But if rapping were a purely athletic competition, Eminem would be Michael Phelps and Mary Lou Retton combined: pure agility and flexibility, like an unstoppable bullet with only white-hot hate in his wake. His flow only gets more baroque and knotty and Nutrageous with age: syllable-cramming, unnecessarily complicated assonance ("I hope foxtrot gets an aerial shot of your burial plot"), a Minaj-erie of silly voices, blink-and-you-miss-it punch lines that range from slow burners to total groaners. This, the "sequel" (or whatever) to his landmark 2000 LP, is little more than a rapsploitation vehicle where practically every line is gratuitous, beyond ridiculous, an effortless and almost empty display of showboating, a carnival trick.
Lmao this is his second public appearance (look at that, he doesn't even NEED to promote and his songs still sell buvketloads). It's all a front though, he's perfectly sane of the mind.
I love the album but he's serving a Brinty tea here...
So, fine, Eminem will never be Jimi Hendrix, but it's astounding to watch him settle into a weird life as another Eddie Van Halen, Les Claypool, or Neil Peart — an artist forever balancing life as the most chops-heavy dude in the Top 10 with a tenuous grasp on the pop smarts that got him there. He's not doing a lot of the self-reflexive, self-fulfilling grandstanding once favored by the so-cute-though tabloid character who made the original Marshall Mathers LP so appealing. Here, the rhymes are the stars, and it's quite a year for them to shine, since chops seem to be en vogue again, and the best young(er) rappers out are acknowledging Em's influence. Kendrick admitted, "I don't think nobody's matching him now"; Danny Brown called him "the best to ever rhyme words." Earl Sweatshirt called himself "the reincarnation of '98 Eminem." Chance the Rapper confessed his own Em phase.
In turn, it's almost insane to think that Eminem didn't use this time to make his lo-fi, chainsaw-goth Odd Future record (though Tyler, the Creator is going to be beyond geeked when he hears how "Bad Guy" rips off his Codiene-soaked therapist voice). It's also insane that he's not just cravenly trying to repeat the huge, huge, huge success of 2010's five-times-platinum Recovery, which was mostly "screamo raps plus huge goofy choruses." (Only three songs here attempt that formula — "Legacy," "Stronger Than I Was," and "The Monster" — and they are, accordingly, the only three songs worth skipping.)
Instead, Eminem is mostly making his version of John Lennon's Rock 'N' Roll, or Billy Joel's An Innocent Man or U2's Rattle and Hum or the Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty: one of the biggest artists in the world indulging an elaborate revisionist fantasy where he gets to goof around in the era right before he started making music. In his case, it's rap's Golden Era, and MMLP2 co-executive producer Rick Rubin brings an arsenal of the type of glue-sniffer rock riffs that peeled the sod off suburban lawns in the Beastie Boys' 1986 (Joe Walsh, Billy Squier), not to mention the type of Cold Lava Lampin' acid-rock kitsch that lured us into 1989's D.A.I.S.Y. Age (the Zombies, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders).
Opening track, "Bad Guy" (which deserves giant quotation marks) is a seven-minute Charlie Kaufman movie that Rap Genius should have a heck of a time untangling, cast-wise: It sounds like Eminem, Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers, Stan's little brother Matthew, adenoidal '98 Eminem, his own conscience (or lack thereof), 8 Mile protagonist Rabbit Smith… there's a lot going on.
Those moments are rare, so this album will never top MM1 or even 1999's Slim Shady LP for the visceral thrill of watching a celebrity twist and distort his own identity like a comic strip transferred onto Silly Putty. But we get rhymes. So many rhymes. More rhymes than some rappers manage in a whole career. Eminem is rap's agoraphobic Howard Hughes, finally out joy-riding in the Spruce Goose; rap's Chris Carrabba, doing a little more bloodletting these days; rap's Ozzy Osbourne, having a self-aware larf at the old days when he used to scare people; rap's Woody Allen, out for another round of artful self-negation. And it was only 13 years ago when he was just rap's Great White Asshole. He's already been the lead actor. He deserves to play the stuntman for a while.
MMLP2 and Matangi gave me so much life then ARTPOP disappointed but still delivered Sexxx Dreams and G.U.Y.
There was also the new Tinie album, which I only listened a few tracks but loved them and some trash Calvin Harris collabs that I use for parties and ****.
Never in a million years. 