Eminem's rare first album is being given away online, but not by Eminem. Infinite, independently released in 1996, is now available for free download from a website owned by 50 Cent.
The give-away certainly doesn't seem that professional. "This rare album is a MUST have for any Rap [sic] fan," reads the blurb on 50 Cent's This Is 50 website, which offers Infinite as an MP3 using the ad-supported download service zShare.
Recorded four years before The Slim Shady LP made Eminem a star, only 1000 pressings of Infinite were ever made. "It sold maybe 70 copies," Eminem wrote in his autobiography. Infinite has since been out of print and copies of the album sell online for about £100.
Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2004, Eminem explained how Infinite's reception guided his future career. "On [Infinite] you can hear the pain and the woes of just growing up and being poor and having a baby on the way. Obviously, I was young and influenced by other artists, and I got feedback that I [sounded a lot like] by Nas and AZ, another rapper who was down with Nas at the time. I started taking all the feedback and started throwing it back in my music: 'Yeah, I am white trash, I am whatever you're gonna say about me.' Somehow started taking the disadvantages and used them to my advantage. I reached a point where I stopped caring what people thought about me. And the second I stopped caring, people started caring about me."
However, it is unclear whether Eminem has approved his first album being made available for free download by This Is 50. Though his new album, Relapse, is to be released next week, no reissue of Infinite has been announced.
