Eminem - Straight from the Lab (2003)
Originally just a bootleg, it was later released in Europe as an actual EP, but it STILL sounds like a bootleg because the audio quality is pretty shitty. These songs were made while Eminem was still running around in public with his dick out, trying to piss on Benzino, Canibus and most notably Ja Rule, who gets plenty of GENUINE death threats on this EP, so really, most of the EP feels like an angry letter towards these three people that Eminem never meant to send, but somehow got dropped in a mailbox by mistake by Dr. Dre when he was leaving Eminem's house the morning after. There are audio glitches to be found in the form of skips, little crackles, etc, and generally not that great to blare in the whip because of those little mistakes taking you out of vibing with the tracks, and even past that, the tracks don't sound that great due to being bootlegged as fuck. This all being said, even if the audio quality was better, I'm not sure if it'd really benefit this EP that much. Some of the songs are pretty fucking underwhelming by Eminem's standards.
I mean, come on, if someone tells you that "Monkey See Monkey Do" (which has a chorus with Eminem imitating 50 Cent's flow and voice) or "Bully" (with its annoying verses and hook) are on the same level as anything else he had been putting out, they're probably too absorbed by the fact that they're diss tracks to really judge them based off of what they actually are. The only tracks I really dig on here are the two brilliant tracks "We As Americans" and "Love You More" (which can be found in much better quality on deluxe versions of "Encore", hence their quality not affecting the rating of this EP), the hilarious diss track towards Canibus appropriately titled "Can-I-Bitch" after Canibus' debut album "Can-I-Bus", and the D12 (minus a few members) and Obie Trice cut "Doe Rae Me (Hailie's Revenge)", and while that seems like I like the majority of the EP: None of these songs really hit that high of heights! It's pretty obvious why they weren't included on studio albums and kinda just serve to fill some kind of "we need an underground gangsta release" void in Eminem's discography. You know, around the time that Eminem started dressing all street and shit right after signing 50 Cent. Jesus, that was embarrassing.
6/10
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