What Was Your First Reaction?

[biterph0bia]

My brother always played SSLP, so my reaction, being age 9, was that his voice was cool. Lol.

[xxTrigger1989xx]

My mum loooooves Beautiful lol

I think she likes LTWYL too because she listens to the radio and one day I was riding with her and it came on, and she didn't change it so I guess she liked it haha

[NicoleEM]

Well my first recollection of Em is about Spend some time and Crazy inlove(that's probably one of the reasons why i don't actually hate Encore).Then i saw the video of Loose it and i thought "this guy lost it",had no ideea was the same album back then.Then early this year i saw Beautiful and i was like WTF?Why haven't i heard it before,this is great,then started to pay more attention to Em and not only

[pHiLLip fARkLe]

I was still young, like 11, and I had NO IDEA what was happening in the Ken Keniff skit.

I was always quick to skip that so my parents wouldn't hear it.

i would always quick skip that so i wouldnt have to hear it.
that shit is gayer than all get out.

i remember i didnt hear the sslp when it first dropped but my boy lemme hear it one time and i was like what then he gave it to me, i listened all the way through and was like wow. then i heard marshall mathers lp was soon to drop so i bought that shit the day it came out... was flabbergasted.

then when eminem show came out it leaked like 2-3 weeks early, i downloaded it, and then i bought it when it hit shelves too. then i went to the anger management tour and he performed like half the songs on that album, and plus he performance premiered the full lose yourself track that was fuckin awesome.

then i was downloadin all them mixtapes shady records was droppin and he was still on fire
then encore dropped... and i was like,,, what the fuck? you gunna go out like that?
cuz that was supposedly his last album back then and shit and i was just mistified why he would come with 3 classics and then go out with a coaster. i think thats why alot of people hate/hated on encore cuz that was his "last" cd. but dont get me wrong tho there are some good ass songs on encore, and to this day i can still get ripped and laugh my ass off at that cd, some of that shit is hilarious to me.

then my laptop broke and i stopped fuckin with music for a long ass time, i was on probation for 3 years and shit after eminem quit rap... and i was just gettin off probation and my boy played that im having a relapse track promoting relapse and i went nuts... thats when i found this forum i think and i been followin all the shit since pretty much.

and i just typed that shit twice. thats how goddamn determined i am.

[Robbie G]

I first heard Mockingbird and started to love it. I'm pretty sure Encore was the first album I listened to and I loved it at the time. Not so much now haha....

Why would you love an album then, but not now? How has the music changed for you?

It was one of the first albums I had ever listened to. The beats were cool, Em was funny, and I enjoyed it. But I knew nothing about music or rap. Now looking back I see how bad songs like Big Weenie, Just Lose It, My First Single, and Rain Man are in comparison to the rest of his work. I realize that there's some great songs on Encore, but it's just not that great of an album. I enjoy listen to it everyone in awhile but it still just sucks as an album.

And I'm not jumping on the "Encore-Hate" bandwagon. I could give a shit about what people on this forum think, people don't affect what I listen to and I'm not going to say something just to impress some Stans on the internet.

Sorry if that came off as sounding angry, it wasn't my intention.

[xxTrigger1989xx]

I first heard Mockingbird and started to love it. I'm pretty sure Encore was the first album I listened to and I loved it at the time. Not so much now haha....

Why would you love an album then, but not now? How has the music changed for you?

It was one of the first albums I had ever listened to. The beats were cool, Em was funny, and I enjoyed it. But I knew nothing about music or rap. Now looking back I see how bad songs like Big Weenie, Just Lose It, My First Single, and Rain Man are in comparison to the rest of his work. I realize that there's some great songs on Encore, but it's just not that great of an album. I enjoy listen to it everyone in awhile but it still just sucks as an album.

And I'm not jumping on the "Encore-Hate" bandwagon. I could give a shit about what people on this forum think, people don't affect what I listen to and I'm not going to say something just to impress some Stans on the internet.

Sorry if that came off as sounding angry, it wasn't my intention.

I'm not saying that you were jumping on the Encore-hate bandwagon, I was talking about people in general lol. Sorry bro

[Robbie G]

It's all good man. Your right in saying that all too often people either love or hate an album by if it's popular or not. Shame.

[StoneyLodge]

I thought the dude sounded pretty cool, I oculd relate to him he was white lol.

[Slimm]

Not sure anymore, I know I heard 'My name is' but it didnt really do anything for me back then. Then when stan and the way I am dropped my parents bought me the MMLP. I remember liking only a couple tracks at first and finally loving every part of it. I think Kim was my fav lol.

It's weird though, in that time I don't even think we had internet in my house so whenever a new album was gonna drop my parents just gave me a heads up and I would check the same store every damn day. Good times.

[shadyboymez]

i heard My Name Is and Guilty Conscience around the same time (can't remember which i heard first) and i remember when i saw the My Name Is video, i was somehow surprised that the guy rapping was white lol. Guess that before i really listened to rap music, but that's definitely what got me into it.

But my overall first reaction to his music was anticipation for more, i thought he was something i could connect with right away, and i did.

[VenomBlackViper]

First time I heard him one of my friends played Lose Yourself on his Razr (remember those?) along with Candy Shop, Grillz by Nelly and some other shit, this was back in 06 when I was 12 and knew nothing about music, a while later I heard Mockingbird on a friends ipod like twice and liked it.
Then I heard Smack That and was hooked on that song forever, I knew all the lyrics even Eminems part which took a while to get. Another friend played Ass Like That and I thought it was funny even though I only remembered the first two lines of the song.
Sometime in 07 I was on youtube and I looked up & heard Lose Yourself(which I thought was too long and boring) and The Real Slim Shady(I thought he was retarded cuz of how he acted in the video & didn't understand what he was saying) and after that I layed off Eminem for a while.
Then in late 08 when I was heavy into The Game I heard rumors that Eminem dissed him on his new song, so I checked out I'm Having a Relapse were some people thought he was referring to Game cuz his real name is Jason and he went into a coma at 17, I thought the song was dope but still didn't really listen to lyrics at that point so I didn't fully get how dope the song was.
09 rolls around and they're playing Crack a Bottle & We Made You on the radio, I saw the We Made You vid & thought both the song & the vid sucked but I liked Crack a Bottle and downloaded it, around that time I also found You Aint Know and was bumping that for a while too and Eminems verse always stuck out to me on that.
Then during the summer in 09 someone showed me My Mom and I found the "this ain't dinner this is paint thinner" line hilarious for some reason so I decided to download Relapse. This is when around the time I was becoming a completely different person and somehow Eminem added to that, Insane, Bagpipes From Baghdad & Underground became my fucking top played songs for a long ass time I was so impressed by how he rapped about fucked up shit that no other rapper that I ever heard(at the time) had the balls to rap about and from there I started listening to more and more of his songs and the rest is history.

[dR3]

I remember hearing Without Me on TV back in 2002 (I was 10 then), and I really liked it, although obviously I didn't understand like 99% of the song.

Then New Year's came, and I wrote a letter to Santa (my parents, lol), asking for an Eminem CD as a present. I woke up on Jan 1st, and there it was, the 8 Mile Soundtrack CD (pirated, of course). I was playing it over and over and over...

A few months later, I saved some money and decided to go look for another Eminem CD, and ended up buying Eminem & Dre: Live at Brixton Academy. It happened to have Kill You on it, and that was my favorite Eminem song at the time. I didn't understand what he was saying, but I loved the vibe of it.

Good times...

[biterph0bia]

i remember when i saw the My Name Is video, i was somehow surprised that the guy rapping was white lol.

I didn't know he was white either lol.

[Cube23]

My parents always let my older brother listen to his music, so one day I heard him playing The Marshall Mathers LP and Criminal came on and it scared me half to death (I was about 10). I didn't get into him until The Eminem Show came out. I bought that, then went back and bought the first two albums. I bought Encore the day it came out and was severely disappointed, but never gave up hope. Still a huge fan, even though I have that same disappointment with Recovery that I did with Encore. Really enjoyed Relapse, though.. It's what I fell in love with in his music and he brought it back perfectly.

[N.W.A.]

Very first reaction, what the hell is Dre thinking. After 2001 and MMLP, he got my respect.