Twenty five years ago, the rapper provoked outrage with his third LP, which shot him to superstardom, and was notorious for its offensive lyrics. Now it has become an even more divisive listen.

Eminem's third studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP, is almost instantly an act of provocation. The Detroit rapper, in the guise of his furious Slim Shady persona, uses this record's intro to encourage naysayers to go "sue me", setting the unapologetic tone for everything that follows.

Warning: this article contains offensive language and descriptions of violence

The first song Kill You then sees Eminem-as-Slim-Shady flow over an impish, stripped-back beat with the whirlwind ferocity of The Looney Tunes' Tasmanian Devil. Lyrically he boasts about getting a machete from OJ Simpson, assaulting his own mother, and being the one who "invented violence", daring outsiders to take these controversial words seriously. It's shocking to listen to, but the fact his nasal voice sounds like a mixture of a squeaky clown nose and a Midwestern court jester gives everything a cartoonish edge.

Released 25 years ago this month, The Marshall Mathers LP was Eminem's ticket to superstardom and, more broadly, a real inflection point for Western pop culture. This was a moment where a white emcee from Warren, Detroit, was suddenly the most debated artist on planet Earth. A celebrated anti-hero, who could provoke outrage while also shifting tonnes of hummable records in the process: MMLP went on to sell more than 35 million copies worldwide.

Eminem was the parent-advisory sticker provocateur who could include homophobic slurs in his raps – but somehow still sincerely perform alongside Elton John, one of the world's most famous gay musicians, at the 2001 Grammys. Entertainment Weekly's Will Hermes perfectly summarised these palpable contradictions in an early MMLP review, calling the album: "Indefensible and critic-proof, hypocritical and heart-breaking, unlistenable and undeniable."

Anthony Bozza, Rolling Stone journalist and author of the book, Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem, recalls that, as offensive as some of The Marshall Mathers LP's lyrics were, Eminem represented something much deeper than just blind rage. As he sees it, the rapper's Slim Shady alter-ego had essentially been conceived by Eminem to punch a hole through the political correctness of the era.

"Political correctness has been a concept in the media and academia since the 1930s, but it became a huge talking point in the '90s and early-'00s," he explains, noting that Eminem was part of a wider "push back against it in music and entertainment" at the time.

Everyone, no matter how popular or vulnerable – from puppies to Christopher Reeves to pop stars including boyband N-Sync and Britney Spears – was a target inside Eminem's crosshairs.

Slim Shady was a sociopathic character envisioned as a sort of MTV generation Frankenstein's monster, out to take down everything in culture that was considered middle-of-the-road. "Slim Shady is the name for my temper or anger," the rapper explained in one early interview. "Eminem is just the rapper, Slim Shady is the attitude behind him."

Not everyone accepted this rationale, however. Lynne Cheney, the wife of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, told a 2000 Senate hearing that Kill You specifically was "promoting violence of the most degrading kind against women".

But the shock tactics of the lyrics aside, musically The Marshall Mathers LP made just as big of an impression. Following its release, many subsequently compared Eminem to Elvis Presley in how he deftly adapted a black artform, rap, and popularised it in Middle America.

However Craig Jenkins, a music critic for Vulture magazine, believes there was a fundamental difference between these two artists. "It was always obvious that whiteness put Eminem on radars that not every other rapper was landing on," the music writer explains. "But the big difference between Em and Elvis is the latter was somewhat trying to make himself more palatable to more people, but the former is defined by the fact he seems to hate all the kinds of people there is to hate."

"MMLP took over the zeitgeist and changed the way mainstream white people and white cultural critics perceived hip hop," agrees Bozza, adding also that his sheer force of personality won over many fans at the time. "Following the excitement and popularity of grunge and alternative rock in the mid-'90s, bland record company fodder rock bands took over the airwaves. But in 2000 there was a huge section of the population who just didn't see themselves in what they were being told to like.

"It makes complete sense, then, that at the turn of the century, professional wrestling had a huge boom in business, thanks to Stone Cold Steve Austin; South Park was massive; as was aggressive and lewd nu-metal like Limp Bizkit and Korn. Eminem's rebellion, snark, and inappropriateness were all definitely in."

The Marshall Mathers LP was the perfect record for this particular moment of disaffection. "Will Smith don't have to cuss in his raps to sell records / well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too!" was perhaps this angry, peroxide blonde's mission statement from MMLP's massive single The Real Slim Shady – filthy yet sharp, the song's technically gifted toilet humour is like South Park's Eric........

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