2002: #1 - "Lose Yourself"

Two other things Eminem did right in 2002 - very right, almost to the point of making them his own art form - were the use of unique meters in his rhymes, often syncopated with the beat; and in "Lose Yourself" what was perhaps the apex of "bending" the phonetic pronunciation of words in order to match many syllables in a rhyme scheme. It starts out: "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy / There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti / He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready" and never lets up.

Rakim and Big Daddy Kane started it all with polysyllabic rhymes on tracks like "Follow the Leader" and "Ain't No Half Steppin", and Nas and AZ took it to the next level on "Life's A Bitch", but here, Em takes those influences and carries rhyming not only to its next logical step but almost to the breaking point of what hip hop and language are capable of.

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2002: #6 - "8 Mile"

We never liked Eminem much.

It has nothing to do with his shock-jock antics; we could probably deal with all the homophobia and mysogyny - awful stuff of course, but nothing the world of pop music hadn't accepted before - if the songs had been any good.

Don't get us wrong - his rapping is always technically stellar and when he works with Dr. Dre the beats tend to be above-average, but he's got the vibe all wrong. The cartoon-rap goof stuff is neither fun nor funny, sort of an idiot's version of Weird Al parodying The Geto Boys, and the serious stuff just sucks. Seriously, the funniest Eminem song to date is "Stan", only because it's laughably bad.

Anyway, to make a long story short, he kind of got it all together on this 8 Mile soundtrack, where he blunted most of the dumb violent stuff, but still left enough grit to keep things slightly dangerous, and most of all, kept the beats crisp and the hooks catchy. What good are serious rap songs if no one wants to listen to them?