“It feels so empty without me,” Eminem proclaimed on his 2002 smash “Without Me.” Fortunately for those who feel the same way, the track has never really gone away. It just became Eminem’s first song to reach three billion streams on Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming platform.
“Without Me” is the 54th song to cross the three-billion mark in Spotify history. It looks likely to be joined soon by Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” also from 2002, which is close behind with approximately 2.9 billion streams. Further down the statistical ladder but no less impressive, the rapper born Marshall Mathers has 15 songs in Spotify’s Billions Club, denoting at least a billion streams. Beyond “Without Me” and “Lose Yourself,” they include “Till I Collapse,” “The Real Slim Shady,” “Love The Way You Lie,” “Godzilla,” “Mockingbird,” “Rap God,” “Stan,” “The Monster,” “Not Afraid,” “Superman,” “Smack That,” “Forgot About Dre,” and “Airplanes Pt. II.”
Not only is “Without Me” Eminem’s biggest streaming hit, it’s one of the best-charting, most acclaimed singles of his career. Upon its release in May 2002, the song was the lead single from his album The Eminem Show. It climbed to a peak of No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Eminem’s highest-charting hit up to that point. It also was Eminem’s first song to be nominated for one of the major Grammy categories, joining the race for Record of the Year in 2003. In terms of critical respect, the song came in at No. 5 on the Village Voice’s year-end Pazz & Jop poll.
Eminem co-produced “Without Me” with DJ Head and Jeff Bass. It introduced elements of electronic dance music into Eminem’s sound — ironic for a track on which Eminem clowned Moby with the line, “Nobody listens to techno” — and included several nods to hip-hop history, including the opening refrain, “Two trailer park girls go ‘round the outside,” a reference to Malcolm McLaren’s 1982 hip-hop hit “Buffalo Gals.” The lyrical nod earned “Buffalo Girls” songwriters McLaren, Trevor Horn, and Anne Dudley writing credits on “Without Me” alongside Eminem and his co-producers.
