Straight from the Lab
Straight from the Lab is a 2003 bootleg album consisting of previously unreleased songs by Eminem. Some of the songs on the album were scheduled to be released the following year on Eminem's fifth studio album, Encore. Two additional series of unreleased songs were leaked in 2011 and 2025 as Straight from the Lab Part 2 and Straight from the Lab Part 3, respectively.
Background
According to Complex, the songs on Straight from the Lab were allegedly leaked by a friend of Eminem's brother Nate Mathers, who had found a CD containing a selection of unfinished music at Eminem's house.Reception
In 2013, Jeff Rosenthal of Vulture ranked the third verse of "Bully" as Eminem's sixteenth best of all time, praising its demonstration of what he considered Eminem's two greatest strengths: "his ability to cut through bullshit and noise with a chainsaw" and "acknowledging his own hypocrisy". Rolling Stone would also rank the song at number 50 on their 2024 list of "The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs".''Part 2''
In 2011, a series of leaks occurred by a Twitter user named "NotAfraid2Leak", commonly referred to as "Koolo". These leaks occurred over the span of a few months, and eventually lead to a fully unreleased and unofficial project titled Straight From The Vault EP. Since then, fans have retroactively compiled all of those songs into a follow up mixtape to Straight From The Lab, titled Straight from the Lab Part 2.''Part 3''
On January 12th, 2025, a collection of unreleased Eminem songs surfaced online. The first 14 unreleased songs were compiled by fans into a bootleg album referred to as Straight From The Lab, Part 3. In the days that followed, additional songs leaked, prompting fans to expand the tracklist, circulate updated versions, and attempt to identify and suppress AI-generated imitations. The leaked material was generally organized chronologically by leak date.On or about January 16, 2025, employees at Eminem’s recording studio in Ferndale, Michigan reported the incident to the FBI. Investigators later determined that the recordings had been copied from password-protected hard drives stored in a studio safe between October 2019 and January 2020. Studio staff obtained a directory listing of the stolen material, which was subsequently being sold online without authorization. In March 2025, federal prosecutors charged Joseph Strange, a former sound engineer who had been employed at the studio during the time of the theft, with copyright infringement and interstate transportation of stolen goods. According to an FBI affidavit, Strange sold the recordings to private collectors in exchange for cryptocurrency. He had previously signed a severance agreement in 2021 prohibiting the electronic distribution of Eminem’s work.