manager Paul
and he said '' It's dope, but it's not 'Give a Fuck' ''. Once again the
funniest shit happens when I'm about to bail. We were about to leave the
studio for the day, cause we couldn't come up with shit. Jeff was in
the next studio playin with this old-ass piano. He was playin the
frantic piano loop that gave ''Criminal'' that sinister feel. All I
had was '' I'm a Criminal''. I hadn't filled the blanks in yet. So I
started writing the rhyme and within twenty minutes we were on our way
out the door with a hook and the first two verses in hand. I went home
and finished the last verse. Afterwards, I put in the skit right before
the album was finished. Only fucked-up thing was that it took almost a
whole day to do that bank robbery skit. Even when dre walked out of the
studio like ''Fuck it, i'm out''. We had to get Mel-Man to get his lines
right, cause he was so drunk. He just had to say ''don't kill nobody''.
But what really took so long was the noise in the background. I did the
skit by myself. I learned how from Dre when we hooked up on ''Guilty
Conscience''. ''Criminal'' was my new ''Still Don't Give A Fuck'' for
The Marshall Mathers LP. That's why I did the same intro as I did on the
''Still Don't Give A fuck''. That's why---just like ''Still Don't Give A
Fuck''--It's the last song on the record. It sums up the whole album.

Kim

This little media favorite was actually the first official song that I
wrote for the album. I had to complete it back in 98, when the first
album was done. I wrote this song when Kim and I weren't together. We
were broken up at the time. This was the end of 98. I remember I was
watching a movie one day that inspired me to write a love song, but I
didn't want to make a corny love song. It had to be some bugged-out
shit. Though I don't remember what movie it was, I do remember feeling
the frustration of us breaking up and having a daughter all in the mix. I
really wanted to pour my heart out, but yet I wanted to scream. So the
same day I went to the flick, I went back to the studio and once again
walked into a session with the perfect beat already playing. Suprisingly
enough ''Kim'' was the only track on the album that I had nothing to do
with in terms of production. FBT created that track and they had it
already for me in the studio. When I started writing the song I thought
that maybe I could tie it into '' '97 Bonnie and Clyde''. So I decided
to make it a prequel. You never would've thought but I played it for her
once we started talking. I asked her to tell me what she thought of it.
I remember my dumb-ass saying '' I know this is a fucked-up song but it
shows how much I care about you. To even think about you this much. To
even put you in a song like this''. I did the vocals in one take. The
mood I wanted to capture was that of an argument that me and her would
have, and judging from the attention the media has given this song, you
can see that's exactly what I did.. and then some.

Drug Ballad

This song is just another one of those tracks that we did one day jut
fucking around. I wrote the rhyme in about twenty minutes. All three
verses. The hook was simple. I hummed Jeff the bass line. I wanted to
touch on how last year I was always fucked up. Life was like a big party
for me. It was the first year that I blew up and I did a lot of
celebrating. By the way, the vocal is the same girl from ''Get Down
Tonight''

The Way I Am

''The Way I Am'' was one of the few tracks that I did completely by
myself. I had the beat in my head before I went into the studio to lay
it down. I had the rhyme and the piano loop all worked out. I had Jeff
play the loop and I finished the rhyme listening to my headphone set on
the way to L.A. That's why the flow is like that, cause all I had was
the piano loop in my headphones. I wanted to do some different shit. I
thought about the rhymes first. Once I got the third line I didn't want
the cadence of the rhyme to stop going with the piano. Even if I took a
break with rappin, I made the words echo so that they still went with
the piano. The funny thing about this is that when I wrote this song I
had already turned in the whole album. Problem was my label felt that I
didn't have a lead-off single yet. I thought either '' I'm Back'' or ''I
never knew'' was gonna be the single, but they nixed both of'em. So I
got frustrated and I said, ''What do you want? another My name is?''
They said '' Not exactly, it doesn't have to be that'' but they were
beating around the bush, because that's exactly what they really wanted.
I wrote it at Kim's parent's house (of all places) right before I went
back to L.A to go record ''the single'' they wanted me to come with. I
stayed in hotels for a month just trying to come up with a single. This
is the song I wrote right before ''The Real Slim Shady''. I was about to
explode, like '' YO!! WHY IS EVERYBODY STRESSING ME!!!'' I was getting
sued by my mother. My father was coming out of the woodwork trying to
make amends and all kinds of crazy shit. Adding to the fire was the fact
that I was getting shit about the Columbine reference on '' I'm Back''
and the label was telling me that I wasn't gonna be able to say it. My
whole thing was, what is the big fucking deal? That shit happens all the
time. Why is that topic so touchy as opposed to, say a four-year-old
kid drowning? Why isn't that considered a huge tragedy? People die in
the city all the time. People get shot, people get stabbed, raped,
mugged, killed and all kinds of shit. What the fuck is the big deal with
Columbine that makes it seperate from any other tragedy in America?
Anyway, the label wanted a single so I gave 'em ''The Way I Am'', which
was the complete opposite of what they requested. I was kinda rebelling
against the label by letting them know they couldn't force me to do
something that I didn't want to do.

Kill You

What happened with ''Kill You'' was I came off the European tour in
October of 99 and I called Dre and I told him that I needed some new
tracks. He just happened to be going through some when I called. I
remember saying ''I ain't really got no new tracks, but I'm trying to
work on some new shit today''. Meanwhile, there was a track playing in
the background. I asked ''What's that?'' He responded ''What's what? You
mean this?'' and he puts the phone to the speaker and it was the ''Kill
You'' beat. I told him ''Send me that shit'' He was really suprised.
''You want this? This is some little shit we fuckin' with''. I said
''Whatever send me that. I....will....kill....that....track''. He sent
it to me the next day and I wrote the song. I recorded it weeks later
when I started recording The Marshall Mathers album. The first thing I
came up with was the hook: ''You don't....wanna fuck with Shady....Cause
Shady....Will fucking kill you''. I wanted to start the album with that
song because everybody in the press was like ''what's he gonna rap
about? He's not miserable anymore. He can't rap about being broke no
more, he can't rhyme about his pain and misery cause he's got money''.
That's why I started it up with that line ''They say I can't rap about
being broke no more, they ain't say I can't rap about coke no more''.
That right there gives you an idea of what the albums all about. The
song is ridiculous. The whole hook is basically bashing women. Like ''
I'll kill you even if you're a fuckin' girl''. I kill bitches, I kill
anybody, then at the end of the song I say '' I'm just kidding, ladies.
You know I love you''. It's kind of like you could say whatever you
want as long as you say you're joking at the end. Which is cool cause
that's what I do. It's funny cause people think that song is about my
mother, all because of the first couple of lines. When I say ''When I
was just a little baby boy'' and when I say ''Oh now he's raping his own
mother''. After that the reference just stop. The whole idea of this
song was to say some of the most fucked-up shit. Just to let people know
that I'm back. That I didn't lose it. That I wasn't compromising
nothing and I didn't change. If anything...I got worse.

Who Knew

''Who Knew'' was the second song I recorded for the Marshall Mathers
album. Dre was playin' a DAT and he was about to leave the studio. I
wanted to hear some shit. So he played me some new shit and the ''Who
Knew'' beat was one of the tracks on the DAT. I immediately thought ''Oh
my god, this is fucking ridiculous''. Dre left, but he said if I wanted
to stay and record, then I should go ahead. See, what Dre does is he
lays tracks to a DAT, but he won't complete them unless somebody want's
em. He'll lay like ten or twenty down, and whoever likes'em, they gotta
rhyme to the track. Then he'll come in and re-do it the right way. So
since he didn't have the beat laid down yet, I just rapped to the DAT. I
had just come back from Amsterdam when I wrote that song. I had the
hook, I had the verse, I had everything and it just mixed so perfectly
with Dre's beat. So I said ''Fuck it'' and recorded it that night. The
next day he heard it and said ''Damn, you brought that shit to life.
Let's get it in and knock it out.'' The whole idea behind this song was
try to make critics feel stupid. I think I countered everything that was
said about me last year with the Marhsall Mathers LP. Just like my next
album will counter everthing the critics said this year as far as gay
bashing and all that shit goes. I just tried to make them look stupid
and let them know not to take every fucking thing I say literally.

The Real Slim Shady

Okay, so they made me do the single. Thing was, I had that hook for a
minute. But I was nervous about doing anything with it. I didn't even
bring it to Dre. He didn't know I had it in store, stockpiled with a
bunch of other hooks. See, I write the hooks a lot of times before I
write the actual rhyme. So I had this hook, but I asked myself, ''Will
this work?'' It just need the right beat. Man, we went into the studio
about four times tryin to come up with one. We did about four or five
tracks and still nothing was working. Finally, me and Dre was in the
studio and we had just about given up. I was laid on the couch,
exhausted, and Dre was about to leave the room. I was tellin the bass
player and the keyboard player to play something till I liked it. So
they kept fuckin around, fucking around and fucking around till Tommy
(one of Dre's keyboard players) played the first few notes of 'The Real
Slim Shady'' and I jumped up and said ''What was that?'' I then asked
him to do something different with it. Make it go up and then down. He
did a couple of different things with it until I was like ''Right
there''. I then ran and got Dre to come listen to it. They added drums.
Now this all happened on a Friday. We had a meeting on Saturday with the
label and they asked ''Well, did you come up with anything?'' I played
them ''The Way I Am'' and they said '' It's a great song. It's just not
the first song.'' Orginally they were talkin about ''Criminal'' being
the single, but I told them to let me make this shit (''The Real Slim
Shady'' instrumental) over the weekend and I'd have the rhyme written by
Monday. Then we'de see if it worked. If it didn't then fuck it. Right
around this time was when Will Smith was dissin' gangsta rap and
Christina Aguilera was talkin' shit about me on MTV, putting me on blast
about being married during a time when I wasn't ready for the public to
know that about me yet. So I waited just long enough to get new subject
matter to get into. Now I had something to talk about. I came in on
Monday, recorded it, and was done. Interscope, obviously was satisfied.
That situaion made me value the saying ''Things happen for a reason'' a
bit more.

That was a great little read, thanks

Yeah great read, thanks.

Rock bottom is one of my favorite songs of all time, i related at one point in my life...

wow good looks, i love the whole album so it is cool to see his meanings and explanations for how and why he made the song cool shit bro. Thank you

nice post dude.

Some classics there.

if you don't like slim shady lp GO FUCK YOURSELF!!!!!! lol just kidding

by far his best albums