Those who were appalled by "The Slim Shady LP," the last album by the wondrously snotty Detroit rapper Eminem, will no doubt find its follow-up, "The Marshall Mathers LP," to be a whole new low in ill communication.

Here, after all, is a man who not only has no second thoughts about making a crude joke about the paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve; he also hesitates not a moment in rhyming it with another tasteless jibe about the late skiing enthusiast Sonny Bono crashing into some trees. In addition, Mr. Mathers has very unkind things to say -- usually of a homosexual nature -- about 'NSYNC and their boy-group ilk, not to mention Christina Aguilera (alleged to be a promiscuous dispenser of oral endearments) and the rest of the reigning teen-queen auxiliary ("Britney's garbage!" is probably the gentlest dis on the album).

Puffy Combs may find little to laugh about in Eminem's announced willingness to impregnate his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, "even if she was my mother," and thus sire "a son and a new brother at the same time, and just say that it ain't mine." And many jaws will surely drop to the floor forever after hearing his horrific jest about the late fashion designer Gianni Versace, who was murdered outside his Miami mansion by a gay gunman. ("He was checkin' the mail," says Em. "Get it: 'Checkin' the male?'") And there's really no way we can go into the extended oral-sex skit here involving the two head clowns of the Insane Clown Posse (longtime Eminem nemeses), except to note that it's quite possibly one of the vilest things ever committed to record.

So is Eminem a satirist -- a man whose abrasive psychodrama serves a higher artistic purpose? (It'd be nice if that explained the frightening track called "Kim," about Kim Scott, the mother of his baby daughter, and now his wife; a woman last encountered with her throat slit in the locked trunk of a car sinking beneath the waters of Lake Michigan on "The Slim Shady LP," here taken to ultra-violent task once again).

Or might he even be an artist? The third track here -- an emotionally astounding composition called "Stan," the story of a doomed, disgruntled Eminem fan, told entirely in the texts of increasingly hostile letters, and hooked unforgettably on a loop from the obscure song "Thank You" by the singer Dido, off the soundtrack to the 1998 movie "Sliding Doors" -- is an awesome and heartbreaking accomplishment, not at all the work of some transient pop-world wiseass. On the evidence of this track alone, Eminem would appear to have a rich and unpredictable musical future ahead of him.

On the other hand, might he not also just be some lucky sociopath, working out his problems on multi-platinum albums? Your call. It's impossible to predict how any particular listener will hear this masterful and truly disturbing album. But hear it you really must.

—Kurt LoderKurt Loder