A debut album that landed like a sledgehammer, 1988's Straight Outta Compton has become a legend in its own right. The featured N.W.A lineup was Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren. The album was produced by Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, and released on Ruthless Records, the label co-founded by Eazy-E and N.W.A manager Jerry Heller two years before.

Although it sold well initially, its landmark status rested on the controversies surrounding its gangsta lifestyle themes and attitudes. Its provocative tracks described the world N.W.A knew through their own eyes, including the title track, which elevated the group's hometown of Compton, Calif., "Express Yourself" and "Gangsta Gangsta." The album also included "F*** Tha Police," which resulted in the FBI and U.S. Secret Service sending threatening letters to Ruthless Records and the group's banishment from many venues.

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Credited as one of the most influential hip-hop records of all time, in 2015, Straight Outta Compton the film appeared, dramatizing the 1988 impact of the album, with Ice Cube portrayed by his son O'Shea Jackson Jr. Confrontations with law enforcement and antagonism based on "F*** Tha Police" form a core element of both the 2015 drama as well as the drama on the streets that has never stopped.

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Among the album's many aftermaths, Eazy-E died in 1995, Ice Cube went on to produce and star in his extensive filmography and the adventures of Dr. Dre touch on many other histories, including those of Eminem and Kendrick Lamar. Meanwhile, in recognition of its critical importance to music history, Straight Outta Compton was inducted into the Recording Academy's GRAMMY Hall Of Fame as well as the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.

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Three decades ago, a close-knit rap collective from the Midwest sent a powerful statement through the culture of hip-hop.

Fusing hardscrabble, horror-influenced rhymes with slick G-funk production and an inventive approach to rap vocals, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony — a five-member Cleveland-bred group signed to Los Angeles-based Ruthless Records — struck lightning with their sophomore album E. 1999 Eternal. Released on July 25, 1999, the record debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and eventually sold 4 million copies. It also earned a GRAMMY nomination for the inaugural Best Rap Album award.

E. 1999 Eternal's dark and macabre tone was informed not only by the group’s experiences on the streets, but on the tragedy of loss. Members had seen friends and family die over the years, including their mentor Eazy E. These tragedies set the stage for their cathartic hit "Tha Crossroads" — a chart-topping remix of an album track that won Bone Thugs their only GRAMMY for Best Rap Performance By A Duo or Group. Thirty years on, GRAMMY.com charts the legacy of this influential album.

E. 1999 Perfected Bone Thugs' Signature Style

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's style gave the group an edge over the rest of the rap field. Their combined use of fast flows and harmonically-delivered vocals made them a novelty, with few contemporaries attempting to replicate their sing-song delivery. 

Contrasting these pleasant melodies with gritty lyrical content also gave them an edge. Gangster rap at the time truly reflected the harsh conditions of life on the streets — and this was especially true for Bone, who channeled into music the grim realities of life in post-industrial Cleveland’s east side (the album is named for East 99th Street where the group typically hung out). The album is littered with tall tales about encounters with rival gangsters ("Eternal," "Land of the Heartless" ) and the criminal justice system, with a prison break narrative on "Down ‘71 (The Getaway)." Meanwhile, "1st of tha Month" illustrates the day of welfare checks arriving in the hood and how much of the funds from them go to drug dealers: "The first be the day for the dopeman." 

None of this would feel out of place in hip-hop’s New York heartland, but it’s the record’s West Coast-influenced production that again diversified it. Bone Thugs had been adopted as proteges by N.W.A.’s Eazy E and, under his guidance, they and DJ U-Neek (who produced all tracks on the album) set the group’s Midwestern nihilism against a backdrop of slow-rolling California G-funk. U-Neek sourced morose samples from vintage funk and soul and video game soundtracks ("Crossroads," "Eternal,") as well as building his own tableau of synth and drum machine-driven beats.

The Album Brought horrorcore To The Mainstream (And Caused Tension With Three 6 Mafia In The Process) 

While hardcore and gangster rap frequently portrayed the urban ghettos that birthed hip-hop as hellish places as a means of social criticism, it was also sensationalized by politicians and the media as glamorizing gang violence. In response, horrorcore took the violent content in rap to its logical extension, drawing on psychological horror and slasher flicks for inspiration. Houston group Geto Boys’ work, in particular, frequently drew on horror tropes.

On E. 1999, Bone Thugs build on these early experiments and craft a world heavily inspired by horror content, depicting their C-Town hood as a nightmarish landscape of murder and death. The record is littered with spookiness from the very start, with satanic backmasked vocals and deep-voice modulation on “Da Introduction." Bone-chilling lyrics referencing murders, executions, and other grotesque violence soak the album in gallons of blood, especially on tracks like "Mo’ Murda" and "Land of tha Heartless." The crew even adopt slasher flick-inspired nicknames: Bizzy Bone becomes "Lil’ Ripster"and Krayzie Bone frequently refers to himself as "Leatherface" in reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Horrorcore would continue to hold a place in the rap landscape for years to come thanks to groups like Insane Clown Posse, $uicideboy$; Playboi Carti and Denzel Curry. Yet Bone Thugs were far from the only ‘90s group to adopt the genre; Memphis natives Three Six Mafia became their rivals in the scene. Both groups took a similar approach to the genre, favoring slow beats and rapid-fire flows, but while Three Six had only released their influential first album Mystic Stylez a year earlier, they had been active in the underground for much longer.

"When Bone came out … with ‘Thuggish Ruggish Bone’ and all of that stuff and we hear somebody kind of on our same style: Faces Of Death, redrum, muder, 6-6-6, tongue twisting," Three Six’s DJ Paul explained in 2015. "We were like, ‘Damn these dudes done stole our style!’"

Paul characterized the tensions between the two groups as "more of a misunderstanding" than a real feud, but the crews eventually did come to real blows in 2021 during a Verzuz rap battle event. 

"Tha Crossroads" Set The Pace For Melodic & Soulful Rap 

By 1995 the East Coast rap revival had firmly established hardcore hip-hop as the dominant style in the genre, with the likes of Mobb Deep, Wu-Tang Clan, and the Notorious B.I.G. answering the West Coast with their own gritty street rap. Yet quite a few of these gangster rap artists also made room for more soulful and introspective material, exemplified by tracks like Wu-Tang’s Gladys Knight-sampling "Can It Be All So" and, in particular, "Life’s A Bitch" by Nas featuring AZ.

Bone Thugs would take this combination of soft sounds and gangster lamentation to the top of the charts the following year with "Tha Crossroads," a remix of a E. 1999 Eternal track, already a eulogy to their dead friend Wallace "Wally" Laird III. U-Neek swapped the original’s gothic core sample (from a Sega Genesis fighting game) with a soulful Isley Brothers segment and the rappers added additional dedications to other fallen friends and family: group member Wish Bone’s Uncle Charles, fellow rapper Lil Boo of The Graveyard Shift, and most famously Eazy E, a victim of the AIDS epidemic who died just before he could see Bone Thugs achieve success with E. 1999.

The smooth, R&B-esque sound combined with the group’s emotionally bare paens to their deceased brethren ("Can somebody, anybody tell me why / We die, we die?") and the cruelties of "Livin’ in a hateful world" struck a nerve. Propelled by the tragic association of Eazy’s death and the prior success of the E. 1999 record, the track debuted at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the chart the next week, staying in place for eight more. It later won a GRAMMY for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Though a handful of rap hits would take on similarly morose subject matter in the years to come – DMX’s "Slippin’" serves as one example – track’s influence would be felt much more deeply a decade later, when a host of mainstream rappers including Kanye West, Drake, and Kid Cudi would combine confessional, moody lyricism and production with a sing-song rap style similar to Bone Thugs. Then that wave of "singing-ass rapping" would influence a subsequent 2010s wave of emo rap from Juice WRLD and Lil Peep, among others. 

Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, 2Pac and the Smashing Pumpkins all had No. 1 albums in 1995. Despite such hallowed competition, four movie soundtracks also topped the Billboard 200 chart that year. Two were family-friendly Disney behemoths: Pocahontas and The Lion King, the latter still powering from the previous year. The other chart-topping soundtracks, for the Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle Dangerous Minds and the stoner comedy Friday, were no one's idea of kids' entertainment.

Beyond those No. 1 spots, 1995 marked a fascinating midpoint in a soundtrack-heavy decade. According to a New York Times report, a new release CD that year typically cost anywhere between $13-$19. At that price, a soundtrack needed major star power or an undeniable concept.

For movie studios and musicians alike, the format was rich with opportunity. However, there was no certain formula for success. Some soundtracks were guided by a single producer, while others drew on a grab bag of then-current songs. Several featured one clear hit that eclipsed the soundtrack, or occasionally the movie itself. For all their differing approaches, the soundtracks of 1995 epitomized the energy and audacity of the decade, while also establishing tropes for the next 30 years.

The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album (1992) set the bar high for the decade. With a 20-week reign at No. 1, it remains the biggest-selling soundtrack of all time. Whitney Houston performed six songs on the album, including the titanic power ballad, "I Will Always Love You." (At the 1994 GRAMMYs, the track won the GRAMMY for Record Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, while the soundtrack itself earned the Album Of The Year award.)

While The Bodyguard magnified their commercial potential, movie soundtracks like Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) framed the medium as an artistic showpiece. Throughout the '90s, Tarantino and fellow indie auteurs Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater and Spike Lee made music a key character in their films. (The latter continues the trend on his latest movie, Da 5 Bloods, alongside six-time GRAMMY-winning composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.) Both instincts, for commercial returns and artistic validation, were well-represented in 1995.

Batman Forever (1995) epitomized the big-budget, mass-appeal mid-'90s soundtrack. Spanning PJ Harvey to Method Man, the 14-track set employed some tried-and-true tactics. First, only five songs on the track list appear in the movie itself, ushering in a rash of "Music From And Inspired By" soundtracks. Second, its featured artists largely contributed songs you couldn't find on other albums: According to Entertainment Weekly in 1995, U2 landed a reported $500,000 advance for "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," an offcut from the band's Zooropa album sessions.

Most significantly, Batman Forever backed a surprise smash in Seal's "Kiss From A Rose." Originally released as a single in 1994, the ballad blew up as the movie's "love theme." In its music video, Seal croons in the light of the Bat-Signal, intercut with not-very-romantic scenes from the film. Outshining U2, "Kiss From A Rose" reached No. 1 in 1995; one year later, the song won for Song Of The Year, Record Of The Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 38th GRAMMY Awards.

Both Bad Boys and Dangerous Minds had their "Kiss From A Rose" equivalent in 1995. Diana King's reggae-fusion jam "Shy Guy" proved the breakout star of Bad Boys, transcending an R&B- and hip-hop-heavy soundtrack. Meanwhile, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," featuring singer L.V., the key track on Dangerous Minds, became the top-selling single of 1995; it won the rapper his first, and only, GRAMMY for Best Rap Solo Performance the next year.  

Other soundtracks from 1995 endure as perfect documents of their time and place. Clueless compiled a cast from '90s rock radio to accompany the adventures of Alicia Silverstone's Cher Horowitz and her high school clique: Counting Crows, Smoking Popes, Cracker and The Muffs. Coolio, the everywhere man of 1995, contributed "Rollin' With My Homies."  

From the same city, but a world outside Cher's Beverly Hills bubble, came the Ice Cube- and Chris Tucker-starring Friday. Its soundtrack took a whistle-stop tour of West Coast hip-hop and G-funk via Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Tha Alkaholiks and Mack 10. True to the era, the music video for Dr. Dre's "Keep Their Heads Ringin'" is half stoner comedy, half cheesy action movie.  

Waiting To Exhale, the 1995 drama directed by Forest Whitaker, boasted a soundtrack with a clear author. Babyface, the R&B superproducer with 11 GRAMMY wins for his work with the likes of Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton, produced the set in full. Following Babyface's co-producer role on The Bodyguard soundtrack three years prior, Waiting To Exhale featured two new songs from the movie's star, Whitney Houston.

Houston's "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" and "Why Does It Hurt So Bad" led a track list that also featured Aretha Franklin, TLC, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige and then-newcomer Brandy. A powerful showcase of Black women across generations, the soundtrack has prevailed as a standalone work, going on to receive multiple nominations, including Album Of The Year, at the 1997 GRAMMYs. In a crowded year for soundtracks, which also included Dinosaur Jr. founder Lou Barlow's work on Larry Clark's contentious Kids, Waiting To Exhale demonstrated the power of a singular vision.

For the most part, the soundtracks of 1995 tried a bit of everything. The previous year, The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack went all-in on covers, including Nine Inch Nails overhauling Joy Division's "Dead Souls." That trend continued into 1995, from Tori Amos covering R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" for Higher Learning to Evan Dando's update of Big Star's "The Ballad Of El Goodo" in Empire Records to Tom Jones gamely taking on Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Gonna Go My Way"' for The Jerky Boys movie. (Is there a more '90s sentence than that?)

Elsewhere, the Mortal Kombat soundtrack blended metal and industrial rock (Fear Factory, Gravity) with dance music (Utah Saints, Orbital). For every Dead Presidents, which zeroed in on '70s funk and soul, there was a Tank Girl, which threw together Bush, Björk, Veruca Salt and Ice-T to match the movie's manic tone. 

Continuing from their '90s winning streak, grown-up soundtracks have proven surprisingly resilient. In an echo of Babyface's role on Waiting To Exhale, Kendrick Lamar oversaw production on 2018's chart-topping, multi-GRAMMY-nominated Black Panther: The Album, uniting an A-list cast under his creative direction. On the same front, Beyonce executive-produced and curated The Lion King: The Gift, the soundtrack album for the 2019 remake of the Disney classic, which spotlighted African and Afrobeats artists. In 2016, Taylor Swift and One Direction's Zayn recorded "I Don't Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker)," pitching for the movie tie-in bump enjoyed in 1995 by Seal and Coolio. (The millennial stars stopped short of including scenes from the movie in their music video.) 

Like Batman Forever back in the day, the DC Universe continues to put stock in soundtracks. Both *Suicide Squad *(2016) and its follow-up, Birds Of Prey (2020), are packed tight with to-the-minute pop, R&B and hip-hop. Each soundtrack reads like a who's who of the musical zeitgeist. In 1995, Mazzy Star, Brandy and U2 grouped up behind Batman. In 2016, Twenty One Pilots, Skrillex and Rick Ross powered the Suicide Squad. In 2020, everyone from Doja Cat to Halsey to YouTube star Maisie Peters form Team Harley Quinn. 

As 1995 taught us time and time again, nothing traps a year in amber quite like a movie soundtrack. 

Marshall Bruce Mathers III is a man of many names. But no matter what you call him — Marshall, Slim Shady, or the name by which he's best-known, Eminem — he's undoubtedly a household name. In fact, he's the top-selling hip-hop artist of all time, and in turn, one of the most popular artists of all time, in any genre.

He's no slouch when it comes to awards, either. Eminem has 15 GRAMMYs, and a total of 47 nominations. His latest album, The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce), earned three nods at the 2025 GRAMMYs, including his eighth for Best Rap Album — a Category he's won six times. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of those GRAMMY-winning albums, The Marshall Mathers LP. After breaking through with his second set, 1999's The Slim Shady LP, Eminem's third album put the rapper into the dead center of early-2000s media and discourse. During that era, Eminem inspired protests, sold a now-unthinkable amount of albums, and inspired seemingly endless amounts of cultural criticism.

The Marshall Mathers LP also saw Eminem reacting to the expectations brought on by the massive success of The Slim Shady LP, beginning a chain of albums that react to the previous album that continues to this day. 

Em's 12 studio albums are just one component of his sprawling discography — which, along with several deluxe or extended versions of his LPs, include two separate greatest hits collections, mixtapes, collaborative and group projects, and movie soundtracks. And that's not to mention guest features, unreleased tracks and other rarities.

There's much more to Eminem than what many consider his classic period, which started with The Slim Shady LP and ended right before the release of his fourth album, Encore, in November 2004. But it is that season — where a white rapper from Detroit teamed up with Dr. Dre and rocketed to the peak of popular culture — that is at the center of the rapper's discography and persona, and that he has in some ways been reckoning with since.

The best way to understand Eminem's catalog is to break it down into several eras: his pre-fame output, where he was not yet fully artistically formed; the aforementioned classic period; the fall and subsequent rise that followed; a look back at his classic period, but with mature insights and fresh eyes; and, over the past few years, a reaction to the changed world around him. 

Now, dig into each one of these eras, and how they all contributed to making Eminem one of rap's greats. 

The Pre-Fame Period (1996-1998)

Eminem's first album, 1996's Infinite, is a project he still seems slightly embarrassed by. It is, notably, not available anywhere online (at least not legally), and only the title track can be found on streaming services.

But it is worth hearing in order to understand Em's whole story. It was recorded before he came up with the Slim Shady persona, and sounds like what it is: the earnest work of a talented mid-'90s underground rapper with an AZ obsession and a chip on his shoulder. 

The dense rhyming that would characterize his mature work is there, as are hints of the troublemaker personality that would soon take over the world. All of that is mixed in with the odd cringe-worthy punchline ("I'll run your brain around the block to jog your f—ing memory") and resentment towards local radio stations for ignoring him — stations that, only a few short years later, wouldn't stop playing his records. 

That project is followed by the debut of his Slim Shady alter ego on the appropriately-named Slim Shady EP. This is where Em first finds his footing. 

Slim Shady is the device Em used to say things you're not supposed to say (one song begins: "Slim Shady, brain-dead like Jim Brady"), while providing a complicated artistic and philosophic out. The character gave Em permission to be extreme, and also room to claw back some of what he was saying, and question whether he really meant it. 

The intro of the Slim Shady EP goes into this head-on, featuring tropes Em would use throughout his career. The demonic-sounding Shady tells him, "You're nothing without me," in a skit that could appear verbatim on his most recent project, The Death of Slim Shady. 

Musically, Eminem has discovered that evil sells. Letting his most deranged thoughts loose makes him sound far more energized than on Infinite, and already, even before meeting with Dre, he has a unique voice and style.

One other project happened during this era that's worth mentioning: a single with Royce Da 5'9", "Nuttin' to Do"/"Scary Movies," which they released in 1998 under the group name Bad Meets Evil. It is a stellar piece of work, and even at that early stage Shady and Royce have a notable chemistry — one it would take them over a decade to fully explore.

This was the time when Em could not miss. Pretty much everything he put out during this period was both artistically and commercially successful. Even seemingly throwaway efforts like his appearances on DJ Green Lantern's Invasion mixtapes (three volumes of which were released between 2002-2004) were both memorable and newsworthy.

All of this began with Em's discovery by Dr. Dre and the subsequent album The Slim Shady LP. Along with its influence on hip-hop, this album put its maker at the white-hot (pun intended) center of popular culture. Everything Eminem did or said got a reaction, which in turn inspired him to act out, which inspired more outrage. It was a cycle that ultimately led to burnout (more on that later), but for a few years it created something close to magic.

Read More: 4 Reasons Why Eminem's 'The Slim Shady LP' Is One Of The Most Influential Rap Records

The Marshall Mathers LP showed Em at his provocateur best, playing in the sandbox of his newfound stardom and the outrage it inspired. The record has, as of this writing, sold over 11 million copies in the US alone, which should give you some idea of its astronomical impact. Eminem was reckoning with the fact that he moved from overlooked and ignored to multi platinum seemingly overnight — and he didn't seem to be having an easy time of it. All of his grievances with fans, family and pretty much anything else he could think of were given the largest canvas imaginable.

Its follow-up, 2002's The Eminem Show, was just as provocative, but had a wider focus. Slim Shady's name was now being spoken in the halls of power, and he had some thoughts about that (and about America's post-9/11 terrorism obsession) — as well as some jokes about then-VP Dick Cheney's heart problems. 

It wasn't just the music that made this season so pivotal for Eminem's career, either. He also starred in 8 Mile, a sort of fictionalized version of his battle rapping come-up, which proved that he was a big enough star that he could be at the center of a massively successful and compelling film. Naturally, he contributed a few songs to the film's soundtrack, including the one that arguably solidified him as a global superstar: the chart-topping and GRAMMY- and Oscar-winning "Lose Yourself."

He also, alongside Dre, discovered and signed 50 Cent, and produced and rapped on Fif's monster 2003 debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. There were other major features during this period as well: virtuosic raps on songs by Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Xzibit, and more. He even appeared on one of the very few worthwhile posthumous Notorious B.I.G. songs, "Dead Wrong."

In addition, he somehow managed to find time during this period to release two albums from his group D12, both of which went platinum.

Eminem himself summed up this period the best. "Them last two albums didn't count," he rapped on Recovery's "Talkin' 2 Myself." "Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushing 'em out."

The rise to megastardom began to take its toll. Em became trapped by the demands of celebrity, and by his own drug use. And it began to show in his work. 

Encore contains a number of extremely juvenile songs with titles like "Ass Like That" and "Big Weenie" that would have been better left on the cutting room floor. There are also several tracks that simply retread concepts he had already done on his previous albums ("Mockingbird" is, for example, essentially "Hailie's Song" redux). 

That said, there are also occasional great moments: a mature look at the costs of rap beef ("Like Toy Soldiers"), and a glance back at his childhood that, in its seriousness and thoughtfulness, avoids the exaggerated, comic tall tales of his first album ("Yellow Brick Road"). The deluxe version of Encore contains several of his best songs of this era, "We As Americans" and "Love You More," which were inexplicably left off the album proper. 

Following Encore, fans would have to wait over four years for Eminem's next release — and the result, Relapse, was a divisive record. Many heard it as a largely sub-par collection of serial killer stories, celebrity insults, pill addiction stories, and bad accents (the last of which he would apologize for later). But it was produced almost in its entirety by Dr. Dre, which has won it no shortage of fans over the years. And those same serial killer tales would become influential on a new generation; it is, notably, an album that Tyler, the Creator has repeatedly and publicly championed.

Recovery marked, well, Eminem's recovery. It also set the template for a sound and a style he would use in future years. Sound-wise, there's a heavy rock and roll influence: drums, guitars and organ that wouldn't sound out of place on a classic rock station (not for nothing, Black Sabbath is sampled on "Changes"). Stylistically, he adds heavy amounts of puns to his repertoire for the first time, a device to which he would return again and again.

Read More: GRAMMY Rewind: Watch Eminem Show Love To Detroit And Rihanna During His Best Rap Album Win In 2011

The project aimed for hits, and it succeeded. Biggest of all, of course, was "Love the Way You Lie," a ballad with Rihanna on the hook that was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks. This is yet another formula that Em would return to, as we shall see.

By the time the 2010s began, Eminem began to acknowledge his past. Two projects in a row, Hell: The Sequel and the suitably-named Marshall Mathers LP 2, looked back at different aspects of his career.

The former of these found him re-teaming with Royce Da 5'9" as Bad Meets Evil, this time for an EP-length project. The pairing hadn't lost a step since the late '90s, when they joined up for a fantastic single and a Slim Shady LP collaboration. Here, Em is less focused on his own story and mythology, and more concerned with simply rapping. He sounds happier and more free, more interested in wordplay than narrative. 

Even his by-now-long running ultraviolent worldview is more palatable in tandem with Royce. It also sounds good to have Eminem rapping with someone else (his own records are notably short on guest verses). Hell: The Sequel is largely not thought of as a high point of Em's discography, perhaps because it wasn't released under his name. But in this writer's estimation, it's his best project outside of the classic period.

The sequel to the Marshall Mathers LP also looks back, but in a different way. Em is thinking about the people affected by the often-scattershot insults he hurled at the height of his fame, and treating at least some of them with nuance and empathy — including the frequent villain of many of his early tracks, his mother. 

Sonically, the rock-influenced material is still there. And so is the Rihanna duet, repeated on "Monster." There is also perhaps the best-known and showiest example of Em's virtuoso rapping, "Rap God."

This idea of legacy — the album literally has a song by that title — continues on 2017's Revival. He's concerned with how hard it is to live up to the expectations set by his own past work. He also continues to look back on his early years, but this time with a clear-eyed view of how it affected his daughter, which he looks at on "Castle." 

One other part of this record is a response to modern rap. Em has heard Migos and their then-ubiquitous triplet flow, and he's got some things to say about it. That will come to a head shortly.

Revival did not have a great critical or popular reception, which did not sit well with Eminem. Within eight months, he released Kamikaze, a record that was largely about that poor response to Revival. It is shorter and more focused than pretty much any other solo album he's ever released.

It's also perhaps the most bitter, which is no small feat. He was angry at the current state of rap and the media that covers it. The only relief comes with the song "Stepping Stone," in which he examines his culpability in the collapse of his group D12.

That same cycle of an album responding to the previous album's reviews continued on Music to be Murdered By, which literally begins with the couplet, "They said last album I sounded bitter/ Nah, I sound like a spitter." He even responded to specific reviews, with this 2.5 star Rolling Stone review of Kamikaze a particular target of ire. He seemed frustrated that neither the seriousness of Revival nor the lashing out of Kamikaze got the acclaim he felt they deserved. 

That said, MTBMB does have some standout tracks. There's the moving "Leaving Heaven," where Em responds to his father's death in 2019. And there's "Darkness," which reimages the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Plus there's "Yah Yah," an excellent collaborative display of rapping with Black Thought and, yet again, Royce.

Em's most recent project, The Death of Slim Shady, is also a reactionary album. But this time, it's not a response to the reception of a previous album — instead, it's a reaction to a changed social climate. 

Eminem (or, more properly, his never-quite-buried alter ego) sounds like your angry uncle at Thanksgiving, or a "South Park" rerun. Gen Z, pronouns, the "PC police," opposition to fatphobia — all of these come under fire. One of the songs, "Brand New Dance," appears to be a slightly reworked 20-year-old leftover, which explains the track's Christopher Reeve jokes. 

The album openly deals with the same question that plagued Slim Shady EP's opening: is the bottle-blonde enfant terrible Slim Shady all that Marshall Mathers has to offer the world? He doesn't appear to have come up with an answer yet. But the struggle to figure that out has led to a quarter-century of frequently compelling music, with the promise of a lot more to come.

The 2025 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 67th GRAMMY Awards, will air live on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday, Feb. 2. Watch highlights from the 2025 GRAMMYs on live.GRAMMY.com.

The 2025 GRAMMYs telecast will be reimagined to raise funds to support wildfire relief efforts and aid music professionals impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. Donate to the Recording Academy's and MusiCares' Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort To Support Music Professionals.

Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before the onset of the wildfires in Los Angeles.

Steve Cropper is still "selling energy" — putting forth what a younger generation might call blues rock "vibes" with his pals as if it were still 1970.

This ethos dates back to his time at the legendary Memphis label Stax Records, where Cropper served as a songwriter, producer, engineer and A&R. Crucially, Cropper was the guitarist in Stax's house band, Booker T. & The MGs — they of "Green Onions" fame — and backed artists including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Carla Thomas. Among his many bonafides, Cropper co-wrote Redding's "(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay."

In his post-Stax years, the two-time GRAMMY winner and nine-time nominee produced and played on sessions with Jeff Beck, Jose Feliciano, John Prine, John Cougar, and Tower Of Power. He later joined Levon Helm’s RCO All-Stars group and was among the original members in Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's Blues Brothers band. Cropper resumed his solo career in the '80s, releasing several albums, while continuing to collaborate with leading lights like Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, Elton John and Steppenwolf.

Steve Cropper has stayed true to himself for over seven decades, thanks in no small part to advice from Stax founder Jim Stewart. "He said, 'Just play yourself and if they don't like it, they'll tell you,'" Cropper tells GRAMMY.com. "So I've been playing myself all my life and it's worked out. That's pretty cool."

At the 2025 GRAMMYs, Cropper is nominated in the Best Contemporary Blues Album Category for the aptly named Friendlytown, recorded with a mix of long-time collaborators and a few newer faces, together billed as Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour. Friendlytown's 13 tracks are familiar, digestible and straight-ahead rockin' — the kind of tunes you'd be thrilled to hear in a local dive. Featuring ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Queen guitarist Brian May, singer Roger C Reale, and guitarist Tim Montana, Cropper co-wrote and co-produced all of Friendlytown with bassist Jon Tiven.

"Steve's guitar playing on the song 'Hurry Up Sundown' is probably some of his best solo work and rhythm work," Tiven says. "It's amazing that at this point in his career, he could still be creating some of the greatest music of his life. I think that's a wonderful testament to the strength of his talent."

Meet Me At The Friendlytown Trader Joe's

There was very little methodical music-making behind Friendlytown, which partially grew out of sessions Cropper put together for his 2021 album Fire It Up. "This record was just about a bunch of guys getting together and having some fun. It's just like, Let's have a blast and try to make the party come to the record, rather than the record come to the party," Tiven notes.

Cropper and Tiven had been working on songs for years with the hopes of finding friendly musicians to give them life. While some found homes, the duo sat on instrumentals for years — until Tiven ran into Billy Gibbons at Trader Joe's. When Tiven told the sharp-dressed man he was making a record with Steve Cropper, "He just lit up like a firecracker and said he'd like to bring us a song. I said, 'Well, it's only going on the record unless you play on it.' And he said, 'Well, that could be arranged.'"

Gibbons ended up on 11 tracks; Friendlytown marks the first time he and Cropper worked together in many years. The ZZ Top vocalist's influence is audible on the album, particularly the title track and Eliminator-esque "Lay It On Down."

In Session At Stax

While casual may be the name of Cropper's game these days, "it definitely wasn't 35, 40 years ago," he says. Back then (and largely before, as Cropper left the label in 1970), making music was "was very serious, and I don't even think the guys had a good time." With a laugh, Cropper recalls his best friend, the Stax bassist/MG Duck Dunn, pining for a world in which "Jim Stewart would've only smiled every now and then."  

While Cropper calls Stewart "the greatest guy I've ever met," the label head was known to be critical. "He knew if you fought for something, like a song, that it was a good song. And if you didn't fight for it, it wasn't worth nothing," Cropper says, chuckling. "He was right. I think about that all the time, but I don't use it. A songwriter could tell me how good a song they wrote is, but if I don't like it, I don't like it. I'm sorry!. I'm sure I've thrown away some good ones before." 

Read more: 1968: A Year Of Change For The World, Memphis & Stax Records

A young Cropper put up a couple of fights, and for good reason. He recalls stumping for Wilson Pickett's "Ninety-nine and a half": [Jim Stewart said] "You boys was out there woodsheddin’. That song ain't going to make it." Cropper pressed it, and Stewart relented. The track made the cut for Pickett's 1966 album The Exciting Wilson Pickett.

Another big Stax hit stayed on the shelf for nine months while Cropper and co. battled it out with Stax brass. "Finally Al Bell went to Jim and said, 'You got to put this record out. It's called ‘Knock on Wood.' And Jim says, 'Okay, but you got to use your own money,'" Cropper says. "He hated that record until it was a hit."

Reflecting on the hardest song he's ever played, Cropper quickly points to Sam and Dave's "Soul Man." But the 1967 smash isn't difficult for the reasons you might think: the guitarist had to balance a Zippo lighter on his leg during sessions and performances, which he used to mimic the song's opening horn line. "I always had to dance [when recording] with Sam and Dave, because they could hit a groove. A lot of guitar players don't know that I played with a Zippo lighter and I'd slide it," he recalls.

Cropper reportedly hated the sound and feel of new guitar strings — something, he says, is no longer the case in old age — and in a lip-smacking good tidbit of studio lore, explained how he managed his unique sound. "I carry a thing of ChapStick all the time and I would go up and down the strings; [that would] take about three months out of the string so it would sound like the rest of them."

Sittin' On A Legacy

After decades in the business, it seems as if Cropper – though ever a professional – doesn't take himself or the creative process too seriously. He jokingly shares a reccolation from a studio session during his Stax years: Once the session was finished, Cropper told the group "Damn, this sounds like a hit." "And Al Jackson said, 'Steve, they're all hits until they're released.' He's probably right."

One of Stax's reliable hitmakers was a close friend of Cropper's: Otis Redding. The two shared a deep musical bond and some shared history. Both musicians grew up on farms ("By the time I was 14, I was ready to leave the home. By the time I was 16, I was gone in my mind," Cropper notes) yet the guitarist describes Redding as "most streetwise person that I ever met. I think he just had it. It came natural to him."

Redding played guitar with one finger and you "never argued with Otis" — especially because he was never available for sessions for more than a day or two. Most Otis Redding albums, as a result, were compilations from different sessions.

"I remember we cut 'I Can't Turn You Loose' in 10 minutes," Cropper says. "[When we recorded] Otis Blue, we had everybody come back at 1 [a.m.] -- after they did their gig and they went home and had their shower – so we could cut it."

Cropper knew that  "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" — arguably Redding's biggest hit, and Cropper's first GRAMMY win —  was a hit. "You know why I knew it was a hit? Because we had Otis the longest I'd had him; for two weeks."

The gentle lull of "Sittin'" was a radical departure from Redding's Southern soul bombast, and perhaps a sign of what was to come if the singer hadn't died tragically in a plane crash. "That one song, we searched for a long time. We call it crossover music; so it could go either way:, R&B, pop, whatever. That was the first one we ever had," Cropper says.

There's Always A Catch

Steve Cropper is still going strong at 83 years old. He reports that he enjoyed HBO's recent Stax Records docuseries, and has an unfinished instrumentals album in the can. He hasn't time for regrets, only dreams, but the name of the one person Cropper wishes he had worked with fires off like lightning: Tina Tuner.

Cropper saw the late legend three times. "I really did admire Tina. She was the closest person to Otis, I think, in the business. It's the yeller, screamer, but everybody loves their music. She was so good, it didn't matter how it was she's yelling and screaming," he says.

Tina Turner's loudest albums still have melody and something "people will walk away humming" — the very thing Cropper loved about  Stax records. "We were selling groove and all, rather than the music," Cropper says of his work with the MGs. "We don't care about the music. We just cared about melody and what's in the simplicity of the song."