What If Encore Never Leaked?

Posted • in music

Tagged: albums

What’s up, Internet? Eminem’s fifth album Encore turned 20 this week. He’d just come off The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show, arguably one of the top three run streaks in hip hop.

That’s not counting D12’s Devil’s Night or the 8 Mile soundtrack, which weren’t solo albums, but he was the driving force and executive producer behind both, and let’s be honest, he carried Devil’s Night.

Encore was pegged to be the triumphant follow up. Then the drugs and the leaks got in the way, the album landed the way it landed, and this is the point where people started talking about how Em had fallen off. These are my thoughts 20 years later.

If I could go back in time and change one thing, I would head back to Eminem’s house in 2004 and stop the friend of his younger brother Nate [1] lifting a CD-R containing the first eight finished tracks destined for 2004’s album Encore. I’d prevent them from leaking, a leak that led to Eminem replacing those tracks with hastily written and recorded the goofy ass songs that wound up on the album.

This change, caused by the leak, ensured that the world never actually saw Encore for what it should have been and cemented his legendary status with a legendary four album run starting with The Slim Shady LP back in 1999. [2]

The leak, however, cast a shadow on his legacy, a regrettable stain on an otherwise impeccable career up to this point.

As we reflect on the album 20 years later (this week), I just can’t help but wonder, what might have been…

There’s not too much detail about what the original album was going to look like but we know that the leaked songs that wound up on the bootleg album, Straight From The Lap EP containted seven or eight songs that were supposed to be on Encore. [3]

We do know that the album was originally mean to open with the track “We As Americans”, leading into “Bully” [4] and then the rest is left up to interpretation. Here’s what I’ve managed to piece together from years of forum and reddit posts on the topic:

What If? Encore

Encore was released 20 years ago today. What if the original tracks never released? How different would have the album been, and how would this have changed Eminem's legacy?

▶ Play on YouTube
  1. 01 We As Americans (Bonus Track)Eminem
  2. 02 BullyEminem
  3. 03 Evil DeedsEminem
  4. 04 Never Enough (feat. 50 Cent & Nate Dogg)Eminem
  5. 05 Yellow Brick RoadEminem
  6. 06 Like Toy SoldiersEminem
  7. 07 MoshEminem
  8. 08 Love You More (Bonus Track)Eminem
  9. 09 6 in the MorningD12
  10. 10 Monkey See Monkey DoEminem
  11. 11 Spend Some Time (feat. Obie Trice, Stat Quo & 50 Cent)Eminem
  12. 12 One Shot 2 Shot (feat. D12)Eminem
  13. 13 Encore / Curtains Down (feat. Dr. Dre & 50 Cent)Eminem
Curated on musicthread.app

The track originally titled Come On In was later renamed 6 In The Morning and used on D12’s second Album D12 World and might have been the original D12 feature rather than One Shot Two Shot that ended up making the album. It’s then super unclear whether the tracks Can-I-Bitch, Hallie’s Revenge (Doe Rae Me), were going to be included on the album. If they were then encore was going to be diss heavy which also makes me think of the sequencing for the track Toy Soldiers where Eminem reflects on the recent beefs with Ja Rule and Benzino and effectively declares the shady camp as the winners and the beef being over. Bully to Toy Soldiers fits though…

The other interesting thing about Encore was there was a track titled Christopher Reeves that was scrapped shortly after Christopher Reeve’s death that same year. We recently had this confirmed on The Death Of Slim Shady album, and if you cruise back far enough on The Way Back Machine you can actually see it on the track list before the relase. (I’ll upload a screenshot later)

With the 20th anniversiary come and gone without a mention from official sources, all hope for an original album release to celebrate has been dashed. Oh well, we can always wonder what if though, right?

  1. I don’t think this was ever cofirmed, but seems to be popular discourse across the web. ↩︎

  2. Encore would’ve been a much different album. “We as Americans,” “Love You More,” a lot of songs ended up on the bonus disc because they leaked and that disappointed me." If that would’ve been on Encore and the other couple songs that leaked, to me it would’ve been right there with The Eminem Show as far as its caliber. - Read More: Eminem Interview - His Career, Addiction Battle, More - XXL ↩︎

  3. “I was just coming off The Eminem Show and the 8 Mile soundtrack and I started recording and had about seven or eight songs that were very much in the vein of what I do.” - Read More: Eminem Interview - His Career, Addiction Battle, More - XXL ↩︎

  4. “We as Americans” was going to start the album, then “Bully.” “Evil Deeds” was in there. - Read More: Eminem Interview - His Career, Addiction Battle, More - XXL ↩︎

Reply by email, XMPP, send a webmention, or say what's up in the guestbook.

No mentions yet.