|
|
|
Eminem - Relapse
| Slantmagazine |
|
I know you're probably tired of hearing about my mom," Eminem admits in the opening lines to the cryptically titled "My Mom" on Relapse, Marshall Mathers's first album in half a decade. While that's a lot of time to contemplate how to creatively express his long-simmering resentment of his fucked-up upbringing, most are apt to respond without hesitation, "Yep, pretty tired." Aside from the mainstream outlets that still believe they have an obligation to love Eminem (Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone turned in predictable raves), many early reviews of the album have been unqualified pans. Granted, to my ears, Eminem's seesawing flow and dissociative deployment of Slim Shady are still outstanding aural shorthands for Em's roller-coaster bipolarity. But relapse is inherently a selfish, almost solipsistic act. And Eminem's recalcitrant backtrack into his own morbid obsessions, personal beefs, and penchant for filling silence with ass-rips are bound to sound like betrayal to the same people who hoped (in vain) that the likes of "Lose Yourself" and "Mosh" represented a more refined, responsible method of artistically channeling chronic anger. With four more years of fertile Bush presidency to unpack, Relapse—as evidenced by an album cover that is meant to resemble a pile of pills, but instead looks like a big pile of puke with Eminem's face in the middle—is nothing more than a backward tumble into "Just Don't Give a Fuck" territory....full text |
|
|
| Rollingstone |
| So how did Eminem spend his time off? Drugs, mostly. "I fall in bed with a bottle of meds and a Heath Ledger bobblehead" doesn't even begin to cover it. Relapse, Em's first album in nearly five years, is studded with brand names, but not Lexus or Cristal — more like Lunesta, Ambien, Vicodin, Valium, NyQuil and other brain candy that helped Marshall Mathers turn himself into a zombie, before he got clean last year. It's hard to keep all the drugs on this album straight, but that's probably the point. Relapse is like a hip-hop version of Richard Pryor's Live on the Sunset Strip, the classic 1982 stand-up flick where Pryor makes the audience squirm through jokes about freebase addiction and setting himself on fire. If it's stronger than his last album, Encore, that's because Em's doing what he does best: cleaning out his closet. And there's more psychotic shit piled up in there than ever....full text |
|
|
| Antiquiet |
| Did you take Eminem seriously when Slim Shady first hit? Because I sure as hell didn’t- I wrote him off as a novelty act, a violent-hijinks pop-culture clown that deserved roughly as much respect as MC Hammer. That feeling stayed pretty constant over the next decade or so, and I was comfortable keeping it that way- until tonight, when I got my hands on an early copy of his new Relapse album. After hearing the entire 80 minute, 20 song goliath of an album, I have to say that any future discussion of Eminem’s prowess and evolution as an artist will take on an entirely new context....full text |
|
|
Go to "Eminem " lyrics