trey_stone's Full Review: Relapse [Clean] [PA] * by Eminem
It's been talked about a million times, but somewhere around 2004, Eminem officially lost the plot. We can hypothesize about the reasons -- hanging around with 50 Cent too much, intentionally making a sh!tty album to alienate his fans, running out of stuff to rap about, whatever -- but his last album "Encore" was generally indefensible for all but most the hardcore of stans. The most I can say in its favor is a few songs were so dumb they were funny. Otherwise, that album marked the clear beginning of Em seemingly actively trying to ruin his rap legacy.
Well, it's been five years, and you'd imagine Em might have a lot on his mind given what he's been through recently. The death of his friend Proof, drug addiction, the fact that his buddy 50 Cent's dropped two sh!tty albums. Too bad, then, that "Relapse" is the same old sh!t.
OK, so not exactly. Basically what Em's created here is a more graphic, disturbing version of "The Slim Shady LP" based on the whole relapse theme, given his recent recovery from drug addiction. The opening skit "Dr. West" sets it up: throughout the album Eminem portrays himself as someone who's just finished rehab, then immediately relapsed (!) and gone back to his batsh!t insane ways. Only where "SSLP" was appealing in how cartoonish everything was, "Relapse" ratchets up the horror factor to the point where all the shock value feels forced and not entertaining at all.
It doesn't help that Dr. Dre, who produced almost the whole album with help from various collaborators including Mark Batson and Dawaun Parker, hasn't had a good idea since 2006. Someone needs to find the guy some new drum sounds, cuz pretty much every song on here clanks and thuds around without going anywhere. Even when Dre tries to put spins on his usual post-G-Unit hard piano sound here -- a horror movie vibe on the eye-rolling homicidal fantasy "3am," an exotic feel that recalls circa 2000 Timbaland (only worse) on "Bagpipes from Baghdad" -- the results are as uninspired as his usual sound. Not that I'd say Dre's best beats have gone to Em, but his beats on "The Marshall Mathers LP" were effective given Em's rapping style. The beats on "Relapse" are just flat and lifeless, whether they put the focus on Em's rapping or not.
What's funny about "Relapse" is that Em's clearly aware of how played his act's become. He brings back the "Paul" and "Steve Berman" skits from his previous albums, and the latter's probably the funniest moment here, as an Interscope Records exec gives Em sh!t about how the album's just more of him b!tching about his life. It's obviously meant to preempt criticism, but it doesn't change the fact that he really doesn't have any interesting new ideas here. "My Mom" goes more in-depth than most of Em's past odes to how much he hates his mom, exploring the subject matter suggested with the "Munchausen syndrome" line from his past single "Cleanin' Out My Closet," but the obnoxious hook, plodding beat and Em's irritating delivery all seem designed to make you agree with his opening disclaimer "I know you're probably tired of hearin' about my mom." After that, Em dreams up a disgusting father-son molestation scenario for "Insane" that's actively disturbing to listen to, and not in a compelling way. I realize that songs like this and the drab celebrity-stalking "Same Song & Dance" are supposed to tie in with the album's whole theme of depicting Em as a drug-addled psychopath, but they're not songs I can imagine anyone but the most devoted of fans getting any real enjoyment from listening to.
Compounding all this is Eminem's flow. Even in the negative reviews of this album I've read so far, I've noticed a lot of "technically he's still got it" qualifiers. I guess that could maybe (big maybe) be true if you're someone who bugs out over multisyllabic rhymes and doesn't pay attention to much else, but I don't see how anyone can deny with a straight face that Em's actual delivery started to sharply deteriorate in 2004, and it hasn't gotten any better. He strains his voice too much, his flow has none of the intensity that used to make it good, his rhyming tends to sound choppy, and he uses too many stupid-@ss accents. If you can imagine what a rambling run-on sentence would sound like in rap form, that's essentially what Em's technique on most of this album calls to mind. I'm all for experimenting with different flows -- the best rappers do it all the time and Em's said he'd been trying to do that -- but the deliveries he's trying on here don't sound any good.
Amidst all the muck here, there are a couple of songs that suggest that Em hasn't lost all his talent. While "Beautiful" isn't an especially good song thanks to Em's monochromatic, dragging beat, it at least finds him emotionally venting about all he's been through in the past few years, even if his intentionally sullen delivery leaves something to be desired. And as easy as it is to give Em sh!t about throwing himself a pity party considering all the criticism he intentionally baits, it's the type of material he excels at when he does it right. "Underground" meanwhile finds Em recapturing a little of his old "Marshall Mathers LP" flow. But these songs only really stand out in the context of how bad the rest of the album is. "Underground" specifically suffers from an awkward, stumbling Dr. Dre beat that clashes with Em's flow, as well as incredibly forced shock value lyrics.
There's not much else worth discussing on "Relapse." "We Made You" is the umpteenth (and worst) celebrity-bashing Slim Shady single that finds Em completely ignoring Dre's leaden piano beat with a seriously irritating delivery, and "Crack a Bottle" sounds more like a generic 50 Cent single than an Eminem one (no surprise that Curtis guests on the track.) Outside of the uninspired Dre collaboration "Old Time's Sake," the rest of the songs here look at the whole relapse theme from different angles. If Em managed to pull this off in an inspired manner, it could've deaded criticism that he doesn't get personal enough, but as is it comes off as a bad gimmick, moreso when you consider that "Beautiful" is both the most personal and best song here.
What really kills "Relapse" is how detached from reality the whole thing sounds, from Dre's stale beats to the whole concept. It's as if Em didn't feel comfortable fully discussing what he's been through in the past few years, so he threw up the relapse concept as an excuse to conjure up a pale variation on his whole Slim Shady persona, rather than actually tackling his inner demons. Problem is, Em's most confessional songs tend to be his best, and here he's resorted to rehashing old gimmicks under a slightly different guise. And while I'm not exactly sure what other producer Em'd work well with, he needs to branch out beyond Dre, who's been going through a serious creative dry spell lately. It's gotten to the point where he's sounding as uninspired as the third-rate Dre knockoffs on the G-Unit production staff.
When all's said and done, big sales or no, "Relapse" is Em's worst album to date, and if it's all he can bring to the table after five years hip hop doesn't need him anymore. Sorry Shady. We'll always have those first three albums I guess.
Great Music to Play While: Wondering when a good summer hip-hop album's gonna drop.
Anticipation for Relapse has been building since fall 2008, when Eminem first announced the album title and debuted the freestyle, I m Having a Relaps...More at Buy.com
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