There is a small music store downtown that I've always been interested in going to, but I haven't really had the time. The building was beaten up, and had a somewhat crooked sign. I went in the store, and what I saw was quite plain. There was a rack of T-shirts for bands I have never heard of, and a CD rack up near the front counter. I leafed through the CDs until something caught my attention. I saw an Eminem CD that I have never heard of. I am a pretty big fan of Eminem's earlier work, I think is newer stuff is less than decent. But, anyways, the cover for the album was just The standard Eminem logo over a plain white backdrop. Only the "M" at the end of Eminem was almost scratched out, making it appear to read "Emine".
The back of the CD was completely blank, no track listings or anything. Obviously I was intrigued by what I found. I went to the guy at the counter, who I asked if he has heard of this album. He gave me a funny look as if he didn't even remember putting this album on the CD shelf. He didn't say a word other than "That will be 3 dollars." I went back to my car, curious as to why he would seem so weary over this. But that aside, I was looking forward to hearing unreleased material. When I got home, I put the CD into my computer, and it wouldn't respond at first. I did the ol' spit wash trick, and it worked. It took a long amount of time to load up, but then again, my computer is a piece of shit.
There were only 6 files on the Disc. I'm guessing this was an EP. 5 of the files were standard audio files, while one was a video. the files were not even properly labeled. They were all just a mish-mash of letters. I played the first track. It was an intro spoken by Eminem. It seemed normal, he was talking about the struggles of his life, and how his father left him at a young age. Midway through, I noticed that he sounded quite uneasy, and he was talking faster, as if he wanted to get the intro over with. A bit odd, but nothing really concerned me, I clicked the second track. This was an earlier version of the song "Stan" one of my favourites about an obsessed fan who killed himself and his girlfriend. The song sounded mostly the same as the original, but when Stan talked about what he did to his girlfriend, he was extremely graphic compared to the version on The Marshall Mathers LP. The beat sounded really low quality, I heard pops and cracks every now and then. I started to get slightly uneasy. I proceeded to click the 3rd track. Oh, boy was it something. It was a mess. It was basically a bunch of songs off other albums, but copied and pasted, to form new sentences. Some of the words were distorted or reversed. I couldn't quite make out the lyrics. But I think he was trying to get some sort of message across, and he sounded panicked, similar to the intro. I clicked the next track. I heard popping noises much like the ones in track 2. It was a new song, only extremely muffled, so I couldn't understand it. Eminem sounded furious on this track. Almost like he was on the song "Kim" from the Marshall Mathers LP. Eventually it was more like screaming more than rapping. The song abruptly ended with a loud, ugly screech.
I was shitting bricks at this point. I was shaken. So naturally, I was reluctant to click the final track. I went to watch a bit of TV to recuperate myself. Later on, I felt like I could click the last track. This one was dead silence for about a minute and a half. and then a very faint beat played in the background. I made it out to be a reversed version of "Kill You." A little while later, Eminem started screaming in the most panicked voice I have ever heard. "What the hell are you doing here!? Run!" He basically repeated this every 15 seconds for the next 2 minutes. After this, it cut to dead silence for about 3 minutes. It then cut back to him yelling again. He was even more panicked. After a while, it sounded like Eminem was being choked, coughing and gurgling was heard. The track was 10 minutes long, and I was at about 7. I immediately closed WMP, not even worrying about the video file that was included in the CD.
About 2 days later, I composed myself enough to watch the video. The video was a different music video for "Stan" It showed Stan killing his wife, and the corpses after being found in the water. This looked almost like it was taken with a camcorder, rather than a high end camera used in music videos. As I got through about halfway through the video, I could not bear to watch more, and turned off my computer completely, and put the CD back.
I did recently find out that there were about 2 other copies released. I was searching on the internet while I found somebody selling a copy on eBay under the title "RARE: UNRELEASED EMINEM CD" There were no bids at the time. I contacted him about it and asked questions. He told me that he found it at a local music store much like the one in my town. He said that he listened to roughly 6 minutes of the final track before getting too scared to continue. If you do find one of these copies, please contact me.