BK The Great
Veteran
The Eminem Show was his most mature album. Encore could have been on the same path if he wasn't abusing pills.
I don't think he had to go full mainstream. To become a huge star again, yeah. But Relapse sold almost as much as Recovery did in its first week, and went #1 and went double platinum. Nothing about that album was made to cater to top 40 radio except for "We Made You" and "Crack a Bottle," and there are way poppier songs on Recovery than those.
If Eminem wanted the respect, and didn't care about what the critics thought, he would have put out Relapse 2. Went down the underground path working with people like Alchemist and Sid Roams regularly. Probably released a few more Bad Meets Evil projects, maybe even a Slaughterhouse album that was more hardcore than mainstream. In this timeline, Skylar Grey probably never gets her big break and ends up starving to death in the woods or wherever it is she came from.
Recovery brought Eminem back to the top and introduced him to a new generation of fans. It was a comeback endorsed by everybody. But I don't know if it was worth the next eleven years of content, honestly.
Em had the nerve to put Skylar Grey on a Mozzy feature
