This album was an embarrassingly large part of me getting in to Hip Hop. It wasn’t my first album, that was The Eminem Show. But I was a little moody for about a year there and the edgy teen I was really identified with a lot of the depression and anger on the album. I still like Eminem now, but I mostly listen to his goofier songs (Real Slim Shady, Without Me, Lock it Up) or anything featuring Swifty McVay. Giving it a re-listen yesterday night I still really liked it, but it is weird to listen to it and not identify with it at all. And some of the lyrics made me kind of uncomfortable knowing I used to rap along with this.

Favorite songs back in the day would have been Kill You, The Way I Am and Kim. Because I was a vaguely poor teenager and I was mad about it. Looking back at it now though, I found myself really getting in to pretty much the whole album, just not identifying with any of it.

The only songs I really didn’t enjoy now are Amityville and Kim. Amityville has Bizarre so we all know what went wrong there. Kim is just…too mad. I don’t know why I loved that song so much as a kid, because I had a decent childhood, but looking at it now it is weird. It kind of gives me some insight on my kids I think, seeing the sort of stuff I felt “reflected me” at that age. Hormones man.

As a poor white kid in a nowhere PNW town, this album was on constant rotation. I grew up on and still am primarily an extreme metal listener but this record hit just right at 19.

On my way to the shitty mill in the morning? Kill You. Getting high after my shift? Criminal. Drinking excessively with the miscreants I grew up with on our nights off? Drug Ballad.

I gave it a full relisten in a work trip a few months back and… man I still love the shit outta it but I can see it’s limits 20 some odd years later.

That Criminal joint.