Holy Unsurpassable Musical Disaster of Epic Proportions!
I mean, who would have thought…? No, it can’t be! Even when the signs of decline showed in The Eminem Show, even when he had 50 Cent signed to Shady/Aftermath and indirectly kicked off the dreaded G-Unit era, even with his participation in the nauseating D12 single “My Band,” and even with his new-found penchant for laughably trying to be “gangsta,” somehow I thought that, maybe, just maybe, Eminem, a member of the pantheon of hip-hop greats, was not *ahem* losing it, that it was just a phase that would soon end.
Well, the phase didn’t end. Instead it went on and birthed the worst album of Eminem’s career – the universally panned, the doo-doo stain on an otherwise glittering career, the absolutely shocking (and this time, less because of outlandish punchlines than outright mediocrity), Encore.
Let me just make this clear – the only good songs in this album are “Never Enough”, “Yellow Brick Road”, “Like Toy Soldiers” and “Encore”. That’s it. That’s…it! I’m sure everyone has heard of “Like Toy Soldiers”, in which Eminem samples Martika’s airy hit “Toy Soldiers” to create a moving report on the beefs his Shady/Aftermath/G-Unit camp endured with Murder Inc. and The Source magazine, and his profound willingness to make peace. “Yellow Brick Road” focuses on a specific aspect of one of the beefs, as Eminem explains the story behind the origin of those infamous racist tapes that he made when he was seventeen, and which were sold along with a Source issue in CD format by his sworn arch-rival Benzino. Over Dre’s banging pad-propelled sound bed, Em spiritedly evaluates his legacy in hip-hop in “Never Enough”. And “Encore”, which is a beautiful mesh of rock guitar and piano produced by Dre, has protege and mentor trading battle rhymes in a cryptically jovial manner, like as if they are oblivious to the musical havoc preceding them.
And even as good as these four songs are, they are second-tier at best. There is no way anyone would ever put them among Eminem’s best. For example, the Em-produced music of “Yellow Brick Road” is rather skeletal and slow-paced, with these weird keyboard violin sounds and a spluttering drum kit. And Eminem’s reaction to the discovery of those tapes is akin to a child who breaks a lamp in the living room and does not say anything until he is compelled to confess when his parents confront him with the deed. Even if he should be commended for doing so, it’s still rather pathetic to hear him apologize after all these years (“And for that I apologize/I was wrong”). And as for “Never Enough”, why does anyone have to endure a mush mouth-delivered verse from 50 and an undistinguished hook sung by Nate Dogg? That brings me to the best metaphor I can use to describe Encore – with some good songs at the beginning, then another good one at the end, it is like a Swiss roll, only that the famous cream filling in the middle is replaced by excretion. So when you bite into it, most of what you taste is a bunch of s**t.
Well, at least there are good songs in Encore, and “good” is the last adjective that crosses my mind when I listen to the rest of this poor excuse for an album. “Mosh” comes close to leaping over the “average” hurdle, but the plodding Dre beat goes nowhere at all, and Eminem merely spouts the routine liberal mantra against our beloved (psych!) President George W. Bush, with a flow so stilted and anticlimactic that I wonder why Em even bothers yelling the lyrics.
But surely we cannot be that surprised, can we? I mean, we all saw it coming, even if we did not necessarily want to admit it. A problem with Eminem is that he really does not have much to say, and that puts him in the same topical realm with a handful of other rappers. “Eminem talks about real issues…he doesn’t talk about bling and b***hes all the time, like other rappers do…,” blah, blah, blah. I’m sick to death of hearing that tired premise - Eminem has been talking about hardly anything else but his ex-wife, mom and daughter throughout his career! Yeah, “Mockingbird” is actually a pretty sweet song, but it’s essentially “Hailie’s Song, Part II.” Eminem literally sings yet another song about his undying hate for Kim in “Puke”, and I bet you a thousand dollars he put a lot more effort into the vomiting sounds than the lyrics. “Every time I think of you now, all I wanna do is puuuuuuke,” eh? Every time I hear this song, I wanna puke, too! Oh goodness, he does the same thing in “Crazy in Love” – singing his a*s off about Kim, only this time, he absolutely butchers the Heart song that he samples the beat from to create a truly cacophonous mess.
And when he’s not tormenting Kim and smothering Hailie with love, he unleashes that Slim Shady character. At this point, it’s just too predictable to be shocking anymore. Oh, wow, he talks smack about the recently-deceased Christopher Reeve again in “Rain Man”! How shocking! And oh, he’s actually dissing Triumph the Insult Comic Dog by impersonating him in “A*s Like That”! Genius! And, oh, oh, oh, he takes a swipe at Wacko Jacko’s child molestation case in “Just Lose It” – talk about kicking a man while he’s down! I mean, it is so bad that he quickly descends into self-parody, like in “My 1st Single”, where he tries to create his traditional goofy first single for his album; and the actual first single, the horrid “Just Lose It”, where he re-creates an 8 Mile scene by battling himself! Thus he finds the excuse for derivative drivel such as this:
Snap back to reality, look it’s B. Rabbit! Yo, you signed me up to battle? I’m a grown man! Chubba chubba chubba chubba chubba chubbie! I don’t have any lines to go right here, so chubba teletubbie!
By Shango, this guy has lost it – yes, pun intended! He has absolutely nothing new to say! And while at one time he could actually shock and make people laugh at his silly lines, which are an Eminem album staple, in Encore they instead come off as childish, juvenile and half-baked, especially coming from a 32-year old man. The guy actually makes farting and defecation noises in “My 1st Single”, for goodness’ sake! It’s like his well is dry; his bag of tricks is empty. When he asserts that he's "done touched on everything, but little boys!" ("Just Lose It"), and he admits that he just "did a whole song that [he] didn't say s**t!" ("Rain Man"), I cannot help but agree with him.
But wait a minute, I must be forgetting something…ahh, I got it! The production, of course! Well, I don’t know where the Bass brothers are, but they have been largely M.I.A. since The Marshall Mathers LP. That leaves Dr. Dre and Eminem to take care of all the beats in Encore. But it’s the same minor-key productions they have been delivering for three albums straight, and it sounds so flat and monotonous it is simply depressing. Far from the sonic richness of N****z4Life and The Chronic - and even Eminem’s first two major-label albums - this is probably some of the worst production work Dre has ever done. How on earth could Dre ever explain the painful starkness of numbers like “Mosh” and “Rain Man”? In the latter, it is so sparse that it almost sounds like he is using only a bass line and a drum. What ever happened to the intricacies of his G-Funk work of the Death Row era, or his musical resurgence of the late '90s and early 2000s? And Eminem only exacerbates the problem, with music like the bland dark piano-driven “Big Weenie” or the depressingly snail-paced and gloomy “Spend Some Time” or the annoying clutter of odd sounds in “My 1st Single”. In fact, since “Big Weenie” immediately follows “Rain Man”, the similarities between the two songs raises the questions: Who’s following who? Is Em merely following the recent producing methods of his mentor, or is Dre following the syncopated and decidedly unfunky methods of his protege? Whatever - the music in Encore stinks in general.
And while I’m on the subject of production, Em still has the nerve to include those annoying skits that have plagued his albums from day one, especially childish ones like him taking a dump in the toilet (“Em Calls Paul”). Oh well, at least Ken Kaniff does not show up this time.
The bonus disc (Deluxe Edition) does not help matters, either. Not only does it add more unnecessary minutes to an excruciatingly long running time (it pumps Encore’s duration up from 78 minutes to 89), it is just more of Eminem’s tired rambling about his wife (“Love You More”), a boring semi-account of his road to superstardom (“Ricky Tic Toc”), and a tepid socio-political outtake on the Second Amendment – complete with the infamous “I’ll rather have the President dead” line (“We As Americans”). And all three songs contain the same old stiff boardwork expected from Em. Yep, nothing but more crap.
But for all of Encore’s myriad problems, perhaps none is more distressing than the state of Eminem’s technical skills. Point blank, this guy has fallen off, and I’m just being nice here. His rhymes are no longer complex and interlocking, and his enunciation and delivery are no longer razor-sharp. Instead his tone has grown more nasal, his words have almost been reduced to mumbling, he has developed this really irritating habit of singing a lot of his choruses (no, he will never be Nate Dogg), and his rhymes have fallen to the doldrums of simplicity. Not that D12, Stat Quo or 50 Cent are lyrical geniuses, or that Obie Trice is a horrible wordsmith, but none of the guys from the Shady/G-Unit camp seem to help out their comrade in the sleep-inducing ode to lust - “Spend Some Time” - or the shock-jock violence of “One Shot 2 Shot”. Maybe no one could have helped Em but himself. I mean, how can anybody explain going from the epoch of lyrical superiority to utter crap like this in “My 1st Single”?
So f**k a chicken, lick a chicken, suck a chicken, beat a chicken Eat a chicken like it’s a big cock, big-a big cock! Or suck a d**k and lick a d**k and eat a d**k and stick a d**k in your mouth I’m done – you can f**k off, f**k-a f**k off!
Oh dear.
Em just doesn’t seem to give a rat’s a*s anymore. Need proof? He has this recurring theme throughout the entire album, where he seems to be preparing for one last show, starting from the dressing room and following him all the way to his appearance before a cheering crowd. The CD label itself reveals Em’s suicide note, in which he issues an apology to his fans, right before he blows his brains out at the end of the show – and thus, the album. Regardless of whether this is the end for Eminem or not, or if his suicide on wax is meant to be taken metaphorically or not, his move with Encore is shameful, not to mention cowardly. It is like he is coasting on his reputation, satisfied with his stagnant subject matter and album-making methods, and either refuses or is unable to evolve further as an artist. And it is safe to theorize that he never realized his full potential, incapable of releasing a classic album worthy of his lyrical genius. Let’s hope he can recover from this major blow to his musical reputation and legacy. If not, there might not be a more fitting epitaph than Erick Sermon’s words from EPMD’s “I’m Housin’”: “What a way to go out – out like a sucker!”
TRACK LISTING:
1. Curtains Up 2. Evil Deeds 3. Never Enough 4. Yellow Brick Road 5. Like Toy Soldiers 6. Mosh 7. Puke 8. My 1st Single 9. Paul (Skit) 10. Rain Man 11. Big Weenie 12. Em Calls Paul (Skit) 13. Just Lose It 14. A*s Like That 15. Spend Some Time 16. Mockingbird 17. Crazy in Love 18. One Shot 2 Shot 19. Final Thought (Skit) 20. Encore 21. We as Americans * 22. Love You More * 23. Ricky Tic Toc *
* The Deluxe Edition comes with an extra CD with three tracks. Not that it makes a bloody difference...
ENCORE is multi-platinum recording artist EMINEM s first full album of new material since 2002 s THE EMINEM SHOW, which spawned the hit singles Withou...More at Buy.com
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