This return visit has been inspired by Eminem. I'd picked up a copy of Eminem's Kamikaze at CD Exchange and, as with most of his albums, it's good, even great, and almost a classic but not quite; and it occurred to me that it's strange how such a genuinely phenomenal lyricist and top shelf beatmaker has never quite delivered a classic album where even Spice 1 - off the top of my head - has at least four to his name; although admittedly I haven't listened to Infinite in a while, so it's probably that one if it's any of them. With every single album, Eminem always comes so close but somehow never quite gets there, and it's taken me a long fucking time to work out why that might be, or why I think that might be. It's the combination of his delivery with his beats - inordinately complex sprinkles of finely tuned particles, single syllables picking at the line in a sort of dizzying pizzicato which demands that the listener keep up; and which is dropped to a beat which often does something very similar but in musical terms, again with the pizzicato but this time as notes plucked over what may as well be the soundtrack to a silent movie illustrating the bad guy creeping tippy-toe up those stairs with an evil pantomime grin on his face. That's how it sounds to me anyway, and to break the problem down into basic English, the music and the delivery do roughly the same thing and so lack the sort of sonic contrast needed to make the thing work, or at least to make it work as it probably should; and I base this theory on 2Pac's Loyal to the Game which posthumously assembles Shakur's lines over beats provided by Eminem, and which is generally fucking fantastic and certainly a potentially classic album.
At the risk of enraging basement dwelling representatives of the fully intact cherry community, 2Pac was never the greatest lyricist of all time. He had an amazing delivery, stuff worth saying, and certainly qualifies as a great, but he was never the greatest; and while those first few albums might justifiably be termed classic and the rest are mostly decent, his posthumous reputation seems out of all proportion, not least because those posthumous albums have been pretty damn patchy, sprawling double disc sets presumably released as such so as to make the most of what few genuinely memorable tracks emerged from the final sessions. I get the impression that 2Pac's last months may have been mostly compulsive studio work, heavy dope paranoia, and hardly any sleep because that's how those albums sound. They're worth a listen, but they can be hard work and the beats, with one or two exceptions, are fucking terrible - bland karaoke funk which may as well have been lifted from the closing credits of low budget cop shows.
Whether by accident or design, as producer, Eminem's mission statement here seems to have been to finish 2Pac's legacy on a high note, something which at least reminds us how much we loved 2Pacalypse Now and Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. So Em's plinky-plonky Addams Family themes are here contrasted with a quite different sort of vocal, 2Pac's driven yet leisurely cruise through whatever was on his mind that day; and the combination is dynamite, bringing out the best of everyone. To be fair, it's kind of a weird listen, not least for pairing 2Pac with the likes of Obie Trice, Lloyd Banks, 50 Cent and others who were probably still propping up the walls of technical colleges back when 2Pac and Alanis Morissette were talking about opening that restaurant together; and it's weirder that 2Pac calls out his posthumous collaborators by name even as their own verses refer directly to his passing. I'd heard that Eminem hired a 2Pac impersonator for those beyond the grave shout outs, or else indulged in some sort of improbable tape wizardry, but it maybe doesn't matter because the joins are invisible and the whole thing hangs together beautifully, regardless of the potential time paradox. A few of these tracks are sort of familiar, with vocals lifted from existing recordings, or variant takes thereof, but Loyal to the Game nevertheless feels like a real living, breathing album rather than something scraped off the cutting room floor. It's emotionally powerful, intelligent, inspiring, and without all the exhausting beef of those posthumous Death Row releases; and is as such probably closer to how we need to remember the guy.
We should probably also keep in mind that this is the sort of thing Eminem is capable of when he has his eye on the ball, which is pretty impressive and should definitely count for a classic album. As though to illustrate the strength of Eminem's vision here, we end with four bonus tracks from fellow producers, not least among whom would be Scott Storch; and if they range from great to more of what we had on those Death Row discs, they sound so out of place as to belong to something else.
Contrary to the protests of certain nutcases, I still say he was a very naughty boy rather than the actual messiah, but Loyal to the Game at least stands as a memorial to what was so great about the guy before the picture got distorted.
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