Relapse - Eminem

It's finally here. It seems like I've been waiting for this forever, but the fifth major album, Relapse, has finally dropped legally despite being leaked a few weeks ago. I don't want to brag, but I must have listened to this about four times in the past 72 hours in order to soak it all in. So far, the critics have not reached a consensus on whether to praise or pan Eminem's latest opus. While Rolling Stone rated it a 4 out of 5 stars, and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-, PopMatters Webzine only rated it a 3/10. In my opinion, this effort falls in the middle. Eminem proves again he's a fantastic lyricist, Dr. Dre created terrific beats, but there is something that is missing. Something is out of sync. Anyone who has listened to any of Eminem's best albums like The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP or The Eminem Show can tell something makes this album seem sub par.

Let's begin with this crazy new accent Eminem's putting on. On most of the album, Eminem has this really weird delivery. I can not imagine why he would do this other than to piss even more people off except it allows him to rhyme words that wouldn't rhyme otherwise. I guess using an accent with a mid-central vowel sound, Em can rhyme "mom" and "valium" much easier. Well, if I wanted to hear Sean Paul, for example, I would be listening to ... Sean Paul. Hmmmm. No, I haven't hit the nail on the head. It actually sounds more like Sean Paul doing an impression of an Afghan exchange student on St. Patrick's Day. I actually was relieved when Eminem did an impression of Christopher Reeves on "Medicine Ball" and temporarily saved me from this corniness. This new flow is asinine, it's absurd and it's absolutely annoying after 15 minutes straight. Unfortunately, I will tell you that out of 20 tracks, he plays with the accent on half of them — and out of the rest, five of the remaining tracks are skits. Get used to it if you want to listen all the way through the album.

Relapse has several distinctive themes. Eminem verbally abuses Hollywood starlets through Ed-Gein-like murderous fantasies, pokes fun at his past motifs like his mother's abuse, and addresses his struggles to stay clean of drugs and alcohol. These serial killing fantasies border on Silence-of-the-Lambs-esque in how creepy Eminem is willing to sink. Either as a symbolic "relapse" in showing how primitive and inhuman one can become when succumbing to drugs or trying to shock his audience into laughing at things they probably would feel guilty laughing at in retrospect. If you remember "Kim" from the Marshall Mathers LP, this act of degrading and then killing people like Lindsay Lohan is both lighter and darker at the same time. In this way, the first half of the album resembles a campy horror movie. A young boy is abused by his step-father and ignored by his mother who, much like Eminem's public now, sees no need to care about him anymore. Although he wants to avoid taking drugs like his mother, instead he does so and becomes a monster. From "3 a.m.," in which he becomes consumed with blood lust, to "Song & Dance," in which he hunts down and kills young girls, the tone becomes borderline disturbing. If not for the catchy "We Made You" that declares Eminem is just having a laugh, even Charles Manson would think he needs psychiatric attention (maybe he still does).

The album seems to be bipolar in it's tone, much like the personas of the id Slim Shady and the superego Marshall Mathers that combine to create Eminem's personality. Slim Shady elevates his previously sinister acts to a hyperbole. In "Must Be the Ganja," Slim says, "How many people you know can name every serial killer who ever existed in a row, / Put em in chronological order beginning with Jack the Ripper, / Name the time and place from the body the bag the zipper, / Location of the woods where the body was dragged and then dumped, / The trunk that they were stuffed in, the model the make the plate and which model which lake they found her in, /and how they attacked the victim, / Say which murder weapon was used to do what and which one, which knife and which gun, what kid, what wife, and which nun?" (note: The answer to this question is Slim Shady). He elevates the serial killer act even more in "Underground": "Captain of a cult, with an elite following to turn Halloween back into a trick or treat holiday / Have Micheal Myers looking like a liar, swipe his powers / Replace his knife with flowers and a stack of fliers / Hit Jason Voorhees with 40's / Stuck a expository up his ass and made him tell me a story / Gave Hannibal Lecter a fucking nectarine / Sat him in a fucking fruit and vegetable section and gave him a lecture / Walked up elm street with a fucking wifflebat drew / fought Freddy Krueger and Edward Scissor Hands too / Came out with a little scratch, ooh / Looking like a got in a fucking pillow fight with a triple fat goose."

But the Marshall Mathers side comes out, too, in the best tracks pound for pound on the album: "Deja vu" and "Beautiful." In "Deja vu", Mathers struggles to get the monkey off his back and staying sober while trying to raise his two girls: Hailie Jade, his daughter, and Alaina, a niece in his custody. On "Beautiful," Eminem shows how hard it is to remain oneself in the limelight and how he could not have achieved everything he has now without being true to himself.

But, aside from that, this album serves as an experiment into where hip-hop goes even beyond gangsta. It is truly an adventure into the heart of darkness where some of us may not be able to go. It is torturing, shocking, and even tempting. But should this be celebrated? It could be. But that accent, man. Wow. I just cannot get past it. This is a good album for the gym or the car ride, but when you sit down and listen to it, anyone can tell Eminem was putzing around. Have fun, man, but not so much that it makes the product start to suck ass. I want the old Em back for the whole album on the next one, not just for a few songs.

3.5/5