Two nights ago, out of nowhere at 9:10 PM, Eminem dropped his eleventh (and presumably last) Studio Album with no advertising and no foreshadowing. With a tweet, an Instagram post, and a drop on every music platform two days ago, Eminem changed his legacy forever. His surprise comeback to music took the world by storm. This album has so many layers and elements to it. He starts off the album with the track “The Ringer.” The track is a good taste of what the rest of the album is like. He expresses his feelings about lil xan and lil pump, Stating how he believes they “imitate Lil Wayne.” This trend continues throughout the album with Em, dissing “mumble rappers” and rappers of our modern day generation in almost every track on the album. In one line he states “He doesn’t hate trap” and personally I believe him. I don’t think someone at his caliber of a status within any kind of music could flatout hate another genre. Rather, I would think he feels resentment toward these “mumble” rappers because, the type of music they make dominates the same audience that Em drew in, however they can create, and captivate, through the same means with significantly less effort. I wouldn’t call it jealously but more or less the feeling of being cast out by the same audience when I’m sure he feels like he deserves the captivation that he sees others gaining so rapidly and so effortlessly because of this new type of sub-genre that takes significantly less , time, skill, and effort to produce than traditional rap. One of my favorite examples of this is when on the very first track on the album he copies Lil Yachty’s nitorious “choppy flow” and then uses the same flow to diss Lil Yachty. Something similar to this is a huge part of the reason Eminem is successful in the first place. He has a long history of going on peoples tracks as a feature and “out-rapping” them on their own track. My favorite example of this is in Drake’s 2009 track “Forever”. Although this is a subjective opinion, Eminem’s verse that proceeded that of Lil Wayne, Drake, and Kayne West, Is considered by many people as the superior verse in the song.
Throughout this album I feel as if we get all generations of Eminem. In the song “Stepping Stone” you can hear the clear comparison to other Eminem songs like “Mockingbird” and “Like Toy Soldiers”. He expresses the emotional side of his rap as well as others styles and moods he has displayed in his career all in one album. Throughout “Kamikaze” You can pinpoint clear comparisons to different periods of Eminem’s career and pinpoint how specific songs on this album captivate those different time periods. It’s easy to ramble about this album for hours. It has so much content and so much worth writing about. However, I’m going to offer my subjective opinions on the album now. Listening to this album from beginning to end is extremely bitter sweet for Me. The first nine songs in the album are all amazing for a variety of reasons. While listening to this album I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic. I felt like I was listening to “The Marshall Mathers LP” or “Curtain Call” all over again. I felt those chills and rushes of nostalgia up until the ninth song on the album. After “Kamikaze” the rest of the album feels extremely forced to me. I feel as if I’m getting an Eminem who’s trying so hard to not sound like “Revival” however in turn he is sounding just like “Revival”. It sounds forced. That’s the best word I can use to describe the last four songs on this album. For me as a huge Eminem fan it is saddening. This narrative of him coming back to music out of nowhere to prove everyone who doubted him after “Revival” wrong, is so exhilarating and epic. With the beginning of this album I felt like he had broken through his previous sound from “Revival” and learned to recreate and recapture his sound from all of his previous work. This was an amazing thought for me, but after hearing the last four songs on this album it felt as if the narrative of him coming back to prove all his doubters wrong was tarnished. It’s upsetting to me because there is nothing I want more than to explain how this album is from top to bottom, fantastic and how he proved everyone wrong who ever doubted him. However, with the conclusion to this album I can’t say that I whole heartedly feel that way.