Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Eminem · S3 E6
1.76 Million
Copies sold in the first week. The fastest-selling solo album in US history at the time
May 23, 2000. The Marshall Mathers LP lands in record stores at midnight, and by Friday the music industry is recounting because the numbers do not make sense.
Eminem: Survival (official music video, 2013). "This is survival of the fittest, this is do or die." Over a decade after breaking every sales record in rap, Eminem distills the mentality that got him there. The video is all aggression and adrenaline, a man who treats every release like a war. That mentality started here, in May 2000, when a kid from 8 Mile outsold Britney Spears.
Survival: Eminem (2013)
The production, handled by DJ Khalil, is built around distorted guitars and a pounding, arena-sized drum pattern that sounds like it was designed for the last round of a fight. Eminem's flow alternates between rapid-fire triplets and long, sustained bars that feel like a fist slamming a table. Listen for how the beat cuts out completely before the final chorus. That silence is a flex: Eminem letting you know that even without the music, the words alone would be enough.
1.76 Million
“We knew it was going to be big. We did not know it was going to be this. When the numbers came in, Jimmy called me and just laughed. There was nothing else to say.”
— Dr. Dre, Rolling Stone, 2001
TAP TO REVEAL: What did the sales numbers actually mean for rap music?
Bitch Please II: Eminem ft. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit & Nate Dogg
The ultimate flex track on the best-selling rap album of the century. Eminem shares a mic with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, and Nate Dogg, and somehow his verse hits hardest. This is what 1.76 million first-week copies sounds like: the new king of rap standing next to the legends who built the genre, and nobody in the room questioning whether he belongs.
Bitch Please II, Eminem ft. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit & Nate Dogg (2000)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The new king of rap standing next to the legends who built the genre, and somehow his verse hits hardest.
Whose first-week sales record did The Marshall Mathers LP break?
The album is a commercial supernova, but the Grammy committee has a decision to make. The most controversial record in America is also the most popular, and an unlikely ally named Elton John is about to make the whole world watch.
0 XP earned this session