I was sitting on a bus-stop bench somewhere in Lower Manhattan, head spinning, trying to process everything I’d just heard. When I first heard that line about Tower Records, it didn’t quite take. Before long, The Marshall Mathers LP had become the best-selling rap album of all time, a title that it still holds today. Dre protege Snoop Dogg, rap’s previous first-week sales champ, had managed with 1993’s Doggystyle. The Marshall Mathers LP sold nearly 2 million copies in its first week - more than twice as much as the Marshall Mathers LP guest and previous Dr. To listen to it is to feel bad, even when you’re thrilled.

The Marshall Mathers LP is 77 straight minutes of death threats, virulent homophobia, ain’t-I-a-stinker edgelord gags, language-drunk wordplay, and psycho-sexual rage-venting. Steve Berman, of course, did sell this shit. I can’t sell this shit!” (I don’t remember any lyrics about big-screen TVs or 40s on Dre’s 2001, but nevermind.) You’re rapping about homosexuals and Vicodin. “He’s rapping about big-screen TVs, blunts, 40s, and bitches. “Do you know why Dre’s record was so successful?,” Berman asks. In that skit, Eminem’s visiting his label’s corporate offices, and Berman is telling him everything that’s wrong with the new album that he’s just delivered. Do you know how it feels to be told to shove a record up your ass?” That’s Steve Berman, real-life circa-2000 president of sales at Interscope, talking to Eminem on “Steve Berman,” one of the skits from The Marshall Mathers LP. “Tower Records told me to shove this record up my ass.

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