Eminem’s official debut album Infinite is often overlooked as at the time, he was an unknown rapper who was hardly known outside his local area in Detroit. It was Jeff and Mark Bass who had discovered him and later released Em’s debut album through their just born record label Web Entertainment. The album of course flopped, selling only a few hundred copies but some major players in the industry were able to catch a glimpse of his talent.
Two decades and hundreds of millions of records sold later, the Bass Brothers are revisiting Infinite on its 20th anniversary. The title track as well as rest of the album has been digitally remastered by taking out the original samples and playing live instruments instead. The title track is now available for stream below.
An accompanying documentary called Partners In Rhyme has also been released which traces Em’s roots and the making of the Infinite album. It features some never seen before footage.
After Infinite, you started working on The Slim Shady EP.
Mark Bass (via rollingstone): Right, after the Infinite record we took a little bit of time off, and that’s when he came back with this little “Slim Shady” tattoo on his arm. He came back a whole different person. Something happened to him where he turned into Slim Shady. I think he was sitting on the toilet and something happened! I mean, he just decided to say, “Fuck the world.” … We were making records on the Infinite project where I was trying to cater to radio, we were trying to keep things a little cleaner, and it was like, fuck that, we’re not going to do it like this. He wanted to do his thing. Then came Slim Shady.
Stream ‘Infinte’ (remastered):
Watch Partners In Rhyme documentary: