You can’t unring a bell Eminem won’t un-“mumble” rap. He’s painting himself into a corner not because there isn’t ample space for lurid, technical raps in the garden of hip-hop microgenres presently coexisting in the culture ( there’s plenty!), or because he’s closer to 50 than to 40 now (consider the 47-year-old Jay-Z’s beloved 4:44, or the enduring appreciation of Diddy, Will Smith, and Missy Elliott), but because he has planted himself resolutely on the side of an age gap that always loses. As southern rap and SoundCloud rap get more established on the charts, Eminem gets more pedantic about why he believes those artists are doing their jobs wrong. Rap fans who came of age during the crunk, snap, and trap eras that flourished during the Detroit MC’s five-year sobriety journey and musical hiatus post- Encore don’t subscribe to the idea that a rapper needs to be the sharpest rhymer to sell a song.
Nearly 20 years after the Slim Shady LP, Eminem has come to embody the very Establishment he once worked to overthrow. The ascendant rap god, born Marshall Mathers, was destroying and rebuilding pop as we knew it. The records took like wildfires, an ecosystem’s natural act of destructive course correction. His craft was a fruit of a decade of practice, but on television, he never seemed very rehearsed. He made the machinery of celebrity look slipshod and silly. If you were a smart-ass, Em was your man on the inside. In the beginning, Eminem was defined as much by the irony of a scrawny midwestern latchkey kid’s unprecedented success in rap as he was by the row it created to have a razor-sharp battle rapper holding court with the pop elder statesmen and well-groomed, media-trained former child stars dominating the charts at the end of the century. Squeaky clean, cookie-cutter pop acts personified the homogenization of the American teenager, the logic went. For a time, as the cool-but-not- that-cool ’90s bucked to the culturally and politically conservative strictures of the Bush administration, the outlook felt vital. _MOVE gives_ The Marshall Mathers LP2 _2 out of 5 stars.To a certain brand of existential crank, Eminem albums were once affirmations that it was okay to be angry and defiant. It’s quite clear that Eminem has officially hit cruise control. And though it might be a welcomed dose of nostalgia that hardcore Slim fans will worship, it’s hardly the best the he could offer. Instead of creating a sequel, Eminem has created unimaginative carbon copy. It’s a breathtaking feat (literally), but when it’s coupled with lazy pop-culture references and uninspired verbiage, it loses face value.Īnd that’s the problem with _The Marshall Mathers LP2:_ it’s colorless and unanimated. Take, for example, “Rap God,” the EDM-inspired, six-minute centerpiece in which Eminem raps 97 words in 15 seconds. Indeed, Eminem’s maturity and motives are certainly in question, but his technical ability is not. The 22-year-old has managed to do something Eminem hasn’t: grow up. Perhaps Eminem could take a few pointers from fellow shock-rap auteur Tyler, the Creator. Even if this wasn’t the case, his misogynistic and homophobic quips are no longer shocking, and his horrorcore gimmick has become quite passé. Now over-the-hill and sober, it’s awkward, if not a little unsettling, to hear Eminem tackling the same subject matter he did in his youth. The latter, which features rap’s godsend Kendrick Lamar, is a silly, promiscuous ode to the rap game and, depending on how you look at it, oral sex. On “So Much Better” and “Love Game,” he reverts to his horrorcore and shock-rap beginnings, even going so far as to say “My life will be so much better / If you just dropped dead” on the former. Other attempts to replicate his original sound don’t bode so well for Mr. It highlights Eminem’s storytelling ability, and while it’s not the only track that sounds like classic Slim, it’s the only one that truly emulates his early work. Even the record’s bright spots are incredibly lackluster, save for album opener “Bad Guy.”Ī continuation of “Stan” from _The Marshall Mathers LP,_ “Bad Guy” is written from Stan’s brother’s perspective, who has returned to exact revenge.
It’s a metaphor for Eminem’s career since 2002’s _The Eminem Show._ Since then, it seems I’ve been listening to the same Slim album for 11 years, and whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to the listener.ĭuring _The Marshall Mathers LP2_’s nostalgia-riddled 78 minutes, however, it’s extremely difficult to find anything to get excited about. On the deluxe edition of _The Marshall Mathers LP2,_ the sequel to Eminem’s classic album, there’s a track aptly titled “Groundhog Day.” Intentional or not, it shares its name with the 1993 film in which Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over again. Album review: Eminem’s ‘The Marshall Mathers LP2’
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