I've given three albums good or decent ratings and now it's my job as a reviewer for you to take a look at what albums are total crap. Usually crappy albums come from artists and bands who are getting old. Metallica's Saint Anger and To the 5 Boroughs from Beastie Boys are good examples. Once Eminem gained success with The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show, he showed everyone that white people can rap. People have waited two years for his next album, hoping it would be as decent as The Eminem Show or better, but just like Saint Anger and To the 5 Boroughs, it came out as total crap. Because Encore is his fourth album, this shows that Eminem has gotten old pretty quickly after about five years. He dropped five hits off this album, yet it fails to show that white people can rap. If you want more proof on this information, read the tracklisting below.
Tracklisting:
01. Curtains Up - This track has the same name as the first track on The Eminem Show. In this version however, while the curtains rise up the audience screams "Eminem! Eminem!". It's a good intro, but it leads right into...
02. Evil Deeds - A strange and cheesy first song for the album. Eminem explains throughout the song that he doesn't work for Satan, even though he is disliked by many people. I like the beat, but his rhymes just can't pull through for me to really like this song and the rhymes are what really matters in a Rap album.
03. Never Enough - Just two and a half minutes of Eminem rapping with 50 Cent and Nate Dogg. This track's definitely filler.
04. Yellow Brick Road - Eminem tells what he hasn't told before about his past. I like how some rappers rap about their life, but this guy does it too much. This song also seems to drag on and is not one of my favourites here.
05. Like Toy Soldiers - The third single on this album, explaining how there's tons of violence in the Rap industry. A good choice for a single, however I don't like Rap a lot.
06. Mosh - The album's first single. This song makes every track before it suck, because everything about it is good. Em's lyrics against George W. Bush are amazing, although they never helped make John Kerry win the 2004 election and even though the background vocals in the beat sound almost like the ones in White America off the Eminem Show, this song makes a good download if you missed the video when it aired.
07. Puke - After a really good song comes a really bad song. Eminem tries writting a love song to his ex-wife Kim and it just doesn't work out. Never write love songs to exs. That would just make your track skippable.
08. My 1st Single - Mosh was already Encore's first single, so why does Track 8 have this name? This is actually a song about picking an album's first single. The beat's good here, but the tone of Em's voice is hard to understand and some of his rhymes are too bizarre to make this a great song.
09. Paul (Skit) - On this particular Eminem album, you won't find Steve Berman or Ken Kaniff. The only person left to do skits on is Paul Rosenburg, who has made skits since The Slim Shady LP. In this skit, Paul calls Em, telling him that Michael Jackson might get offended by the video for Just Lose It. So what? Eminem has offended too many people as a rapper.
10. Rain Man - This track's funny, but it also has rhymes that are kinda crappy. This is the moment when Eminem introduces his new name. He's already given himself enough names to be called by and this song definitely shows how Em gets old pretty quickly. You know your rhymes have gone stale if you say stuff like "Is it gay to play putt-putt golf with a friend..." and "I don't know how to put it. This is the only thing that I'm good at".
11. Big Weenie - Eminem conducts an experiment on a bully to make him show his real self. This track is filled with so much stupidity that it's another song you can skip.
12. Em Calls Paul (Skit) - Em replies to Paul's call in a robotic voice, saying how he liked Michael Jackson when he was black, but doesn't like him anymore because the plastic surgeons turned him into a freak. Speaking of Michael Jackson, here's...
13. Just Lose It - The second single this album had. It became controversial not because of the song, but because of the video. Just like My Name Is, The Real Slim Shady, and Without Me, this is another dance hit, but Eminem saying "Guess who's back, back again?" when he's already back for the third time is another factor showing how he's already gotten old. At least this is a pretty decent song.
14. Ass Like That - Usually it's hard for me to pick what my favourite song on an Eminem album is. For this album though, it's an easy one... Ass Like That. Instead of pretending to be black, Eminem pretends that he's a horny Asian rapper, rapping about every female celebrity he sees and how he's avoiding the police while doing that. The only bad things I have to say about this particular track is how it can be racist to many people from Asia and that Em is obsessed with saying the words "pee" and "pee-pee" on this song. It's the best song on the album in my opinion, because it's Eminem's funniest and I never knew that this would become his most recent hit. Download it if you haven't heard this gem.
15. Spend Some Time - Eminem, Obie Trice, 50 Cent, and Status Quo rap about hoes. Another stupid song worth skipping.
16. Mockingbird - After Mosh, Just Lose It, and Like Toy Soldiers, I never thought Eminem would get another hit. He did however and this was his fourth hit. It's another song he wrote for Hailie, but it's one of the album's best moments, except for the fact that Em drops the f-bomb near the end of the song. Kinda upsets the mood.
17. Crazy In Love - Just like Puke, it's another stupid love song you can avoid.
18. One Shot 2 Shot - A track on shooting people. I thought Eminem was against the violence in Like Toy Soldiers. D-12 make their appearance here, making this sound like a song that didn't make it on D-12 World and I don't like most of the songs this Rap group writes anyway.
19. Final Thought (Skit) - You'd think the curtains are about to close, but they manage to open up for...
20. Encore (Curtains Down) - A decent title track. Didn't really care about 50 Cent and Dr. Dre showing up, but after all that rapping you get suprised when Eminem says "Peace out!" and goes around shooting people just like in One Shot 2 Shot. Finally, Em goes into the robotic voice saying "See you in Hell, f**kers!". That album might have been mostly crap, but it needed an amusing way to end it.
Rating on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best): 4
Content Rating: Parental Advisory: Explicit Content
