Going nuclear on several occasions, there are no holds barred throughout the entire 12-track LP. Born out of the opinion-driven shit storm that followed the release of his previous album, ‘Revival’, ‘Kamikaze’ is the album critics knew Em had in him. Regardless of whether they were members of the media, fellow artists, or anyone else with something negative to say, everyone fetched it on his 10 th studio album. ‘Kamikaze’ is Eminem’s biggest fuck-you to his critics. There are a few gems sprinkled throughout ‘D12 World’, though, such as ‘Git Up’, ‘6 in the Morning’ and ‘How Come’, but it’s the final stretch that proves the finest stretch as ‘American Psycho 2’, ‘Good Die Young’ and ‘Keep Talkin’’ stand head and shoulders above the rest of the album. ’40 Oz.’, which sounds amateurish at best with its dated Trackboyz production failing to connect, and I’m pretty sure that rubbing your ear along a cheese grater would be more pleasurable than listening to ‘Get My Gun’. For some, there’s absolutely no forgiving ‘My Band’, while others will claim guilty pleasure immunity for the album’s first single. And while their sophomore album ‘D12 World’ pales in comparison to the quality of predecessor ‘Devil’s Night’, it does have its moments. But instead of rap written solely for the purpose of comedic entertainment, Em and his band of rapping misfits were serious MCs who just so happened to be funny, too. ‘D12 World’ w/ D12īefore The Lonely Island, there was D12.
The shit sounded more like a Beach Boys record composed by a cartoon character than the meeting of two elite MCs. ‘The Marshall Mathers LP 2’? Are you kidding me!? An album that seriously lacks cohesiveness and is so bloated that it’s bursting at the seams with excrement named a successor to probably one of the most impactful rap albums of the last 20 years? OK, so ‘Monster’, featuring Rihanna, might be catchy, and tracks like ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Beautiful Pain’ help Em find a rhythm late on, but because the album sits at an unnecessary 21 tracks in length, the good is massively overshadowed by the bad and the ugly. And what a waste of a Kendrick Lamar verse on ‘Love Game’. The title alone felt like a spit in the face of fans.
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Acting like a lyrical training camp at a time when Em needed it, on it you can hear him feeling his way through new rhyme schemes, playing with cadence and experimenting with different types of lyrical content, all in an effort to nurse himself back to full strength. So truth be told, this album was more about Em getting back on the horse and seeing how it felt. The difference here, though: it came off the back of a turbulent five years for the rapper, a period that included the loss of his best friend (Proof, of D12) and battling addiction to drink and drugs. With just a handful of tracks standing out on Em’s sixth studio album, ‘Relapse’ is another misfire in his repertoire.
Em might have since addressed the album and its critics (me being one of them) on ‘Kamikaze’, but it still doesn’t excuse this awful body of work. Whether it’s Em’s obsession with rap/rock hybrids (his use of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’ for ‘Remind Me’ should be considered a crime against music), the terrible choice of beats that at times stifle some pretty significant lyrical content from getting out the gate, or the fact that ‘Walk on Water’ sounds like someone stole some Eminem a cappella files and pasted them over the top of an instrumental meant for Emeli Sande, ‘Revival’ suffers from a lack of quality control. Whatever the case, the marriage between beats and rhymes in hip-hop is a sacred thing and one song into ‘Revival’ it was obvious that divorce papers needed to be served, immediately. Maybe Em was surrounded by too many ‘yes’ men. ‘Revival’Įven a deaf man could hear that ‘Revival’ was a mess when it was released at the tail end of 2017. Marshall Bruce Mathers III, this is your life.