Eminem Relapse Album Review

[Taco John]

So I've listened to the new Eminem album about a dozen times, and I have to say that I think the album is brilliant. It's not perfect, but it's an effort that comes in at the A level.

To give some perspective, I really liked his Slim Shady LP, but I thought it was very rough around the edges and that he still hadn't pushed the level of his talent yet. I thought he came into his own with the Marshall Mathers LP, perfecting his style and gaining absolute control of his lyrical flow. To me, the MMLP is his best album, though I think he showed absolute mastery of his craft with The Eminem Show. The problem that I had with the Eminem Show was that I thought it was a little *too* slick and over produced. I love the album, to be sure, but it doesn't have the organic feel that The MMLP has. Encore, I thought, was terrible in comparison to all of them. I liked some of the stuff on there, but Eminem had said anything interesting that I thought he could say at that point in time. To me, he hit the wall that every successful rapper is bound to hit: we've heard it, you've got nothing new to say, and you're so rich that you no longer have street cred anymore. Frankly, I had thought Eminem had done the right thing by closing the book on his career and only doing small projects and producing (ala Dr. Dre).

Boy am I glad I was wrong about that.

This new album, while containing some of the same themes we've seen in the old album (namely the drug use of his mother and its fallout in his life), contains a lot of new and fresh stuff and gives listeners a peek into the world of Eminem since his pseudo-retirement.

The album is essentially therapy for Eminem, with the major theme being his relapse into the world of drug addiction and prescription pill popping. There's a lot of hate and anger in this album, and he hits you in the face with it right out of the gates, but what you find as you journey through those gates is that the deeper into the album you get, the more he aims that hate and anger at himself.

The first three songs absolutely put my jaw in my lap - the first song being an anthem to mass murdering. It's not a particularly new theme for Eminem, but it does have a more graphic edge to it than his past stabs at this theme (sadly, the pun was intended). The music and lyrics come together in a very haunting way that made me seriously question the guys sanity. But he doesn't stop there. As you leave 3am with the image of Eminem being a deranged psycopath who is ready to butcher people in a drug induced black-out, he does something very interesting by leading you back in time with the songs "My Mom" (My Mom does valium and lots of drugs, that's why I'm on what I'm on, cuz I'm my mom), where Eminem talks about how he has inherited his drug addiction from his mother. From there, he blows the hinges off the door with the song "Insane," where Eminem reveals a history of being sexually abused by a step father (If you could count the Skeletons in my closet). By this time my jaw was in my lap.

The first three tracks hit me like a ton of bricks, and I thought the album was going to be very heavy. Eminem doesn't necessarily lighten the load, but from this point on you no longer feel like you're staring alone at a dead baby in a dumpster. The next song, Bagpipes from Baghdad flashes to the not so recent past where Eminem does a little of his usual Slim Shady celebrity bashing stuff. It's a catchy beat, but not a particularly strong song. The most interesting thing is that he reveals that he's been clean and sober for at least a year now (who’s-gonna-go-see-the-doctor first? we’ll do a coin flip, i just got my one year sobriety coin chip).

The next song on the album, called "Hello," is a sort of re-introduction to Eminem. It's a very good song with some double meaning to it. The question is whether or not he's reintroducing himself to the fans, or re-introducing himself to the pill addiction (as though it were a person). It's an excellent song, and he doesn't hold back as he reveals how low things got for him:

I lose a pill and I'm recklessly wrecking the house
That was supposed to be breakfast where the heck is it now?
There's the necklace I lost, right next to Stephanie's blouse.
Man I should check to see if my mum left any out
Nope! Guess I'll reroute
Maybe somewhere in the depths of the couch
oooh, Jackpot, yeah
Open Sesame mouth!

In the song, he reveals that his recent "pnemonia" bout was actually an overdose situation where he had to be rushed to the hospital.

The album then takes another dark turn, as Eminem flashes back into his mass murdering persona with a skit about a stranded girl getting into the wrong car with the wrong person, and leading into "Same Song and Dance" where he basically kills Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears. By this time, the mass murdering schtick has worn a little thin, and the album leads into the Radio Pop friendly "We Made You." I'm not a big fan of Eminem's radio pop. I understand why he has to do it, and I think that he's very good at it. But I don't find it particularly interesting - and certainly not compelling. But it can be fun when I'm in the right mood. This one, in my opinion, is one of his better radio pop efforts, so at least there is that. But by this time in the album, I was starting to tune out a little bit.

The next song provides the funniest moment in the album, when Eminem gives Christopher Reeves the last word by rapping AS Reeves, complete with robotic voice and long drawn out mechanical breaths. Needless to say I was shocked but tickled by the picture he paints of Reeves battle rapping against him:

Eminem on coming to kill you [long mechanical breath]
Always hated you and I still do
You'll never fill my shoes my superman costume [long mechanical breath]
Doesn't even fit you they don't feel you
You're takign this shit to far [long mechanical breath]
Who do you think you are
Hang my suit up in the armoire
Everday I hate you more and more
Throw down the cardboard
Let's break dance if you think you're hardcore


The Paul Berman skit after this is probably the funniest moment of any of his albums.

From this point on, the album maintains a high level of interest. Stay Wide Awake continues the horror theme of the album - which really comes off to me as a self defense mechanism to protect himself from just how much of his soul he bares on the table (especially later on in the album, with Deja Vu).

Old Times Sake is a great collaboration with Dre that I think is one of the best they've done together. Must Be the Ganja has a good beat, flow, and is pretty catchy.

The album climaxes here with Deja Vu, which I think is probably one of the best songs of Eminem's career. It starts with a skit that is essentially a recreation of the scene where the paramedics are treating him for overdose as they start to rush him to the hospital. He goes from the extremes of painting himself as an evil murderer, to this song in which he completely bears his soul showing just how vulnerable he is. I think the song is brilliant. The beat is spot on. The flow is absolutely superb. The lyrics are deep and penetrating. When someone asks me why I listen to Eminem, this song is a good one to offer up as a damn good reason. The whole experience of this song is hypnotic and it just gets better with each and every listen as you're drawn deeper and deeper into the lyrics and the thoughts behind the lyrics. I can't say enough about how great this song is.

The next two songs are anti-climatic, but still worthy efforts. Beautiful seems like a song he wrote for his girls, which I dig. And then Crack a Bottle is the star studded reprise to the album, featuring Dre and 50 Cent.

At the end of the day, I find that each time I listen to the album, I like it more and more. It's what I wish The Eminem Show was (with the Eminem Show being Encore, and Encore being some B-sides that never made it into an album).

The bottom line is that it's a worthy effort. Eminem has reinvented himself with an album that fans will appreciate. This isn't the cruise control album that Encore was. This is Marshall Mathers working his ass off to produce something worth releasing, and definitely worth listening to.


4.5 stars.

[Demonpenz]

I always have to chuckle when I hear the regular crunk horseshit at party's clubs, then all the sudden em comes on and people are dancing to

my mom loves valuum and lots of drugs

[KcMizzou]

[Demonpenz]

I thought there was a little love in that not so PC moment for reeves