Eminem's Slim Shady LP dropped just before the millennium, and at what I would call the beginning of mainstream raps biggest decline. Biggie and Pac were dead, and while acts like OutKast were still killing it, Snoop and Dre's best work would soon pass. Eminem's Slim Shady LP had a combination of sarcasm, outrageousness and fear that seemed to be what people from street corners, to suburbia, to city kids, needed. A generation of anger, of numbness, of anti-culture. And it included the white kids.
This "anti-culture" was what Eminem, and his alter-ego Slim Shady, defined. Most of us worked at crappy restaurants, trimmed hedges, broke concrete... and the glamor rap began to speak of, just didn't connect for everyone. Coke was for the glamor people, this generation was about the pharms. Some blame it on the doctors, but that's up for another discussion; In any case, the valiums piled up from various broken bones, addies from the mounds given to adhd kids, easy to chop and rail (minus some burning), and most of all, family cabinets filled with xanax bars, oxycotin, percs, and loratabs, or perhaps even harmless benadryl, and some Ambien to end the night with. A time came where, when you couldn't get some x, or shrooms weren't around, or felt like something more mind blowing than herb or booze, kids didn't have to look far. And most of all, this generation didn't give a f**k.
Eminem's first two albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, delt with his anger, drugs, women, pyschosis and murder. The lyrical packages, later acclaimed by Noble Peace prize winners for his poetics, were taken as is by some, and maybe too seriously by others. In "Stan," considered by some to be one of the best rap songs of all time (and specifically praised by poets), he pleads "what's this **** you said about you like to cut your wrists too? I say that **** just clownin dogg, c'mon - how ****ed up is you?" His third album (The Eminem Show) turned for the lighter, more of a reflection of his exploded fame, and fourth album Encore felt with this and politics.
But, Encore felt like a watered down Eminem. It didn't hit me like his old albums did. Maybe its my age, maybe I'm just not impressed as easily by "shocking lyrics." But, while the album was good, it wasn't what I wanted. Maybe I wanted more shock, more violence... maybe I'm a little sick? While critics wouldn't admit to that, the album fell short in many of their eyes too, and the commercial feel of the album didn't sit well with his older fans.
The newest album, Relapse, is the first of a two series release, of Eminem after his hiatus of music making. Immediately is a reminder of his struggle with pills, and much of the album deals with his pill addictions, stemming from his mother (who he says put pills in his food), to his continued use as an adult.
Relapse follows like a story of going to a rehab clinic that makes you worse: evil doctors, horrors, murders. While the shocking lyrics, and psychosis, are back, it runs more like a horror movie production than a (fabled or not)biography. 3AM, which has excellent lyrical flow, and shows Eminems capabilities, tells of going crazy and waking up at 3AM around dead bodies. My Mom tells of his mother getting him started on pill additions, and introduces Eminems stronger "accent" in his raps on this album. A kind of word twister that matches his lyrics with tonal changes. Some have said its annoying, others thing is massively genius. "Same Song & Dance" tells of 'the same song and dance' a girl does when trying to breaking a window trying to get away from him, again, back to his shocking beginnings, with the refinement that seems to come from his 36 years of age:
"Yeah baby, do that dance
it's the last dance you'll ever get the chance to do
Girl shake that ***
You ain't ever gonna break that glass, that windshield's too strong for you
I said Yeah baby, sing that song
It's the last song you'll ever get the chance to sing
You sexy little thing, show me what you got, give it your all
Look at you ball, why you cryin' to me? Same song and dance"
..it's one of his stronger songs on the album, but your soon disappointed as "We Made You" starts next, which has a tacky commercial appeal made for charts. "Crack a Bottle" (crack a bottle, everybody wobble), also has a tacky feel...that wears off quickly. The track I looked forward to the most, "Old Times Sake (ft. Dr. Dre), also fell a little short, and the accent rhyming came off a little forced.
I'm looking foward to the second part of the release, which will perhaps have more of the Eminem I remembered doing pills with as a kid. Now it kind of sounds like he's graduated to better drugs and friends. Come back Em, it doesn't sound like you've really relapsed, come'on man, just one line of addie, it aint gunna kill ya man, just one line...
Music: 3.5
Sound: 3.5
Overall Rating (out of 5): 3.5
