I assume there has probably already been more than enough said about this album, all of which I've avoided - which has been easy given that I don't even like the internet that much. To get to the point, here's yet another Eminem album, something like his millionth despite having slowed his pace in recent years, at least in terms of how much of his music is out there. You already know what it sounds like because it sounds like an Eminem album, and I'm sure you already know whether or not you really want to hear it.
It does a lot of the same stuff that the previous records did, bending over backwards to offend more or less everyone, and arguably ramping up the aggressive insensitivity to an unprecedented level; which is probably necessary given how easy it is to cause offence now, requiring our guy to go the extra distance. The running joke here is that he's trying to get himself cancelled, but as ever there's a point as serious as a corpse underlying the slapstick. The point is stop behaving like fucking idiots, you fucking idiots, but feel free to roll your eyes from whatever you have apparently mistaken for the moral high ground.
So it's the same Eminem album yet again, but somehow moreso, and the differences soon become obvious. On the surface of it, he's sharpened his own beats to a fine point, and they've honestly never sounded better - meaning I'm probably going to have to go back to previous albums and give those Addams Family rhythms another crack of the whip. He's doing the same thing here, except it's bigger, more filmic, sounding less like something which hadn't yet decided whether or not it was going to work; and lyrically, I don't have the hyperbole for how far ahead of himself he's travelled, with internal rhyme schemes and multiple puns so complex, so rapid fire effortless that it takes a few listens even just to unpick them. It feels like the album he's been trying to make all these years, and there's no longer much point denying that he's genuinely one of the greats.
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