When it comes to Eminem’s career, it’s easy to stop at the numbers. Over 220 million records sold. Ten No. 1 albums. Two RIAA diamond-certified albums and another diamond hits compilation. By most accounts he is the best-selling rapper of all time. If you started listening to him in the 2010s or the 2020s, that may come as a surprise, but if you were there for the Shady/Aftermath onslaught of the turn of the millennium, you know how Marshall Bruce Mathers III came to dominate rap.
A Detroit native, Eminem made his name on the local independent circuit joining any and every open mic before being discovered on the radio by two local producers, Mark and Jeff Bass. The Bass Brothers signed Em to their label and immediately got to work releasing his debut album Infinite in 1996, which had Em sounding like a mix between AZ and Masta Ace and didn’t make much noise. The three regrouped and Eminem came up with an alter ego that inspired the creation and release of The Slim Shady EP a year later. It was that EP that caught the attention of Jimmy Iovine, then the head of Interscope, and the legendary West Coast hip-hop pioneer Dr. Dre.
A short while later, Eminem signed to Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, and re-released the Slim Shady EP as a full-length with some new production with Dre — and, well, the rest is history. That album turned Eminem’s world upside down and made him one of the biggest stars in the world. His next album, The Marshall Mathers LP, released in 2000, would break all sorts of sales records and solidify his spot as one of the best rappers to ever hold a microphone.
Nearly a quarter-century, 10 albums, and many controversies later, Eminem is still going strong. His latest album The Death of Slim Shady (Coupe de Grace), debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200 and received some of the best reviews he’s gotten in many years. But how does it stack up with his other solo albums? To answer that question, we went back and a revisited all his projects and ranked them from worst to best. See how we stack them up below.
