In the summer of 2000, a mentally disturbed, gleefully transgressive white guy became the most popular rapper of all time. Eminem was already a star before he released The Marshall Mathers LP, and he spent much of the album wrestling with the implications of that stardom, but that stardom had nothing on what was about to follow. The Marshall Mathers LP became something bigger than an album. It was a cultural phenomenon, a problem to be solved. The Marshall Mathers LP sold 2 million copies in its first week. Within a year, it was diamond. It’s still the biggest-selling rap album of all time. Its edgelord lyrics catalyzed dinner-table fights and Senate hearings. Nobody knew how to make sense of what happened with The Marshall Mathers LP, least of all Eminem himself. But he tried.