The Eminem Show is the fourth
studio album by American rapper
Eminem, released in 2002. It was the best-selling album of 2002 in the United States, with sales of 7.6 million copies.
At the
Grammy Awards of 2003 it was nominated for
Album of the Year and became Eminem's third LP in four years to win the award for
Best Rap Album. The album debuted at number one on the US
Billboard 200 chart, selling approximately 284,000 units in its first week, which due to a premature release by retailers and street-date violations, counted only a day and a half of sales.
The album sold 1,322,000 copies the following week, where it registered a full week of sales.
The album topped the Billboard 200 for five consecutive weeks.
The album also spent five consecutive weeks at the top of the
UK Albums Chart.
It has gone on to sell over ten million copies.
On March 7, 2011, the album was certified ten-times-platinum by the
Recording Industry Association of America,
making it Eminem's first album to receive a
Diamond certification in the United States. In 2003, the album was ranked #317 on
Rolling Stone's list of
the 500 greatest albums of all time, and was later ranked at #84 on the same magazine's best albums of the 2000s decade. The album received critical praise by most music critics and is often debated as Eminem's most personal and best work. Eminem himself acknowledged during an interview with MTV that was recorded on May 25, 2002, that he felt that The Eminem Show was his "best record so far".
The Eminem Show was Eminem's first album to be mainly self-produced.