Same Old Shtick

A lot has changed in the world since Eminem dropped 2004’s “Encore”. Barack Obama was a little known Senate hopeful delivering a star-making speech at John Kerry’s Democratic Convention. iTunes had just released a version compatible with PCs, MySpace recently switched from being a filehosting site into a social networking site, YouTube was a year from being launched, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King won Best Picture that year, Scott Peterson‘s murder of his wife Laci was the 2nd biggest news story of the year behind the elections.

And in the world of hip hop, 5 years is even longer than it is in the world as a whole. 5 years is close to being two generations in hip hop. During that time: Crunk hit its peak and then petered out, 50 Cent feuded then reunited several times with The Game in the G Unit soap opera, Diddy launched a few Making Of The Bands and seeks acting gigs now, the Stop Snitchin’ movement got so big it was on a 60 Minutes episode, Young Jeezy’s Snowman logo was banned from schools, Nas declared hip hop dead and then shocked everybody by threatening to name a record called the N-Word, Outkast finally won a Best Album Grammy for hip hop (even though it was for their worst album), Dr. Dre still didn’t release Detox....well, some things never change. But all of those stories feel like ancient history. People thought Dr. Dre having 3 years between his tracks on The Aftermath and Chronic 2001 was a lifetime, but Eminem is adding an extra 2. (Although it could be 10 years between 2001 and Detox the way things look which is like 800 years in hip hop.)

People actually thought Eminem retired after dropping his greatest hits package “Curtain Call”. He never gave an official confirmation one way or the other, but rumors swirled he was either going to be a full-time producer (oh please no!), act full-time, run his label full-time, or sit at home and do nothing since he was filthy rich and didn‘t need to work another day in his life. But then talk got around that Eminem wasn’t done rapping and was slowly but surely working on a new record that was rumored for a while to be entitled “King Mathers” (although he denied it and “King Mathers” is just a mix tape compilation of some of his remix appearances.)

So what was Eminem doing for 5 years? Not slaving away on perfecting his next record. He was actually too fucked up on pills to do much of anything. Eminem had always joked about being addicted to Vicodin and other assorted pills since “The Slim Shady LP” (there’s even a cartoon drawing of a Vicodin pill in the booklet.) But his addiction was no joking matter, he said he spent his days in a druggy daze not even being able to find the ability to get off of his couch to spend time with his daughter. He said one of the breaking points was when she discovered him passed out in his car which embarrassed him into wanting to seek treatment. But that was kept secret from the press, as his people told the world he had a severe case of pneumonia that required a lengthy hospital stay (although since most people who get sick enough with pneumonia to be hospitalized for weeks are either dying of cancer or AIDS, this set off a whole other line of rumors.)

But he’s back from the abyss and wants to tell us all about it. Eminem has been one of the rare emcees who will occasionally drop the bullshit bravado and open up to be a little vulnerable. In other genre’s of music that’s just typical songwriting, but in hip hop there is an unspoken rule that you must give an outward appearance of strength and bravado at all times. So when a rapper does break down and tell us about his weak points, like Eminem has his whole career, or Cage on the dark autobiographical “Hell’s Winter”, or even Bushwick Bill on “Little Big Man”, it‘s shocking.

The problem is, critics (especially the ass-licking review by Rolling Stone, which shockingly wasn’t written by professional celebrity rimjobber David Fricke) are overstating just how much Eminem opens up this time out. If we take reviews like the Rolling Stone piece, which compares “Relapse” to Richard Pryor baring his drug addicted soul for audiences, at face value going in, you’re going to be incredibly disappointed. Maybe 30% of the record takes a harsh look at Eminem’s drug addiction that derailed his life. The other 70% is Eminem by the numbers. Mocking harmless celebrities, murdering dozens, raping women (lots of raping actually), bitching about his mom, gay bashing, telling us fame sucks, et al. He even keeps in the fine tradition of joking about Christopher Reeve....even though Reeve was dead when “Encore” was released.

Now, the album isn’t as awful as “Encore” was. “Encore” was the audio equivalent of watching a once great athlete stay in the game too long and embarrass themselves by putting on a half-assed performance. “Relapse” is like when Michael Jordan came back to the Washington Wizards and showed a few flashes of brilliance in between showing why he’s not the Michael Jordan that he was when he left the Bulls the rest of the game. Fortunately for Eminem, hip hop in general is so abysmal that he ends up sounding better than he really is by default. He’s coming back to an industry where one of its most talented artists wrote it off for dead a few years ago and few disagreed with him. Where its biggest star is about to humiliate himself doing an awful rock album his own label has cold feet on releasing. Where a nerdy Jewish guy who was going to teach Elementary school is now one of the biggest rap stars of the year. Where “The Stanky Leg” is a smash hit. So yeah, basically Eminem just has to show up and he’s a god among men.

But what is so disheartening about the guy is that you know that he could do so much better. He has the potential to be the premiere social commentator of his generation. Yet his idea of social commentary is announcing he wants to suck Jessica Alba’s tits and wants to sodomize Kim Kardashian. You just get so frustrated because it’s so beneath him. It’s like watching a rocket scientist decide to work at Burger King making Whoppers the rest of his life. Eminem seems perfectly happy putting out formalistic records the rest of his life. While he’ll toss a few pieces of brilliance at you like “Mosh” or “Stan” or “Square Dance” or “Deja Vu”, the rest of his albums feel like before turning them in he sat down with a check list going “Let’s see, insulted starlets, check. Calling my mom a drug addict slut, check. Saying I want to murder Kim, check. Rape threats, double check. ‘Faggot’ quota filed, check. Tossing in lines about how much I love my daughter to balance it out, check.” It’s like you’re left being a fan of what he could be instead of what he actually is.

The record opens up with Dr. West an intro where Eminem is about to be released from drug treatment. Only the doctor doesn’t sound like he really cares if Eminem stays clean or not. Eventually he morphs into a demon-doctor offering Eminem some pills until his alarm clock goes off and we realize it was a dream sequence.

Next is the single 3am which finds Eminem discussing blacking out and murdering various people. It’s a standard Eminem murder track, but the lines about masturbating watching Hannah Montana should inflame some people. Okay, maybe just inflame Billy Ray Cyrus. But he’s basically done the same kind of statutory-rap about JoJo, Hilary Duff, The Olsen Twins, and Mandy Moore that it’s still generic Eminem all around.

Cue the obligatory Debbie Mathers song. My Mom finds him, not fantasizing about raping and murdering her, or accusing her of only caring about him when he got rich. But coming to the rehab realization that he turned out exactly like his mother, who he claims was a pill popper, so really he hates her because he hates himself. While that’s a new angle, the Marshall vs. Debbie feud jumped the shark when SHE put out a diss song against him in 2000, and then it jumped over the shark one more time in 2002 when he complained about her some more in “Cleaning Out My Closet” before making her a semi-fictional character in “8 Mile”. It’s just boring now. It has been explored from every angle, so even metaphors about her drugging his food as a child just fall flat as duds.

The most talked about song on the album is Insane, which has Eminem telling a tale of being molested by his step father. While a lot of people seem to believe it’s at least a half-way confessional piece, the “Paul” skit towards the end of the record writes it off as a total tasteless joke, when he says “The whole gay incest step father rape thing? I don’t even have your back on this one.” And the rape tales are done so cartoonishly that you have to wonder how anybody got fooled. If it was indeed a revelation, it would make Axl Rose screaming “MY FATHER USED TO FUCK ME UP THE ASS AT THE AGE OF TWO!” at a Rolling Stone reporter seem dignified. But it’s just Eminem’s new shock tactic trick: him as rape victim instead of rapist. Which since rape is such a popular topic on “Relapse”, I guess is the same trick as bashing gays but throwing Ken Kaniff, his homosexual alter-ego out as a defense.

One update to the Eminem package is Mariah Carey is the new Kim. On Bagpipes From Baghdad he turns his “YOU DUMPED ME WHORE!” wrath on the now Mrs. Cannon. Actually Kim isn’t mentioned once on the entire album, which is shocking since Em isn’t exactly known for abstaining from beating the proverbial dead horse. Eminem claims he dated Carey for 6 months in 2001, but for some reason has waited until 2 albums to make her a focal point. Although he did use her as a punchline on mix tape songs like the 50 Cent duet “Jimmy Crack Corn” where he said she was crazy and liked anal sex. He also takes some shots at her husband comedian Nick Cannon, which has now lead the two into getting into a pissing contest over Twitter and satellite radio for the honor of Mrs. Carey-Cannon. How 21st century.

Next up is Hello where Eminem gives a summary of what happened in his life between “Encore” and “Relapse”: pills, more pills, lots of sex, more pills. This is definitely one of the album’s highlights, as Eminem reminds the planet why he has one of the all-time greatest deliveries in hip hop. He unleashes the masterful flow we all missed, taking us through what a day was like for his pill head years: blowing through $300 worth of painkillers like it was nothing, spending hours on the phone searching for more, having to hide being zonked out on pills from people. Yet he also regrets having to get clean, making it an honest view of drug addiction: you know you have to end your personal hell by all reasoning, but you’ll still miss it. This is definitely Eminem at his finest.

But after that reminder of why he’s great, he then begins to remind us why he’s such a frustrating talent. The Tonya skit begins a long slide into “Eminem By The Numbers”, which I’ll refer to as The Generic Suite. Here Eminem abducts a female stranded motorist to rape and kill her. And the next tracks all follow suit of Eminem giving what people expect out of him instead of pushing boundaries.

Generic Suite #2 is Same Old Song And Dance, which as you can tell from the title is Eminem by the numbers. He’s boringly abducting and murdering fellow celebrity drug addicts Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears on wax to attempt to shock us. Basically all he has now is people like Bill O’Reilly giving an equally generic faux-outrage spiel over crap like this. Most rappers stick to a few plotlines to go over every single song, but it’s especially disheartening when someone you know could do so much better like Eminem wastes his breath rhyming about it.

We’ve all heard We Made You by now. It’s the “My Name Is”, “The Real Slim Shady”, “Without Me”, “Just Lose It” of album. Musically it sounds like an Amy Winehouse tribute, which is incredibly dated since the world is over her neo-60s Soul revival and descent into crack addiction by now. That was SO 2007, Marshall. He gets off a line about wanting to have sex with Sarah Palin. It’s sad that the last time out he put out a political condemnation of the Bush Administration on “Mosh”, and now he’s perfectly happy mining the “Nailin’ Palin” pun Larry Flynt ran into the ground over a year ago. Hell, he even references stealing Jennifer Aniston away from John Mayer, and they’ve been broken up for how long now? How old is this song? Do people even remember who Blake Civil Fielder is anymore? The whole song is one big TMZ time capsule.

Medicine Ball (geddit?!) is another Slim Shady ego-stroking song, bragging about how he’s so crazy the world is probably sorry he’s back. “I guess it’s time for you to hate me again”, goes the chorus. And the song has him raping, performing an abortion with a coat hanger, blowing up a balloon inside of a vagina. He also threatens to rape all of The Pussycat Dolls and urinate on Rhianna (although the reference makes me wonder if his label pulled any Chris Brown jokes. Or is he saving that for the second Relapse?) He tops the verse off with saying he’d like to Krazy-Glue Madonna to a recliner and says she looks so old she “looks like she outlived her life sentence.” Every trick in the offensive book gets thrown out here outside of 9/11 jokes. It ends with the second Christopher Reeve reference of the record, ending with Eminem doing an impression of Reeve threatening him. Yawn.

Stay Wide Awake is a filler track, slow with more tired rape & murder fantasies. He does compare himself to Mozart, though. Sorry, can‘t stay awake, this should have been cut. I’ve got to say it’s surprising that Dr. Dre produced all but one song on here. It’s by far the least imaginative Dre has sounded, most songs sounding like outtakes from Chronic 2001. But I will say throw away Dre tracks are far superior to most of the rest of the world’s beats today.

Old Times Sake has Dr. Dre nearly surprisingly hanging rhyming with Eminem. I never thought I’d ever hear Dr. Dre putting on a performance rapping impressively enough to rival Eminem, but he does here. Remember, this is the same guy who got told by Ice Cube “Hey yo, Dre, stick to producing” and not a single person raised an objection.

Must Be The Ganja ends the Generic Suite, with Dre and Em trading weed references and it’s pretty lackluster hearing somebody you know is sober bragging about getting high. If they wanted to do a weed track, why didn’t they call Snoop Dogg in? He can bust some rhymes for the Pussycat Dolls but he can’t drop a verse for Dre & Em?

With skit Mr. Mathers you are finally yanked out of the plodding Eminem by the numbers with a skit involving what appears to be Eminem half-dead from a drug overdose. With Eminem you can never tell what’s real and what’s just for the album, since he blurs fantasy and reality so strongly. But if he was as much of a drug addict as he says, it is very plausible this is based on a true story.

The strongest song on the record is Deja Vu, which deals with admitting his addiction weaknesses. Fortunately, unlike the lyrics of post-rehab albums like Metallica’s “St. Anger” he doesn’t toss out a bunch of 12 Stepper cliches as lyrics. Eminem tells the truth about how pathetic he was to pill addiction and should be praised for it. It’s nice to hear him cut the “rape ’n’ murder-athon” bullshit and deal with a touchy subject as an adult. He is nearing 40, after all.

After that artistic high point, things could only go down. And boy do they ever. Beautiful is nauseatingly awful. Eminem finds some obscure solo Brian May song and uses it as a sample. Let’s review: Brian May playing guitar = good. Brian May singing = not so good. If Eminem was ever put on trial for being a terrible producer, this song would be Exhibit A. He is a tremendous rapper, but all that time he has spent around Dr. Dre has done absolutely nothing for his production ability. All of his songs sound the same: campy sounding synths with some hokey 80s sample that you just feel embarrassed for him listening to. Obviously nobody held an addiction intervention for him, because a “stop producing” intervention would have come first. Lyrically it is also absolutely horrible. Celebrities pissing and moaning about “You have no idea how hard my life is!” never makes for good music, no matter who does it. Toss that in with Eminem using a “Walk a mile in my shoes” cliche for the chorus and even drops a “tears of a clown” reference and you really want to puke.

Another lackluster track with Crack A Bottle follows. The song just sounds like a half-baked way to get 50 Cent and Dre on a track together. I think this was only included (and released as a single) since it was leaked months before the album came out, with a version so raw it had Eminem rapping Dre and 50’s verses for them before they got to the studio. 50 Cent definitely phones this one in, proving once again that he only rises to the occasion if he’s talking shit about another rapper on a diss track.

Relapse has its own obligatory Steve Berman skit. If you remember in “Encore”’s Berman skit Eminem flipped out and shot him at the end. This time Berman bitches him out about being gone for 5 years and telling him his disappearance helped cripple the music industry.

Underground closes things. This song really feels like “Criminal” in a way. It becomes obvious listening to it Eminem is incredibly nostalgic for 2000 when the world hated him, because he goes out of his way on this one to get Homosexual groups to picket his concerts and record label again. But this time they seem pretty busy with the gay marriage drive and attacking Carrie Prejean, so they might not take the bait this time out. Hopefully they won’t to teach him a lesson that it’s time to grow up and while trying to be offensive and shock the world is cool in your 20s, in your late 30s a little maturity is a good thing. This entire song is Eminem crying out “Please protest me again so I can have to go to the Grammys this year with Elton John singing the hook to ‘Beautiful’ to prove I don’t really hate you people!”

And there you have it. A pretty lackluster record as a whole, but its strong songs are incredible so it’s worth checking out. As with all double albums, this December we’ll probably all be saying Em should have condensed all the good material into one really strong record. But hey, it’s his art, we’re just listening to it.

RATING: 3/5