“I guess it’s time for you to hate me again,” – Eminem, Medicine Ball
Fifteen years ago this past February, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, trouble-loving rapper released his debut studio album and took the music world by storm. Fifteen years ago this past February, the world was introduced to Marshall Mathers, better known by his rap moniker of Eminem or his maniac alter ego of Slim Shady.
After many accolades including two diamond albums, thirteen Grammy awards, and the undisputed title of greatest rapper ever, Marshall Mathers has sealed his place in music history as not a king, but a rap god. He’s become a hero not just to aspiring rappers, but to people all around the world who have learned to be themselves solely because of his lyrics.
Five years ago, though, that may not have been possible. Eminem was gearing up for his comeback album, Relapse, which was set to be his first studio album comprised completely of original material since 2004’s disappointing Encore. This was his first album sober, as he had been relatively out of the rap game for five years with a drug addiction, the loss of his best friend, Proof, and just a lack of intrest in wanting to record.
“I wasn’t ready mentally. I wasn’t ready to give up the drugs. I didn’t really think I had a problem,” Mathers said about his drug problem to XXL weeks before Relapse‘s release in May 2009. “Basically, I went in, and I came out. I relapsed, and I spent the next three years struggling with it. Also, at that time, I felt like I wanted to pull back, because my drug problem had got so bad. I felt like, Maybe if I take a break, maybe this will help. I started to get into the producer role more… I can still be out there with my music, like with the Re-Up album, but I don’t have to be in the spotlight the whole time.”
It was an album that all hip hop fans were patiently waiting for, but would the former blonde bomber come through, or had Eminem’s time as rap’s head honcho gone and passed?
The album begins on a chilling note, as the now sober Marshall Mathers meets with his drug counselor, Dr. West (voiced by The Wire’s Dominic West), and discusses how to stay sober. Much to Eminem’s confusion, West tells him not to worry about going to meetings, admitting that even he doesn’t know the twelve steps, and even offering him Eminem’s sleep medication. Their discussion culminates in Dr. West revealing that he is Slim Shady; the demons that Eminem tried to bury upon becoming sober. An alarm sounds, and we the listener realize that it was all a dream. But for Mr. Mathers, the nightmare has truly begun.
The song quickly transitions into “3 A.M”, a mass murder tale that explains just how Eminem developed his sadistic, murder-loving tendencies. This is the first song of many on the record where Eminem’s wordplay and lyrcisim, traits many hadn’t seen at full power since The Eminem Show and the 8 Mile soundtrack in 2002. “You’re walking down a horror corridor/It’s almost four in the morning and you’re in a, nightmare it’s horrible/Right there’s the coroner, waiting for ya/To turn the corner so he can corner ya, you’re a goner, he’s onto ya/Out the corner of his cornea, he just saw ya run/All ya want is to rest cause you can’t run anymore, you’re done,” the now sober Eminem raps as he then talks about masturbating to Hannah Montana and killing his cousin in the bathtub.
Following “3 A.M.” is “My Mom”, the first of several tracks on the record that make the listener stop and shake their head. It’s not that it’s a bad song – the instrumental is actually one of the better ones on the album, and the break following the hook after the second verse is catchy – but it’s just the subject matter that annoyed the listeners. At this point, it’s been ten years since you started dissing your mother on record; do you really need to keep going? If Eminem really wanted to talk about how his mother’s drug abuse would lead him to doing the same, a mocking song isn’t the right place to do that. Next is “Insane”, which, as the title suggests, shows just how crazy the now-brown haired rapper is.
Except, all it talks about is being raped by his step father and hanging himself. This is definitely the old Eminem, and it works to perfection here – “Insane” is so disgusting and vile that it stands out on the record. A song that stands out for the wrong reasons, however, is “Bagpipes from Baghdad”, which features Eminem dissing his former ‘girlfriend’ Mariah Carey and her husband Nick Cannon over a middle eastern sounding beat with accents. “Bagpipes from Baghdad” is easily one of the weaker songs on “Relapse”, although it did lead to a beef between Mathers and Carey.
“Hello” is next, and while it’s nothing special, it’s definitely an improvement over “Bagpipes from Baghdad” and “My Mom”; his lyricism shines once again as the Detroit-raised rapper re-introduces himself to the world, a sober and different self. After “Hello” is the “Tonya” skit and “Same Song and Dance”, where Eminem raps about capturing and raping a girl he rescued from a thunderstorm, Lindsay Lohan, and Brittney Spears – I think that Dr. West should have also attempted to help him with his sick fascination for lynching a girl with sixty six inches of extension…cord.
Relapse featured a sober Eminem, much to the delight of friends, family, and fans.
Then, the album begins to take a bit of a wacky turn, and truth be told, it’s probably not for the best. “We Made You,” which is Relapse’s version of “The Real Slim Shady” and “Without Me” actually is a pretty good song, and even has an entertaining music video to go along with it! Seriously, there’s something about him trying to woo Sarah Palin that’s extremely humorous – that, and him and Dr. Dre mocking Star Trek; while it’s not up to the level that his other celebrity bashing singles were on, “We Made You” is one of Relapse‘s highlights.
And for a bit, the highlights disappear. “Medicine Ball” follows, and it disappoints massively. Eminem takes the entire third verse to mock former Superman actor Christopher Reeves, and while that’d be fine, Reeves had died in 2004, just weeks prior to the release of Encore. Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, even brings this up in an entertaining phone call skit similar to what we’ve seen on previous Eminem records.
A hybrid of “3 A.M.” and “Same Song and Dance” appears with track twelve – “Stay Wide Awake.” This song, right here, is partly why people hate on Relapse. It really is the same song as the two mentioned above, just with a different beat and different lyrics. Literally, any song that Eminem put on the Refill record (more on that below) would have been better than “Stay Wide Awake.” “Old Time’s Sake”, which features Eminem’s mentor Dr. Dre in a rare vocal appearance, somewhat makes up for it, but “Must Be The Ganja” is a track that really could have been a bonus track; it just doesn’t fit with the album, truth be told.
Then, the album picks up pace in a big way. “Mr. Mathers” is like the “Tonya” skit, a small skit that transitions into another song; this time, it’s “Deja Vu”, which is easily one of the best songs on this album. Here, we get an inside look at what being a drug addict is like, especially one with children:
“And you’d think that with all I have at stake/Look at my daughter’s face/Mommy something is wrong with dad I think/He’s acting weird again, he’s really beginning to scare me/Won’t shave his beard again and he pretends he doesn’t hear me/And all he does is eat Doritos and Cheetos/And he just fell asleep in his car eating Three Musketeers in the rear seat,” Eminem tells us on track sixteen. By all means, this could have been the best track on the album if not for one song – “Beautiful”.
Out of the hundreds of songs that Eminem has released in his years in the rap game, “Beautiful” may just be a top five pick. It is one of his deepest tracks, and it, quite frankly, makes the entire album. You can put whatever you want into words, but it’s not until you hear someone talk about how broken they feel about the fact that they’re struggling with addiction that you can truly empathize with them. It’s a look into the feelings of someone with depression, someone with addiction; someone who’s lost, just trying to find themselves.
“I’m just so fucking depressed, I just can’t seem to get out this slump/If I could just get over this hump but I need something to pull me out this dump/I took my bruises, took my lumps, fell down and I got right back up/But I need that spark to get psyched back up in order for me to pick the mic back up,” Em raps to start the song off, before beginning one of his greatest choruses in his long history as a rapper:
“In my shoes, just to see what it’s like to be me/I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes, just to see what it’d be like to/Feel your pain, you feel mine, go inside each other’s minds/Just to see what we find, look at shit through each other’s eyes/But don’t let ’em say you ain’t beautiful/They can all get fucked, just stay true to you/Don’t let ’em say you ain’t beautiful/They can all get fucked, just stay true to you.”
In an album filled with murder, rape, sex, drugs, incest, and twisted fantasies with an arm and leg amputee, it’s the realistic song that makes the album what it is.
The solid work in the album’s latter parts continies “Crack A Bottle”, a triplet between the ‘platinum trio’ of Eminem, Dr. Dre, and 50 Cent. “Crack A Bottle” is a throwback to “Encore/Curtains Down” off Encore; it’s a good song, not the best on the album, but certainly a solid song. I especially like Dr. Dre’s verse, but all three verses are great – this was when all three were actually making music, of course.
After “Crack A Bottle” is the Steve Berman skit, which is the album’s final skit. Newer Eminem fans might be confused upon hearing this skit for the first time, especially when Berman talks about Eminem shooting him, but it’s actually a throwback to The Eminem Show where Eminem shoots Steve Berman for no reason.
The final song on the album is “Underground”, which sees Eminem go absolutely berserk on a ferocious Dr. Dre instrumental. If Relapse was constructed entirely of songs like “Underground”, then this would easily be a classic album. The true highlight of the album, however, isn’t even Eminem’s comeback. At the end of Underground, we’re treated to Dr. West’s next It’s the return of Kenneth Kaniff from Connecticut, who raps about having sex with young boys and loving condoms on freestyles of “We Made You” and “My Mom” that disgust his fellow recovering addicts (I, along with others, really wonder what Ken Kaniff was in rehab for).
Welcome back, Mr. Kaniff!
Relapse also has two bonus tracks, and man, these tracks could have easily been on the regular tracklist. The first is “My Darling”, which chronologically takes place right after the “Dr. West” skit that begun the album. Here, Eminem merges with the “Slim Shady” alter ego everyone presumed had been killed at the end of Encore. When I said that “Dr. West” was chilling, that song is as peaceful as a choir song compared to this.
It works like this – the song starts up with Marshall Mathers waking up from a nightmare, and he’s trying to just mind his own business; Slim Shady doesn’t want to let him. The two go back and forth, and Em just doesn’t want the old Slim Shady to be a part of him. Arguing doesn’t work, logic doesn’t work, and shooting himself with a gun doesn’t work either, and it eventually ends with the two combining to form Eminem.
The other bonus track is “Be Careful What You Wish For”, and it’s exactly how it sounds – Eminem talking about how badly he wanted fame, and how it transformed him into something else, a monster that he didn’t want to be. Both tracks are great – I’m a bigger fan of “My Darling” because it deals with inner demons, something we can all relate to – but you can’t go wrong with either track.
For the sake of time, I’ll say this about Relapse: Refill – if Eminem had decided to include a track or two from Refill on Relapse, then this would be a completely different album for the better. The one song of note that I’ll recommend is “Taking My Ball”; despite it’s eye-opening lyrics that include Eminem shoving Tonka trucks and flashlights in people, it’s a song that would have been a fine replacement for, say, “Medicine Ball.”
Overall, this was a fairly well-received album by fans and critics. “Whether you listen to him for his wordplay or for the Pop singles, if you’re happy he’s back or you just miss the days with The Bass Brothers, love him or hate him, Eminem‘s mind-bending talents simply can’t be denied. Few, ever, can rhyme entire bars the way he does, let alone match his seemingly never-ending variety of flows and cadences,” HipHopDX said in their review of Relapse, while IGN praised the album, writing “After four years away from the industry – four years of incredible social change and personal upheaval – hip-hop icon Eminem returns with Relapse, an exceptionally well-produced, well-performed album.”
Relapse, at the end of the day, is an album that still stands out five years later; there’s some memorable tracks on here, and some forgettable ones. Without Refill and the two bonus tracks, this is probably a 3.5/5 star album, but the bonus tracks push it up. And while Relapse isn’t anywhere close to The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, or maybe even The Marshall Mathers LP 2, this is still a solid album that’s been underrated over the past few years. Relapse is better than Encore, both D12 albums, and one could even argue that it tops Recovery, of all albums.
How did you feel about Relapse? What was your favorite track? Least favorite?
Bump Magazine 