Eminem's first album Infinite turns 30: the record that sold 'maybe 70 copies' and gave him the name Slim
Eminem released Infinite, his first album, on 12 November 1996 through the Bass Brothers' small Detroit label. By his own account it sold maybe 70 copies; the flop pushed him toward Slim Shady, a name he took from the album's own co-producer credit.
By Riffiter
Thirty years ago, on 12 November 1996, Eminem released his first album, Infinite. It came out on cassette and vinyl through a small Detroit label, and by his own count it went almost nowhere. "It sold maybe 70 copies," he wrote in his 2008 book The Way I Am, as quoted by The Guardian.
A basement record
Infinite was recorded between December 1995 and June 1996 in the basement studio of the Bass Brothers, Mark and Jeff Bass, who also released it on their label, Web Entertainment. The cassette insert gives the label's address as 430 W. Eight Mile Rd. in Ferndale. Denaun Porter (Mr. Porter) produced most of the record, with the Bass Brothers as executive producers.
At the time Marshall Mathers was rapping at Detroit open mics. In the 2016 documentary Partners in Rhyme: The True Story of Infinite, he names the one that mattered most: the Hip Hop Shop, "the most infamous open mic spot there was."
Nobody bought it
Selling the album was the hard part. "I couldn't get stores to take product on consignment. Even I couldn't give product away," one of the people behind the label says in the same documentary. Accounts of the final number differ: Eminem's own figure is about 70, Rolling Stone later put it at less than a few hundred, and the size of the pressing is disputed too. Copies were reportedly sold out of a car around Detroit.
The reviews that did come were about who he sounded like. "I got feedback that I sounded a lot like Nas and AZ," Eminem told Vanity Fair in 2004, a quote The Guardian reprinted in 2009.
The name in the credits
What came next was a change of attitude. In the same Vanity Fair interview he said he started taking the criticism and throwing it back in his music: "I reached a point where I stopped caring what people thought about me. And the second I stopped caring, people started caring about me."
He also needed a new name, and it was already printed on Infinite. The cassette insert lists the album as "Co-Produced by 'Slim'." That was Kevin Wilder, who told Rolling Stone in 2016 (as DJBooth reported) that Eminem walked into the studio and told him he was taking the name. The character became Slim Shady.
From the Rap Olympics to Dr. Dre
In 1997 the Bass Brothers put out the Slim Shady EP, and Eminem flew to Los Angeles for the Rap Olympics battle and finished second. Interscope staff there got hold of the EP, it reached Jimmy Iovine, and Iovine played it for Dr. Dre. Dre signed him to Aftermath.
His first single with Dre, "My Name Is," opened on a fake TV show called The Slim Shady Show, "starring Marshall Mathers." The Slim Shady LP followed on 23 February 1999.
Thirty years later
Infinite has never been reissued in full on streaming services. Only its title track turned up on Spotify, about twenty years after release, and the album itself is still a collector's item.
On Riffiter, The Slim Shady LP has 321 ratings. Infinite, the album that started it, has barely been rated. You can rate both.