(VOR News) – Over the past decade, critics have said Eminem has been eclipsed by younger rap artists.
Marshall Mathers’ only rival is his youth. Mathers’ ID without the ego was Slim Shady, the character who inspired his 1999 breakout album The Slim Shady LP and many subsequent successes.
The brattish, boisterous “I’m Back.” stood out. The Eminem Detroit rapper used a wicked jester persona to indulge in every prohibited thought, sexist fantasy, homophobic zinger, and drug-addled boast. We’re told this behavior is considered unacceptable today. His lack of effort was not the cause.
Mathers matured through sober albums like Recovery (2009) and Revival (2017), trying to confront a childhood of neglect and abuse.
Eminem Paul Rosenberg, Shady’s manager, said he thinks “more as a character.”
This conduct was modeled by Shady. The horror-movie plotline of his 12th album cleverly circumvents this ideological development by showing Shady’s return via a time-portal from 1999, where he becomes a super-villain.
In the music video for “Houdini,” a stressed Mathers, costumed as a superhero and resembling Del-Boy from the Only Fools and Horses episode with the inflated sex dolls, tells producer Dr. Dre, “He is attempting to have us cancelled!”
It sets the tone for an Eminem album that often seems like a bet on how many Caitlyn Jenner insults Mathers can squeeze into 65 minutes. The “Houdini” clip ends with a catastrophic incident that creates “some unholy hybrid” of the youthful, insolent Shady and Mathers’ older, paunchier self (51).
If this album was meant to let Mathers indulge in his earlier, purposely insulting vocabulary while fighting his Shady character, it’s the worst of both worlds.
The Eminem Death of Slim Shady’s ham-fisted tapping of buttons and ranting about “the PC police” and “Gen Z” hunting him like a Telegraph op-ed.
It appears anything is being done to get an answer. Mathers’ critics are “mad because they can’t tame me” in “Habits,” but these old routines aren’t trendy. On “Road Rage,” Mathers, like many others who talk about a “woke mind-virus,” rambles about pronouns and that his “dick just won’t expand” around trans people. All right, pal.
A few of his songs spoof Christopher Reeve, the Superman actor who was injured in a horse-riding accident in 2004 and died over two decades ago.
This is Weird Al’s LP-length spoof of Eminem.
Even Weird Al wouldn’t settle for “Houdini,” which plays the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” riff indefinitely, sounding like an unanswered cell phone ringtone.
“Houdini” is the album’s lowest point, although the other rhythms are dull. Another tension-filled single is “Tobey”. The song is named after Spider-Man’s protagonist, Maguire. Mathers takes the mike after BabyTron and Big Sean’s stellar verses, more than three minutes later.
Mathers’ Eminem rapping has his trademark sharpness of diction, but the subject is continuously downhill, without creativity, or delight.
Mathers’ fight between his two personalities ends in murder/suicide at three-quarters, and he awakens to say, “It was all a dream.”
The last few recordings change tempo abruptly. Mathers’ tribute to his daughter Hailie, his Eminem muse in his vulnerable times, “Temporary,” features Skylar Grey’s hook. Mathers fears he may die from addiction before seeing Hailie graduate or record her first podcast, which every father fears. The final song, “Somebody Save Me,” retains the dreary, mawkish tone.
The motif from “Habits” is expanded in this gloomy climax. In this regard, Mathers equates his Shady comeback to a substance relapse.
The spoof “All You Got” again references his addiction, popularity, and Shady Eminem persona: Mathers is told, “You were nothing until you discovered me.”
“You are incapable of surpassing me/You are incapable of surpassing my intellect.” The Freudian idea is intriguing, but a better record would have expanded on it. However, that would have required sacrificing a few Eminem and Caitlyn Jenner jokes, which he could not have.
SOURCE: IN
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