You Think that’s Bad You Should Hear the Rest of My Album

Thanks to the ineptitude of the music industry, Eminem may be the last superstar it ever creates. After the teaser of My Name Is, Slim Shady exploded into the stratosphere of stardom with The Marshall Mathers LP with a mix of catchy disposable rap for the TRL set and more credible flows for the hip hop head. And during a time when ever rap album had over fifty percent of the songs having the word “featuring” attached to it, Eminem managed to fill full album with nary a partner except for a rare verse from his buddies 50 Cent and some beats provided by mentor Dr. Dre.

But it has been five years since Eminem has released a new album and in the rap genre, the years away can be counted like dog years. The Shady persona made it usually first appearance with the first single We Made You where Em does his usual run down of celebrities but raging on Sarah Palin, Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan all seemed a couple months too late and even featured one of the weakest Dre beat to date. He even goes even more outdates bringing up with failed relationship with Mariah Carey on Bagpipes from Bagdad. But that does feature the best line when Em chants chucking corn much like the famous refrain about Chaka Khan.

The rest of the songs on Relapse can be put into different themes: murder and drugs. And for over seventy-five minutes and fifteen songs he goes over those topics over and over again. The former goes into gruesome detail playing out a special on Court TV to the point it is reminiscent of the horrorcore genre that failed to gain any acceptance, critical or commercial, during the mid-nineties. And most of the songs are just shocking for the sake of shock value and have no depth like say Stan.

Even more nonsensical is Eminem’s flow as most of the songs features the same nasal cadence that is featured on the first two singles We Made You and 3 A.M. Also Relapse seems Em tread the same subjects again and again with Lindsay Lohan, Hanna Montana, Kim Kardashian, Heath Ledger, and Christopher Reeves getting multiple references throughout the album. The last even Em knows he has gone to for even mentioning so later in the album blaming Reeves for having a last name that is too easy to rhyme. But on the bright side Relapse is Auto-Tune free.

The one thing that saves the album from being unlistenable is Dr. Dre’s beats which are as crisp as ever (sans the one for We Made You). Most of the songs have the trademark Dre bass attack while Bagpipes from Bagdad gets a Middle Eastern flavor. The best though is saved for last with the menacing strings of Underground. Hopefully this is a precursor for Detox whenever that actually comes out which is a running joke on the album with Eminem originally says 2010 but later postpones it to 2020.

Song to Download – Underground

Relapse gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.