Review Summary: Eminem is the most bipolar motherfucker of all time.
Eminem is no longer who he used to be. His sense of humor, ear for beats, the way he talks, he is no longer the same rapper. At the same time, if you just read the lyrics word for word, he’s very much the same, he’s angry at his mom, Kim, and anyone seeing more success than he is, which means only the most successful of pop stars. His humor no longer centers itself around the horrible, sometimes incredibly imaginative tales that were completely relatable to his situation. Instead, this sort of realistic, dark humor, Eminem had replaced it with the certain silly, exaggerated persona on
Encore. But after realizing that Dre brought some of his blandest beats ever created and Em’s silly rhymes were some of the worst he ever wrote, Em soon spent five years stuck in a valium coma, and came back with a completely bipolar effort that switches from all of Em’s moods has had over his entire career.
Relapse shows potential for Eminem’s new blazing array of flows and occasionally some hilarious lyricism, but also shows that Eminem isn’t exactly consistent when it comes to writing songs anymore, and a certain accent almost derails the entire project.
Relapse benefits from two things, but other than Em’s revitalized self, there’s only one thing that consistently stays quality: Doc Dre’s beats. Dr. Dre, instead of putting the fuk back in funk like he did with G-Funk or just giving Em the regular recycled inconsistent productions that he has been making for Eminem since
Marshall Mathers LP, has chosen to go through his stash of quality beats and picked out some his truly quality material. The usually trendy middle eastern-styled synths of “Bagpipes from Bagdad” would usually fail in the hands of many other producers, but Dre’s bouncy and lively style of production manages to make it listenable and entertaining enough. Even some admittedly bad songs on the record, like “We Made You” and “Medicine Ball”, which contain some of Eminem’s worst lyricism since ever, are examples of excellent productions, with the former containing a sort of cartoonish, humorous aura that Em has been trying to portray in his productions for years, but consistently failed, and the later just bangs like any other of Dre’s productions for other artists, and it comes as a surprise if only because it seems as if Dre has been giving Em all of his filler tracks until just now.
In spite of Dre’s and Em’s effort,
Relapse is far from Eminem’s best effort, and rather shows itself as Em’s most inconsistent effort. His flow is rejuvenated and his lyrics are occasionally are just as vivid as they were before, his lyrics seem to lean on cheesy horror flick, and his annoying ‘foreign’ accent grates the mind of the listener further. Awful fillers like “Hello” and “Same Song and Dance” take their place as some of Em’s worst. At the same time,
Relapse doesn’t work much as an album, with some tracks that are completely new for Em (“Stay Wide Awake”), others take an
Encore level of ridiculousness to the next level (“We Made You”), and still others sound ripped from earlier albums (“Beautiful”, “Underground”). Ultimately the tracks that show a new Em or an older Em are the ones that stand as highlights, but when Em indulges too much on horror flicks or
Encore filler rhymes, he makes his worst songs as of yet. But for the moment, we get one of Eminem’s better moments of his career, and certainly one of his best moments involving beats. But be forewarned; the accent plagues
Relapse a good amount of time.
3.26 of 5
