After blowing up the music scene with a mouthful of adjectives and a box full of laxatives” on The Slim Shady LP and spitting lyrics about slitting his wife’s throat on The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem has done the unthinkable on his new record, The Eminem Show: he’s grown up. Well, sort of. He still has the ability to shock listeners, as evident on “My Dad’s Gone Crazy," which features his daughter. He tells his mother he’d rather “be a pussy-whipped bitch, eat pussy, and have pussy lips glued to my face with a clit ring in my nose” than keep his mouth shut. Not exactly Natalie and Nat King Cole dueting on “Unforgettable,” is it? He still enjoys dissing celebrities, and Moby and N'Sync's Chris Kirkpatrick are targets of his attacks on “Without Me,” the album's first single. Aside from these Eminem "standards," he’s also managed to make a stunningly introspective record.

On “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” undoubtedly the strongest cut on the album, Eminem puts to rest his turbulent relationship with his mother by directly addressing her. In a stunning lyrical twist, Em claims to have been a victim of Munchausen’s syndrome, a disorder that causes a child’s mother to tell the child – and those around her – that the child is sick in a bid for attention. The song concludes with the haunting lines; “Remember when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me? Well, guess what? I am dead. Dead to you as can be.” But he follows this rant by revealing a side of himself far more vulnerable than anything we’ve seen on his previous efforts, paradoxically singing “I’m sorry Mama," demonstrating the conflicted emotions common in so many parent-child relationships.

Mathers further explores his vulnerability on the touching “Hallie’s Song,” a track dedicated to his daughter in which he actually sings. When he admits, “My insecurities could eat me alive,” and later says his daughter erases these feelings, gone is the ill perception of Eminem, the rapper who critics say wants to pervert your children and ruin America. Instead we hear someone we can empathize with; a troubled man whose only real solace and joy is in his family.

He also addresses the Frankenstein monster he’s created through his alter ego, Slim Shady. Mathers is aware that the public wants Slim Shady, not the real individual behind his invented persona. They want the chainsaw-wielding psychopath, not the caring father, or the son with the wounded ego. Eminem recognizes that he might have invited condemnation on his previous records, but also points out that Shady is only a creation of his art, and that music is just music (a recurring theme for him). His message here is simple: don’t take it so seriously. This is especially clear on “When the Music Stops,” the only track featuring his erstwhile crew, D-12.

Another recurring theme Eminem thrives on is the respect he feels has been denied as a hip-hop lyricist, going so far as name-dropping an A-list of MCs considered to have the best mic skills on “’Till I Collapse.” After naming them one by one, he snarls, "and then me!” It's obvious he feels slighted by the rap community. On album’s first song, “White America,” he raps “Let’s do the math,/ If I was black, I woulda sold half,” addressing the fact that his previous album sold 8 million copies. Perhaps it's a source of resentment in the more underground hip-hop community. While this may be minimally true, such a lack of respect is probably largely imagined. It’s hard to believe any real hip-hop fans would accord such little respect to an artist signed by Dr. Dre.

Nevertheless, Eminem is, without exception, the most gifted lyricist in the rap game today. Even songs with lackadaisical beats (like “Sing for the Moment”, which inexplicably samples Aerosmith’s “Dream On”), and hackneyed story lines (“Superman”, “Drips”) are enjoyable because of his tongue-twisting lyrics and inventive rhymes. He gives music fans something to hope for, to anticipate and to discuss. As he says of the medium on the album’s first single, “Without Me”, “but no matter how many fish in the sea, it’d be so empty without me.” Amen.

Tom Donnelly