On May 26, 2017, ‘The Eminem Show’ turned 15 years old.
‘The Eminem Show’ hold a special place in my heart — it’s one of the first albums I ever owned, and it was certainly the first album I owned to bear the notorious PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker.
Like any white, suburban kid growing up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Eminem was my favorite rapper. And frankly, he was probably the only rapper I ever heard of for quite some time. And given that he was the only rapper I’d ever heard of, when 2002 rolled around, I just had to pick up his latest album, ‘The Eminem Show’. Filled with unabashed classics like ‘Without Me’ and ‘Cleaning Out My Closet’, to cult hit tracks like ‘Superman’ and ‘Sing For The Moment’, to this day ‘The Eminem Show’ is one of the best rap albums of all time.
To coincide with the album’s 15-year anniversary, limited edition and anniversary copies are being sold, and it looks as though Eminem teased a look at one of the new album’s inside covers on his Instagram.
But it wasn’t just any tease — it was a glimpse of what appears to be a handwritten note by Em himself, claiming that Jim Carrey and the movie The Truman Show were the main inspiration behind TES. He even goes as far as suggesting that Carrey ‘wrote the album’:
Naturally, when I read this, my head all but f*cking imploded. If there is one childhood icon I remember more fondly than Eminem, it’s Jim Carrey. Dude is a god damn legend. I can recite every line of Liar Liar just like I can recite every lyric of TES.
So as a massive fan as both of these artists, knowing that one helped inspire the other creates a whole new appreciation for both of them.