‘Kim’, ‘MMLP’s most famous and problematic song, depicts Em fictitiously killing his ex-wife over a raging backdrop that samples Led Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’. The album gave me an excuse to scream the angst out of my soul. I have to admit, though, that as a younger man I was more focused on how the album felt like an antidepressant, a type of audio medication, one that offered me a break from the volatile upbringing I was forced to endure as a 17-year-old living with an alcoholic mother and, before he was kicked out of the house, a sometimes violent father. It’s easy to see why ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ might be the most divisive album in music, and there’s no denying that some of its lyrical content is hurtful towards certain groups of people. Elsewhere, he makes jokes about the gay community (‘Bitch Please II’), and on ‘I’m Back’ he renders the shooters of the Columbine High School massacre as the real victims. In retrospect, there’s no justifying some of Eminem’s bile: one minute he’s poking fun at disabled actors (‘Who Knew’), and the next he’s branding girls as “nothing but a slut to me” (‘Kill You’). Spewing out shock and awe with unrelenting aggression at every turn, he left no-one out of his firing line. Eminem’s unapologetic temperament and twisted humour, which often came as he dipped in and out of his alter ego Slim Shady, saw him enter some very challenging territory across its 18-track offering. But while the album was wildly popular, it was also heavily criticised.