No critic has had a greater impact on the world of music writing than Robert Christgau. There's plenty of criticisms that could be aimed at the writer as a result, such as that his cult of personality has created an indefatigable wave of conformity among all the music writers that follow in his wake (not his fault) or his narcissistic adoption of the "Dean of American Rock Critics" nickname. Still there's no denying that he's got talent with the pen and the ear, having successfully introduced readers to hundreds of acts through the years and adopting performers far before many of his contemporaries.
One such performer that Christgau has championed, even before it was hip, was Eminem. He couldn't have realized when he first wrote about Slim Shady that the act would become the most relevant performer of the 21st Century thus far, but he knew an earthmover when he heard one. To mark the tenth anniversary of the rapper's Encore, we look back at Christgau's thoughts on Em's albums, listed from worst to best (and most are pretty well received).
Relapse (2009) B-
Indeed, only one of Eminem's albums was rated poorly by Christgau, although even the "B-" it received is only a bad score in relation to the praise that the essayist has heaped upon the emcee over the years. "For the first time in his career Eminem settles for sensationalism straight up, and, worse still, makes you wonder whether he ever truly knew the difference," he wrote about Eminem's return to his Detroit horrorcore origins. No one complained, least of which Eminem, who dissed his own album on the follow-up.
The Slim Shady LP (1999) A-
Christgau wasn't so good as to catch Eminem on his true debut, Infinite, but he did jump on the bandwagon right off when he got a hold of The Slim Shady LP. "You have to love the way he slips in sotto voce asides from innocent bystanders," he wrote. "He shows more comic genius than any pop musician since--Loudon Wainwright III?" Although everyone now claims to have been onboard since day one, many of the first reviews for Slim Shady more-or-less praised it as a guilty pleasure versus a lyrical triumph. Christgau went right to the meat.
Fucking Yzarc (2000) A-
If there was ever any question whether Christgau was guiding the conversation or merely writing about whatever the kids were discussing that day, his review of Fucking Yzarc should set the record straight. Just the review's mere existence. Eminem was the name on everyone's tongue following the success of the The Marshall Mathers LP and yet Christgau was one of the few mainstream critics who went out of his way to find this bootleg released during 2000. Living in an era where every mixtape from every schlub emcee earns a headline, the Dean deserves kudos for digging a little deeper.
The Eminem Show (2002) A-
Christgau's review for the highly-anticipated follow-up to Marshall Mathers is handled in our favorite style: Isolating just one song from the album and using it as a tool to sum up the entire package. Unfortunately that song isn't our personal favorite from the performer ("White America") but his choice of "My Dad's Gone Crazy" perhaps works better than our own suggestion. "But it's no coincidence that the brashest track on the album sonically is also the deepest thematically," he notes. "The one where he comes out and explains his aesthetic in terms only a member of Congress or daily rock critic could fail to understand." There is a hint of classic Christgau snideness in the last clause.
Recovery (2010) A-
Eminem may have taken his only lumps from Christgau in 2009's Relapse but he seemed eager to make it up (for his own sake of course, not the critic's). "The comeback is for Eminem, not Slim Shady--and for Marshall at his most martial," writes the tastemaker, proving that he himself knows a little something about wordplay.
The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) A
It doesn't say much that Christgau gave Eminem's crowning achievement the rare perfect score-most critics did that year (and if they didn't, their opinions quickly changed in follow-up retrospectives...oddly enough). "Unless you hope to convince the platinum hordes that you live on Mars, there's even less point moralizing about this one than there was with the last," he serves up as a giant told-ya-so to those who nervously praised Slim Shady. "Disable your prejudgment button and you'll hear a work of art whose immense entertainment value in no way compromises its intimations of a pathology that's both personal and political."
Encore (2004) A
More surprising than his high praise of Marshall Mathers was the perfect score Christgau assigned to Encore when it dropped a decade ago. It's interesting that most of this review ends up sounding like a diss to the performer—"Except to report tediously that he sounds bored and complain ad infinitum that he's obsessed with the love of his life (plus, right, the beats are no good" reads one stinger—the critic somehow comes to the conclusion that the album's earned an "A" ranking. Part of his conclusion rests in his unusual decision to consider the bonus tracks on the deluxe extra disc, a region most critics tend to discount as part of the work in question.
