In today's society the arts are a very effective way to let people express their beliefs and try to communicate their ideas and feelings inside them to an outside audience. An artist's success is usually based on how well he or she can communicate their thoughts and words indirectly through a medium to their audience. In some cases an artist's beliefs can be extremely controversial and could cause much debate in society. Music is one of the arts that has been found to be controversial in the past few decades as musicians try to express what's going on in the minds though the medium of music. .
Over the past five years, there has been no other artist who has been more controversial and in the middle of numerous debates in society than Eminem. When he broke into the mainstream of radio stations all over the country in 1997, people were shocked at first with his lyrics and some wondered if he was serious when he brought up issues in his songs such as homosexuality, domestic abuse, drug abuse, and suicide. His songs raised eyebrows at first and had censors all over the country frantically trying to stop him from saying the things that were on his mind. His first album was very successful and went multi-platinum in months but no one could've imagined the success he would have with his second album, the Marshall Mathers LP. .
On this album, Eminem went beyond lyrical limits in some people's minds and talked about things that have never been touched on before in any artists lyrics in any time period or any category of music. On this album he also talked about homosexuals, but this time in even more of an obscene way than he did on his first album. He made many threats against homosexuals, including mocking the death of famous fashion designer Johnny Versace who was a homosexual, and calling many of his enemies things like "faggots" and "homos." He also had his usual discussion about drugs including a song called "Drug Ballad" and another song in which he claims he was high when he wrote it.