Heccubus.Blog

Like most people who download music and enjoy hip hop, I picked up an early leak of Eminem’s “return” album Relapse a couple of weeks ago. Unlike most of these people, however, I was genuinely excited to hear it. I mean, Christ, I actually liked Encore. Sure if you hold it up against Em’s first two albums, it’s absolute garbage, but at its core there was a solid, enjoyable–if a tad imbalanced–record there. It was his usual mix of witty barbs, comic tomfoolery, and searing hatred for all of mankind. Yup, it was, indeed, an Eminem record. And at the time, that hadn’t quite gotten old yet. However, since the release of the underrated Encore, five years have passed. Five years of silence from the Mathers camp, outside of his usual headline-grabbing outrageousness. Five years without a mildly amusing joke track that gets overplayed to the point of being infuriatingly unfunny; five years without an angry, bitter hate track about Kim, his mother, or both; five years without a touching ode to his daughter. For five full years, we heard nary a peep out of the man, aside from popping by occasionally to rain down upon us a shower of news about his glorious return, to be entitled Relapse. In the meatime, all we had from Mathers was a bunch of shitty, boring production for other artists, and a lot of empty promises.
So a year or so passes with the usual shit that we’ve all come to expect from the hip hop industry when it comes to announcing one’s comeback. We were fed delays, excuses, and long lapses of silence for a while, and eventually everyone just sort of stopped caring. And can you blame them? The rumour mill started churning with news of a new Eminem album as far back as fall 2007, thanks to a Cashis-fueled assertion that a new album entitled King Mathers would be out by year’s end. Thank fucking God that it never happened. As Mathers continued to isolate himself from the world, consumed by the death of his close friend Proof and an addiction to prescription drugs (not to mention marrying and divorcing Kim….again), the idea of another Eminem album became a bit of a stretch. Hell, I half figured he’d wind up dead. But no, after all these years of (maybe, I guess) waiting, we’ve finally been graced with the presence of Eminem’s return, the bloated mess of shitty beats and “been there done that” rhymes that is Relapse.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert on hip hop, be it music-wise or culture-wise. What I can say for sure, however, is that I am well aware of the fact that my opinion of this album may not be a popular one. Additionally, I also know that it could very well be a popular opinion. At this stage, it is becoming apparent that Relapse may be the most divisively reviewed album of the year. Frankly, on my first listen, I made it through about 4 or 5 tracks before I just had to shut it off, and hope that my ears would forget what had just been forcibly crammed into them. I suppose I should have seen this coming, but Relapse is just more of the same old shit from Mathers. We get the goofy, “funny” track that will no doubt be played so much on the radio that it just gets driven into the ground. We get all the angry, bitter, “I hate you mom/Kim” tracks. And we get the heartfelt ode to his daughter, I’m sure, though I was not able to stomach enough of the album to get that far into it. Those tracks usually come in a bit later, mind you. It all just sort of leads me to ask “why?” Why would anyone, particularly someone who is as cynical about mainstream music as myself, expect something new from a man who has made millions off of releasing the same album five times now? Why would he bother to mess with what is basically a winning formula? Why would anyone actually subject themselves to listening to this?
Okay that last one isn’t all that fair, in reality. I’ve been finding myself quite surprised to find that the album is receiving some very positive reviews. Allmusic.com even went so far as to give it 4/5 stars. It has also inspired some fairly strong responses to my own opinions of it, which I suppose I find even more surprising. A user on RateYourMusic.com, a record cataloging website that I use felt the need to respond to me directly via a private message. The exchange, I felt, was quite amusing. Here, in full, is my initial review of the album that caused this poor lad so much grief:

I know I know you’re probably all tired of hearing about my mom” he says. Yeah. We fucking are. I made it four songs into this pathetic mess, and can tell you now that I am never putting this album on again.

Okay, it seems pretty…bitter? I’m not sure, but regardless, it is important to note that for a brief, negative record review from me, this is comparatively tame. However, it inspired one of the album’s admirers so that he felt it necessary to try and…I don’t know I guess he was trying to call my bluff or something:

Do you often review albums after listening to less than a handful of songs?

I’ll make sure to ignore all your reviews in the future.

Now, not only is it wise to note that his account has been deleted by an administrator since sending this (I won’t even bother posting my admittedly incredibly dick-ish reply), but also that this album, this flaming pinnacle of mediocrity–which if I recall, he awarded a 4.5/5 rating–inspired such rage in an individual in response to my negative opinion of it, that he felt the need to confront me directly and “threaten” to never read any of my reviews again. Oh horror of horrors, right? The point is though, Eminem is turning into a career failure in my eyes. He hit high so early with his first two records, and the quality of his music has been steadily declining since then. And in despite of all of this, the man still seems to have some kind of lasting appeal, something that I don’t think anyone expected when he burst onto the scene with “My Name Is” in 1999. For someone who seemed so destined for One Hit Wonder status, it’s shocking to think that he is now a multi-platinum selling artist who has been in the mainstream eye for a decade. And why?
Examining Em’s output is like examining a terminal cancer patient’s health. It’s just a steady, remarkably steep downward slope. [Okay, ouch. Sorry, cancer people. --Heccubus] There’s so little hope at this point that it will ever go back up that we might as well just give up on him and let him drift away in peace. [Okay, last cancer joke, I swear. --Heccubus] The quality of his work has dropped off quicker than any other major “what the fuck happened?” artists that immediately spring to mind in my head. Even bands like Black Sabbath, The Misfits or Iron Maiden, bands whose sudden drop in musical quality are almost legendary, enjoyed success over years and years before declining into middling, sub-par material. Em’s slope began almost immediately after his career high, The Marshall Mathers LP. It could probably be argued that he has a lot more mainstream appeal than other rappers because, well…at the risk of being taken the wrong way, he’s white. That doesn’t by any means mean that he’s better for it (he’s not), but it definitely helps the industry sell him. On top of his suburb-friendly exterior, let’s face it, it ain’t hard to market an angry white rapper to a bunch of angry white teenagers. Even though Mathers has been spewing the same ludicrous hyperbole since day one, teenagers still eat it up. “Whoa, you hate your mom? I totally hate my mom too!” It’s easy to see his lasting influence when you consider something that simple.
I digress, however. My problem with Eminem now is with his inability to come up with something new to say. Do we need more songs about how much he hates Kim? No, of course we don’t. Remarrying her was a fucking stupid idea, and as a direct result of this stupid fucking idea, we are now likely going to be treated to another three or four albums of him bitching about how much he hates her. Do we need more songs about how much he hates his mother? Absolutely not. We get it, Marshall. You had a shitty childhood. So did lots of other people. They, however, are not quite so lucky to have made millions of dollars complaining about it for five multi-platinum albums. More songs about your daughter? Ah why not? Most of them are pretty cute, and some go so far as to be touching at times, despite the insane bent that they often dwell on. The “funny” songs? Oh dear God no. I think Eminem’s humour became stale about 8 years ago after we all got fed up with “The Real Slim Shady”. It will never cease to amaze me that he consistently releases the exact same “funny” song as the first single from every album, followed by a string of serious, supposedly hard-hitting singles. And while it’s true that tracks like “The Way I Am” have an impact on the listener (assuming they enjoy his music, I mean) the impact tends to wear off when the message is drilled home repeatedly for a decade.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bitter, jaded cynic. Maybe none of what I’ve rambled on about here even makes any sense. Hell, the topic has shifted so many times here that I’m not even willing to scroll back and edit this mess. Regardless of everything I’ve said here, yeah I still like Eminem. I’ll still be anticipating Relapse 2 if it’s actually going to happen. The problem, though, is that much like the last 3 releases, I’ll probably wind up being let down again, and then sitting on the Internet bitching about it to whoever will listen.