What fans received on November 12, 2004, was a compromised Encore —a bizarre, goofy, and uneven album. But what was lost ? The original Encore tracklist tells a story of a darker, more focused, and arguably superior album. In the summer of 2004, promotional CD-Rs of unfinished Encore material were stolen from the studio. By early fall, tracks like "Bully," "Love You More," "We As Americans," and "Come On In" (later known as "6 in the Morning") were circulating on peer-to-peer networks like LimeWire and Kazaa.
In his 2022 retrospective with Complex , Dr. Dre admitted, "That leak... it fucked everything up. The original album was hard. Like, really hard. Then he got in his head and wanted to be funny again." eminem encore original tracklist
Today, the "original Encore tracklist" remains the holy grail for Eminem fans—a glimpse of the album that could have been, buried beneath a mountain of fart jokes and celebrity parodies. It stands as one of hip-hop’s greatest "what ifs." What fans received on November 12, 2004, was
In late 2004, Eminem was at the peak of his powers. Fresh off the commercial and critical juggernaut of The Eminem Show (2002) and the success of 8 Mile , anticipation for his fifth studio album, Encore , was deafening. But just weeks before its scheduled release, disaster struck: the album leaked in its entirety on the internet. In the summer of 2004, promotional CD-Rs of
In a panicked move, Eminem and his label, Interscope Records, scrambled to salvage the project. The result was a rushed recording session that produced three new songs ("Just Lose It," "Ass Like That," and "Mockingbird") and a controversial decision to scrap several completed tracks.