In the mid-2000s, internet piracy was the music industry's primary antagonist. During the final stages of production for Encore , the album leaked online in its entirety. This breach of security forced Eminem and Dr. Dre to make a radical decision: rather than pushing the release date up, they chose to restructure the album to incentivize fans to buy the physical copy.
Fans and critics have long argued that the would have been a worthy sequel to The Eminem Show . It was darker, more coherent, and lyrically sharper. By replacing "Bully" and "We As Americans" with "Big Weenie" and "Rain Man" (tracks that made the final cut but were originally B-sides), Eminem turned a potential classic into the first critical stumble of his career. eminem encore original tracklist
