Eminem First Album [upd] -

He sold maybe 70 copies. Most were given away. Detroit’s underground radio stations ignored it. One local hip-hop magazine gave it a brutal review, calling him a “Nas clone.” The final nail: at a small record store, Marshall watched a customer pick up Infinite , listen to it, and put it back with a disgusted face. The owner later told him, “Nobody bought it. We threw most of them in the trash.”

Before the world knew him as Eminem, before Dr. Dre, before “My Name Is,” a hungry, angry 24-year-old Marshall Mathers released an album called in 1996. And it pretty much failed — spectacularly. eminem first album

The cover shows Eminem looking young, clean-shaven, almost soft — a stark contrast to the bleached-blond menace he’d become. The music? He rapped over mellow, jazzy, Nas- and AZ-inspired beats, with a calm, multi-syllabic flow. He wasn’t being funny or violent — just earnest. He sold maybe 70 copies

Marshall had just lost his job as a cook at Gilbert’s Lodge, his girlfriend was pregnant with Hailie, and he was living in a tiny, cockroach-infested apartment on Detroit’s east side. He and his friend/producer, the Bass Brothers, scraped together about $1,500 to press maybe 500–1,000 cassettes and records. One local hip-hop magazine gave it a brutal

Here’s an interesting story about Eminem’s first album — but it’s not The Slim Shady LP .