Review Summary: No one will be clapping after this one.
After the release of 2000's
The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem cemented himself as a rap legend, releasing one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. Mr. Mathers mainly self-produced his fourth album,
The Eminem Show, and took a more personal twist to the lyrics. It wasn't as good as
Marshall Mathers, but it was still a great rap record.
And compared to
Encore, it's practically
Sgt. Pepper's.
Encore isn't Eminem's worst album. No, that honor will always go to
Relapse. But that doesn't mean
Encore is any good. Eminem has simply stopped trying on this album, replacing angry and violent tales about Kim for poop jokes. There are a tremendous amount of joke songs on this album, and that isn't necessarily a problem. However, the problem is that the jokes just
aren't funny. When you look at "The Real Slim Shady" or "Without Me", you can see that there are actually clever punchlines inside of their lyrics. If you look at, say, "Just Lose It", you get a fart sound in the first verse (which Em covers up by saying "Whoops, my CD just skipped! And everyone heard you just one rip!"), an entire verse describing him getting arrested for running around town naked, and thirty seconds of Marshall doing nothing but moaning "touch my body".
These "joke" songs are all smacked right in the center of the album, making for a heavily unpleasant experience, with one bad punchline hitting you after the next. There's "Puke", in which Eminem discusses his utter hatred of Kim over sounds of him vomiting in the toilet. "My 1st Single" has Mr. Mathers rapping with robotic vocals, all while burping and vomiting. Meanwhile, "Rain Man" features the utterly stupid and pointless chorus of "Hi, my name is... I forgot my name!", while talking about the homosexual overtones of football and golf. "Big Weenie" is essentially the '*** you, haters' anthem of the album, only stupider, rhyming "meanie" with "weenie". These lyrics would be cute coming from a five year old's mouth, but when these words are the product of Marshall's mind, there's a problem going on.
It's clear that Marshall didn't try at all on this album, making lazy raps that he knew would ensure him success. The most obvious case of this is "Ass Like That", one of the worst songs to ever come out of Em's mouth. A song that contains an annoying, inane club beat, Chinese-mocking-esque vocals and lyrics so immature that they're borderline creepy. Among these stupid lines include Em telling Gwen Stefani to piss on him, proclaiming his love for masturbating in a theater, and his love of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. As this point, his "jokes" no longer become tolerable, as "Ass Like That" is worse than the previous 7 songs combined.
There is, however, some shining moments in this otherwise worthless album, and they're mostly in the first section of the album. "Like Toy Soldiers", with its marching drum beat and Martika sample, reminiscent of "Sing for the Moment" off of
The Eminem Show, tells the tale of peace in the rap world, and trying to end all feuds. "Mosh", the political song of the album, is an anti-Bush track about pulling the soldiers out of the Iraq War, with dark synthesizers further conveying the mood that this is an anthem for everyone who feels the same as him. "Mockingbird" is the rap equivalent of "Hailie's Song", being a touching ode to his daughter, even if the lyrics are so goddamn sugar-coated it'll feel like you're listening to a kids' song.
Encore is where Eminem lost it. Maybe it was the drugs that did him in, or maybe it was his lack of effort. Either way, this will go down as one of Marshall's weakest efforts. Aside from the blunt profanity, it seems like Em was trying to appeal to ten year olds, with fart and poop jokes splattered throughout the middle of the album, making
Encore Em's most immature album. Although there are some good songs, there aren't enough to justify its existence. Maybe he decided to just lose it.
