10 Non Rock Albums That Rock Music Fans Love

Looking back on Eminem's early days almost feels like watching a really edgy version of a cartoon. The entire appeal of something like Slim Shady was intended to be fairly campy at the outset, but the Marshall Mathers LP gave us something different, showing the heart underneath all of the hardened macho posturing that Em was doing on songs like Guilty Conscience. Now that he had the ear of the entire world, he was going to make the kind of hip hop record that no one else had ever heard before.

Going back into the studio with Dre, The Eminem Show is the one Eminem record most indebted to the world of rock and roll, incorporating both samples and organic playing into the mix to get what he needs. For all of the rap classics that are on this album, songs like Without Me and Till I Collapse could easily be rock songs if you just swap out the beat with some more aggressive drumming, with Em becoming the off the hinge style frontman that he always had buried underneath that bleached blonde hair.

The more serious subject matter hasn't gone anywhere either, with songs like White America tackling what Slim's role in pop culture should be, either calling out the Bush administration or messing with parents' perception of what he should be. Some suits may have been lining up to call him the devil incarnate, but with beats like this behind him, there was no way Slim was going to back down to anybody.