The Chronic Intro

Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg

An outlandish two-minute Gangsta Rap Manifesto that trumpets Dr. Dre’s re-emergence as the master of hip-hop’s sonic universe.

Method Man

Wu-Tang Clan

Amid guffawing and kibitzing, Method Man and Raekwon stoke and poke the Wu-Tang Clan’s mystique, setting a new standard for gory hip-hop banter.

Greatest Hits

Ludacris

Challenging Eminem for hip-hop’s King of Comic Interludes, the rapper and actor Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges gathers his Disturbing Tha Peace players for a tongue-in-cheek salute to “Random White People.”

Public Service Announcement (Interlude)

Jay-Z

Upping the ante on grandiosity, Jay-Z and the producer Just Blaze elevated the P.S.A. to a coronation anthem, stitching together samples of a Chicago garage band (Little Boy Blues), the comic Dick Gregory and a Dr. Dre production (D.O.C.’s “No One Can Do It Better”).

To Keep My Love Alive

Ella Fitzgerald

A beguiling stroll through a wife’s mariticidal spree, composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for a 1943 revival of “A Connecticut Yankee,” their musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel. Fitzgerald quips: “I tossed him off my balcony/To see if he could fly,” while also adeptly rhyming “patricide” with “mattress side.”

Sweat Loaf

Butthole Surfers

Punk’s hardcore absurdists goof on the Doors’ Oedipal hippie head trip “The End,” while wrestling the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf.” It’s a Satanic-panic spoof of golly-gee family values that goes from childlike wonder to a vile din.

Daddy

Korn

Eminem’s Anger Management Tour, which included Korn in a later iteration, capitalized on a kinship between nu metal and rap fan bases, plus the performers’ common subject matter. Like Eminem, the Korn singer Jonathan Davis endured childhood abuse; on “Daddy,” he plays a growling predator and his frantic, girl victim. Davis broke down sobbing in the studio while recording and you can hear him screaming through tears.

Down with the Sickness

Disturbed

The Disturbed frontman David Draiman grunts, moans and bark-chants the chorus of this rock-radio hit over a lashing rhythm section and gnashing guitars. But about three minutes in, he begins to speak intently and the music dials back. Lapsing into screams, he threatens revenge on an abusive maternal figure, which he said was not his mother.

Dance With the Devil

Immortal Technique

Over the plink of “Theme From Love Story,” the Peruvian-born, New York-raised rapper weaves a detailed but familiar hard-luck story of a poor kid who had a “Scarface fantasy stuck in his brain.” But as the story goes on, the drama gradually heightens. By the brutal conclusion, “Kill You” seems like a goofball lark by comparison.

Battle Cry

Angel Haze featuring Sia

Earlier, the Detroit/Brooklyn rapper poured out her agonizing experience of sexual abuse over the beat from Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet.” On “Battle Cry,” she faces down her trauma and spits with a hard-earned, triumphant grit.

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

The Beatles

This affectionate, imagistic Paul McCartney sketch with radiant steel guitar was likely inspired by the Beatles’ London superfans, a.k.a., the “Regulars,” who hung around Abbey Road studios and the group’s Apple Corps office. Later, they split into the genially devoted “Apple Scruffs” and reckless “Baddies,” but it’s unclear if either group was responsible for the actual break-in through a window of McCartney’s townhouse.

Dreaming of You

Selena

Selena Quintanilla Pérez, the Mexican-American “Queen of Tejano,” was working on her superstar-making, first English-language album when she was fatally shot by her former fan club president in 1995. This yearning pop ballad helped Selena’s posthumous album of the same name become her most commercially successful, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.

Hooker With a Penis

Tool

A sludge-thrash maelstrom in which the singer Maynard James Keenan ferociously excoriates a fan who accused Tool of “selling out.” Yes, things get graphic.

The Night I Fell in Love

Pet Shop Boys

In response to Eminem’s use of homophobic slurs on “The Marshall Mathers LP,” the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant (with Johnny Marr on guitar) imagines a lovely one-nighter between the rapper and a schoolboy fan: “He said we could be secret lovers just him and me/Then he joked, ‘Hey, man!/Your name isn’t Stan, is it?’”

Heathens

Twenty One Pilots

Tyler Joseph is a pop empath by trade, embracing those who have suffered because of society’s strictures as fellow “heathens.” Here, he also earnestly sing-raps on a “Suicide Squad” soundtrack song co-produced by Mike Elizondo, who co-wrote three songs on “The Marshall Mathers LP.”

Barbie Tingz

Nicki Minaj

An intern at a hip-hop blog heard this song, in which Nicki Minaj dissed copycat MCs, and tweeted a wish that the rapper would embrace more mature themes. Within hours, the “Barbz” (Minaj’s stans) had crashed the young woman’s phone with threats.

Every Record Label
Sucks _____

R.A. the Rugged Man

R.A. the Rugged Man, a.k.a. Crustified Dibbs, was a frightfully talented, unhinged New Yorker signed at age 17 to Jive. The label wouldn’t release his records or free him from his contract, hence this song. An underground mainstay since the early 2000s, he rivaled Eminem in both mic skills and misogynistic outbursts.

Welcome to Purple Haze

Cam’ron

Meet “Mizzle,” a delusional white crackhead and unlikely Dipset affiliate, who appeared throughout Cam’ron’s “Purple Haze” album, seemingly just to annoy critics.

Gloomy Sunday

Billie Holiday

A gorgeously mordant, spectral lament that emerged in 1933 in either Paris or Budapest by one or two Hungarian Jews, “Gloomy Sunday” became an omnipresent rain cloud drifting across Europe. No evidence exists that the song inspired a spate of suicides — widely rumored at the time — but Holiday’s earnest version of a Tin Pan Alley translation was banned by the BBC in the early 1940s because it was deemed too somber for wartime. The song’s primary writer, Rezso Seress, committed suicide in 1968.

Helter Skelter

Beatles

Charles Manson claimed that songs on the Beatles’ White Album (most notably, “Helter Skelter”) subliminally told him to go on a killing spree and start a race war.

1-800-Suicide

Gravediggaz

This surprisingly bouncy track from the masters of horrorcore rap — concocted by Prince Paul from samples of Iron Butterfly and Booker T. & the M.G.’s — shows what might happen if a suicide hotline was manned by three irreverent MCs.

The Nobodies

Marilyn Manson

Titled after a quote from Mark David Chapman — the obsessive fan who killed John Lennon — this terse rallying cry was recorded after Manson’s music was widely blamed for the mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School. Manson’s band suspended touring, and a group of U.S. senators requested that his label (Interscope) halt production of “music that glorifies violence.” As label mates, Eminem and Manson became allies under siege, collaborating on a rock remix of “The Way I Am.”

Pumped Up Kicks

Foster the People

One of the songs of the summer in 2011, the deceptively breezy “Pumped Up Kicks” is sung from the point of view of a “psychotic kid” carrying his daddy’s gun. The singer-songwriter Mark Foster said he wanted to address the rampant gun violence among isolated, alienated American kids; in fact, the cousin of the band’s bassist was a Columbine survivor.

Murder on My Mind

YNW Melly

Rap artists have frequently battled the idea that their lyrics are autobiographical. Last February, the Florida dynamo YNW Melly was indicted on two first-degree murder charges and police seized on the lyrics and video of his hit “Murder on My Mind.” The song’s video, which has almost 350 million views, showed Melly playing with a boa constrictor, waving automatic weapons and rapping, “Bitch, I’m a murderer.”

Near the Beginning

Albert Brooks

An insider’s mockumentary of the music business, Brooks’s album “A Star Is Bought” follows the comedian’s obsession with scoring a Top 40 hit that would appeal to every radio demographic.

Jimmy Iovine

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ab-Soul

The rare white rapper to achieve post-Eminem pop success, Macklemore rhymed about being so desperate to get signed that he broke into the office of the Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine (who signed Eminem). But the song’s “Iovine” turned out to be a scammer: “You’re one hell of a band, we think you’re destined for greatness … Now, I’m sorry, I’ve had a long day, remind me now what your name is?”

Have a Cigar

Pink Floyd

Under pressure for a follow-up album to the blockbuster “Dark Side of the Moon,” the Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters wrote this epic record-company diatribe. A lumbering synth dirge leads into a series of creepy, corporate clichés, voiced with a pained earthiness by the guest vocalist Roy Harper.

The Nigga Ya Love to Hate

Ice Cube

Ditching Ruthless Records and N.W.A. (including Dr. Dre), Ice Cube dialed up Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad for his solo debut, “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,” an act of war fueled by righteous testosterone. Here, he snarls like Eminem’s big brother.

Paparazzi

Xzibit

Even on his debut single — a full-blown dismantling of his peers who sacrificed their truth for fame — this Detroit-born, West Coast-bred rapper and longtime Eminem collaborator has the raspy authority of a guy giving you advice while holding a grenade.

Y’all Want a Single

Korn

Korn’s label expressed its desire for a single toward the end of the recording process, and the band reacted poorly. The howled chorus was its blunt reply.

This Is Our Song

Colt Ford featuring Danny Boone

Eminem’s scrappy, never-quit attitude appealed to artists across genres. Taylor Swift once covered “Lose Yourself” in concert and so did Colt Ford, a burly hick-hop songwriter who helped write Jason Aldean’s smash “Dirt Road Anthem.” Here, Ford promises not to sell his soul to be a star.

For Sale? — Interlude

Kendrick Lamar

Once testifying that “The Marshall Mathers LP” changed his life, Lamar cited Eminem’s clarity, timing, wordplay and technical facility. But by this track from “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the student had become the teacher. Reflecting his internal dialogue — with and about “Lucy,” a.k.a. Lucifer, a.k.a. the temptations of success — he changes his voice from verse to chorus, switching from rapping to speaking, all while weaving and skipping through flows and cadences to convey his shifting, conflicted moods.

Riiiot!

Chino XL featuring Ras Kass

Signed when he was a teenager living in New Jersey by Rick Rubin, this Puerto Rican battle-rap prodigy rolled out of bed spouting outrageously sinister punch lines. His unrelenting style was dense with brain-melting references and verbal acrobatics, delivered in a laser-precise, high-pitched sneer. Sound familiar?

Hit ’Em Up

2Pac featuring the Outlawz

A response to the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Who Shot Ya?,” which was perceived as a 2Pac diss, “Hit ’Em Up” was a bombshell in the East Coast/West Coast hostilities that ended in the deaths of those two rappers. Naming names and threatening to end careers and lives, it’s a lyrical blood bath. One can imagine a young Eminem studying it like a sacred text.

One Week

Barenaked Ladies

To quote Ice Cube, “every Tom, Dick and Hank” white kid wanted to rhyme by the late 1990s. Enter these Canadian rock goofballs-next-door.

How to Rob

50 Cent featuring the Madd Rapper

An even cheekier introduction than “My Name Is,” “How to Rob” was 50’s major-label debut single, before he was shot nine times and joined forces with Eminem and Dr. Dre. The furor over the song’s slander of countless rap and R&B acts emboldened him to start beefs repeatedly to extend his relevance throughout a long career.

Obsessed

Mariah Carey

After Eminem and Mariah Carey discussed a collaboration in 2001, Eminem implied that they had been in a relationship (which the singer denied). They continued exchanging sporadic barbs, with Eminem the aggressor, until “Obsessed.” It was a killshot, an airy R&B hair flip about a stan (Eminem), played in the video by a hoodie-wearing, goateed Carey.

Yonkers

Tyler, the Creator

Tyler called himself “the reincarnation of ’98 Eminem” on his solo debut mixtape, and he basically proved it with the lead single from his first studio album. On the very Eminem-esque “Yonkers,” he disses rock stars, rappers, therapists and Jesus, before referencing school shootings, firing off homophobic slurs and claiming he isn’t gay.

Witching Hour

Venom

“Remember Me?” channeled the cartoonishly evil attitude of metal-influenced horrorcore rap and these maniacally Satan-hailing English guitar grinders laid the groundwork.

Psycho

Ganksta N-I-P

Eminem was protested as if he were the first MC to release indiscriminately grisly rap music. But there were plenty of ’90s rappers paving the way, most visibly the Rick Rubin-championed Geto Boys, whose 1991 “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” was a haunting asylum of bluesy trauma. Ganksta N-I-P, their Rap-a-Lot label mate, pushed even deeper into the darkness, but always with a flair for the absurd.

Devil’s Son

Big L

A rap virtuoso with an unmistakably searing voice, Harlem’s Big L released his debut album for a seemingly mystified Columbia in 1995. They subsequently dropped him and he never found a label or producer who fully capitalized on his gift before he was fatally shot in ’99. You can hear his furiously blinding bars on freestyles and compilations, but this track, a macabre dream sequence, singes the mic.

Agent Orange

Cage

After an abusive upbringing, the white New York rapper Cage became an addict and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. He briefly signed with Columbia, then recorded the astonishing indie 12-inch “Radiohead” backed with “Agent Orange,” a witty yet terrifying depiction of his roiling mental state, inspired by both “A Clockwork Orange” and his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. When Cage first heard the “Slim Shady EP,” he believed Eminem had stolen his entire identity.

Beautiful Music for
You to Die To

Necro

Brooklyn’s Necro, who produced Cage’s “Agent Orange,” has been a white-rap nexus for 20-plus years. His brother was Ill Bill, whose group Non Phixion were formed by Third Bass’ MC Serch and were later courted by Paul Rosenberg. Meanwhile, Necro created his own horrorcore subgenre, “death rap.”

Kill Yourself (Part III)

Suicideboys

The spookhouse emo version of horrorcore propagated by two Louisiana survivors of the SoundCloud wars. Here, Ruby Da Cherry is suicidally depressed because of a breakup with his girlfriend, Scrim is suicidally depressed because of his addiction to opiates and they’re both mad that people think they use suicide as a gimmick.

Shave ’Em Dry

Lucille Bogan

Lucille Bogan, a.k.a. Bessie Jackson, took this song, most notably recorded by the blues boss Ma Rainey, and cut two versions with the guitarist Josh White. The second, far more explicit, would make even Eminem blush.

Mean Talking Blues

Woody Guthrie

Guthrie channeled an itinerant, God-hating, union-scab narrator who wished everybody the worst — trainwrecks, famine, tight shoes, disease, tarantulas, teeth falling out and brains boiled in turpentine. In short, he was a criminal, as Eminem would say of himself at the album's end.

That’s Life

Killer Mike

Before Run the Jewels, Killer Mike opened up this earth-scorching blast furnace of righteous plain speak (with Sinatra on the chorus), by calling out a stretch Hummer full of celebrity hypocrites, their enablers and President George W. Bush.

Really Be (Smokin’ N Drinkin’)

YG featuring Kendrick Lamar

Wired, agitated, worried about money, haunted by death, cranking 2Pac, spilling his guts and alcohol on the pavement, lashing out at women, YG finally cries, “Oh Lord, where is the world today?!” Lamar is in a spiral of his own, having flashbacks about being on welfare, anxious to get paid and devastated by mourning so many friends. Much like Eminem’s rhymes on “The Marshall Mathers LP,” the duo’s flows are precisely attuned to the tenor of their moods.

Faggots

Eddie Murphy

No two avowedly straight male entertainers have been more obsessed with other men eyeballing their buttocks than Eddie Murphy and Eminem. The first track on Murphy’s debut album is about how it would be embarrassing if a homosexual man beat you up for catcalling him a homophobic slur. That’s it, that’s the joke.

Girls

Beastie Boys

The Beastie Boys, Eminem’s biggest inspiration, had their own early problems with homophobia. On “Girls” from “Licensed to Ill,” Ad-Rock rapped, “I asked her out, she said, ‘No way!’/I should’ve probably guessed her gay.”

Wut

Le1f

An iconoclastic Brooklyn rapper/producer, Le1f (who uses gender-neutral pronouns) showcases their slinky charisma and brash wordplay on this breakout single that percolated with percussive finger snaps and honking synth bursts.

Villuminati

J. Cole

Opening his second studio album, J. Cole plunges back into his ongoing inner conflict about selling out, but in the first verse, he also tries to address homophobia by toying with both sides. He spits a few hateful bars, crudely admits that someone else’s sexuality isn’t his business, then exits, saying, “Just a little joke to show how homophobic you are,” which is too cute by half, as well as incoherent.

High School Never Ends

Mykki Blanco featuring Woodkid

In this short film, Mykki Blanco gives a moving, violently theatrical performance that explores the dangers of same-sex love across jagged cultural and political divides.

Eulogy

Richard Pryor

Pryor played the disheveled, foul-mouthed officiant of a man’s funeral in this brief comic gem. The rough language was intended to heighten the chaos of the unruly characters and less-than-blessed situation.

I Don’t Die

Joyner Lucas & Chris Brown

A fast-rapping Eminem acolyte, Joyner Lucas joined his mentor to record an ill-conceived track called “What If I Was Gay?” which leaked but was never released. Here, Lucas joins Chris Brown for a fragile masculinity summit.

Dope Head Blues

Victoria Spivey

Spivey, a blues singer-songwriter and label owner, moans for a sniff, brags about her money bags, her plane and how the president and the Prince of Wales were barking around her trail. The guitar virtuoso Lonnie Johnson provides accompaniment.

Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?

Harry “The Hipster” Gibson

A twitchy, jive-talking, white pre-rock ’n’ roll raconteur, Gibson had a knack for writing offbeat songs, often about drugs, chased by his revved-up boogie-woogie piano. This one, made semifamous by Dr. Demento in the 1970s, was rejected by radio stations at the time.

Cokane in My Brain

Dillinger

Taking bits from a Philly Soul record, Rev. Gary Davis’ “Cocaine Blues” and a children’s mnemonic, the Jamaican toaster/proto-rapper Dillinger scored an international hit with his brooding, jittery, reggae-funk echo of a brain-burning cocaine comedown.

Drugs

Anderson .Paak

With electronic blips stippling an 808 trap beat, Anderson .Paak rapturously raps and sings about a loveless relationship based only on sex, drugs and lots more drugs.

Hate the Real Me

Future

No two rappers seem more dissimilar than Eminem and Future, Atlanta’s zonked trap-rap avatar. But cushioned by the producer Zaytoven’s twinkling low-lit ambience, gradually surging synths and a muted horn fanfare, Future leans into his regret and vulnerability like never before.

Psycho

Eddie Noack

After a conversation about mass murderers, particularly Richard Speck, the country great Leon Payne sat down and wrote “Psycho” from the point of view of a man calmly revealing his madness to his mother. The honky-tonk singer Noack’s calm, genial voice only added to the creepy chill.

Rated R

Redman

Eminem thinks highly of Redman’s rapping (he ranked him No. 1, above Jay-Z, 2Pac and Biggie, on the 2002 track “Till I Collapse.”) And though the Newark MC has his share of colorful nicknames — Funk Doctor Spock, the Funkadelic Devil — he’s mostly just a grimy dude riffing wildly on horror movies and nodding darkly to his childhood.

The _______ Will Never Die

Esham

Like Cypress Hill holed up in hell, the Detroit hip-hop lifer Esham outlined Eminem’s act, but as a black underground rapper, 10 years earlier. Here, he stomps through a lo-fi wasteland littered with Dr. Dre’s spare parts, blustering matter-of-factly about burning down churches and looking for cops and Klan members to shoot.

I’m God

Lil B

Like Eminem, Lil B is never afraid to say anything, but he allows more light into the darkness. Encased in a rainbow cloud of angelic swoons (from the producer Clams Casino), Lil B first proclaims himself the “Based God” and free-associates his prophecy.

Faneto

Chief Keef

“Amityville” wants to convey Detroit’s deadly chaos to the point that Eminem screams it was also like “Hamburger Hill.” “Faneto,” released just before Chicago’s Chief Keef split with Interscope, feels like watching a video on your iPhone of a sketchy car pulling up to your house.

I’m Bad

LL Cool J

The story goes that Eminem, 15, met his wife Kim, 13, as he was rapping this alpha-male masterpiece of lyrical potency, shirtless, standing on a table. It’s also reminiscent of the time when he first got into hip-hop via his Uncle Ronnie (who committed suicide four years after “I’m Bad” was released).

My _____

Mickey Avalon featuring Andre Legacy and Dirt Nasty

A sex worker, drug dealer and addict, Avalon joined with the MTV V.J. Simon Rex, a.k.a. Dirt Nasty, and childhood friend Andre Legacy to try and make music. Like a crew of lobotomized Eminems, these white Hollywood fiends were very 2006.

A-Z Blues

Blind Willie McTell and Curley Weaver

The Atlanta-based bluesman Blind Willie McTell recorded this unspeakably violent song — reportedly first performed in the 1920s by the black vaudeville act Butterbeans and Susie — with his own rewritten lyrics. After a woman badly mistreats the narrator, he decides to carve the entire alphabet into her body with a razor.

Cocaine Blues

Johnny Cash

When discussing violence in rap lyrics and the difference between art and reality, people have often cited the Johnny Cash lyric “shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” in the song “Folsom Prison Blues.” But it’s rarely mentioned that in “Cocaine Blues” (also recorded at California’s Folsom Prison), he sang that he shot a “bad bitch” down while high on coke.

Ever So Clear

Bushwick Bill

Buoyed by a bright, vibrant soul sample, the Geto Boys’ Bushwick Bill tells this gruesome, mesmerizing story — from birth to being shunned over his dwarfism to success to the night he was shot in the eye. Rushed to the hospital, he survives surgery and has his picture taken for a Geto Boys album cover.

Love Is Blind

Eve

Against Swizz Beatz’s acoustic guitar-tinged backdrop, Eve calls out a friend’s abuser, but the victim still ends up in a hospital bed taking her last breath. In response, Eve barks, “I don’t even know you and I want you dead.” Then she gets her gun.

Goodbye Earl

Dixie Chicks

There’s never been a more high-spirited murder song than the Dixie Chicks’ banjo-flecked country-rocker about an abusive husband who knocks his wife into the I.C.U. and subsequently pays the ultimate price.

Man Down

Rihanna

Rihanna is no stranger to revenge songs, and this rumbling dancehall-pop jam decorated with tinkly keyboards opens bluntly: “I didn’t mean to end his life/I know it wasn’t right.”

Hearteater

XXXTentacion

Posthumously released as an official single, this brief, mid-tempo love lament features the Florida rapper singing over acoustic-guitar strums. In the video, his girlfriend appears naked and drenched in blood, ripping at the flesh of a body lying in a forest. In 2016, she accused XXXTentacion of domestic battery and false imprisonment; the charges were dropped after his death in 2018.

The Dirty Dozen

Jelly Roll Morton

Recorded for a Library of Congress oral history project by Alan Lomax, Morton launches into an assault of invective that only lightens up for the refrain: “Yo mammy don’t wear no drawers.”

Saturday Night

Schoolly D

Calm, cool and exceedingly stoned, Schoolly D narrates this debauched fairy tale about a teenage night on the prowl amid a cacophony of D.J. scratches and breakbeats crashing into drum-machine kicks, snares and cowbell. Schoolly’s off-handed slurs are delivered with a winking sneer.

Smack My Bitch Up

The Prodigy

The pinnacle of ’90s rave rebellion gone ka-ching. The techno-punk jester Keith Flint growls valiantly, and the D.J./producer Liam Howlett patches together stadium-rock breakbeats, sampling a 1988 Ultramagnetic MCs record for the chorus (and offending title phrase). Banned and protested, the group was accused of promoting violence against women; Howlett shrugged, saying anyone who believed that was “brainless.”

Monster

Kanye West featuring Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Jay-Z and Bon Iver

Mr. West gets in touch with his Slim Shady on this ghoulishly stagy posse cut from “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” He carps about the gossip mill and boorishly rhymes “sarcophagus” with “esophagus,” then hands it off to a brilliantly unhinged Nicki Minaj, who raps, “First things first/I’ll eat your brains.” West’s parting shot — “I crossed the line/I let God decide” — is very Shady.

Whoa

Earl Sweatshirt featuring Tyler, the Creator

Odd Future’s Earl Sweatshirt burst on the scene as a black internet teen’s fish-eye lens on the Beastie Boys and Eminem at their most zany.

Wasted

Juice WRLD featuring Lil Uzi Vert

The rapper-singer Juice WRLD spoke openly about Eminem’s influence on his emo-saturated music, freeing him to rap about his struggles with addiction, women and violence, while drawing in listeners with comically cutting pop-culture allusions. Here, he’s tortured by a codependent, drug-riddled relationship with a girlfriend.

Butcher Pete (Pt. 1 and 2)

Roy Brown

Known for his early rock ’n’ roll banger “Good Rockin’ Tonight” — though Elvis’ version stole his place in history — Brown also put his stamp on this lunatic yarn. “Butcher Pete” has a long, sharp knife and he’s choppin’ up meat for miles around; but it soon becomes clear that ol’ Pete was a lunatic gigolo who’s choppin’ up something else, including a 92-year-old woman and his cellmate in jail.

One in a Million

Guns N’ Roses

Axl Rose packs one of Guns N’ Roses’ more memorable melodies with his knee-jerk, teenage reactions to life as a hitchhiker and newcomer to Los Angeles. That means the small-town Indiana white kid takes out his frustrations while slinging racial and homophobic slurs. (He has said he was playing a character.)

Live by Yo Rep

Three 6 Mafia

An essential horrorcore text, “Live By Yo Rep” takes about 45 seconds to reveal its Slim Shady lineage. After a reporter asks what they would do if somebody tried to copy their style, Lord Infamous raps that he would take thousands of razor blades and press them into the offender’s flesh. It gets more evil from there.

M. Shepard

Thursday

In the mid- to late ’90s, as L.G.B.T.Q. life became more a part of mainstream culture, homophobia lashed back, most publicly in the killings of Gianni Versace and the college student Matthew Shepard. In the wake of all that, the emo-screamo pioneers Thursday go all in on “M. Shepard,” a thrashing, moody barrage of guitars with the singer Geoff Rickly shuddering at how frightening and complex it is for young people to come out when so many want them dead.

Tightrope

Brother Ali

On this soulful story-song, the Minnesota rapper Brother Ali empathetically connects three struggling characters — a Somalian refugee, a child of divorce and a boy who is afraid to come out as gay. There’s no resolution, just Brother Ali plainly stating the facts: “It’s a cold world, y’all, shame on us.”

Heavy Cross

Gossip

Facetiously, Gossip’s Beth Ditto might be Eminem’s worst nightmare, a lesbian loudmouth who grew up dirt poor in Arkansas, left home at 13 and became an international star by being herself. “Heavy Cross” is a squalling punk-funk expressway to your heart with Ditto’s bluesy wail teasing and roaring.