Your bag is empty.
Eminem’s surprise midnight album, Kamikaze, is the best Eminem album to come out in years. Which is basically like saying yesterday was the best day of the Trump presidency. The bar is that low. Eminem’s output since 2003’s The Eminem Show has been inconsistent at best, and barely digestible at worse.
The nadir of his career came with last year’s Revival, a dumpster fire of cacophonous hip-rock beats and ill-conceived concepts. The album was universally panned, even from Eminem’s peers, like former signee Joe Budden. Kamikaze is the Detroit MC’s rebuttal to those naysayers, unloading the chopper at anyone who ever uttered a bad word about him. The album sounds like vintage Eminem—he’s rapping on-beat again, and layering rhyme patterns like coats in the Michigan winter. However, the bad side is, well, this is vintage Eminem, which means the 45-year-old rapper can’t blend his prime flows with subject matter that’s more his age than his shoe size.
Eminem has spent the last decade in a purgatory of his own stubbornness. He’s eschewed whatever was the hip-hop sound du jour to keep the sound he’s been known for his whole career. Kamikaze sees Eminem finally embracing the hottest sounds at the top of the charts, even if it’s tongue-in-cheek. “Not Alike” and “The Ringer” have the familiar snaps and double-timed 808s on the top of every Spotify playlist, and Em takes his turn mocking the sounds as simplistic, ironically trying his hand at the music. But the real irony here is that this is when the album is at its best. The drums on these beats give Em more structure to bounce his rhymes off of, so he sounds more on-beat than he has since his heyday.
On-beat Eminem is a welcome change from him struggling to find the pocket on guitar riffs and ballads. So, on the insane double-timed rap-bar meteor shower “Lucky You,” it sounds like breath of fresh air when he speeds through “’Cause even if I gotta end up eatin’ a pill again, Even ketamine or methamphetamine with the Manidon, It better be at least 70 to 300 milligram / And I might as well ’cause I’ma end up bein’ a villain again.” Phew. Marshall is back.
But on the other hand, Slim Shady is back, too. And the sophomoric humor and homophobia from a middle-aged rapper just doesn’t have a place in 2018. Sure, Em is now bleeping out F-bomb slurs, but they’re still on the album, even aimed at the recently out Tyler, the Creator. When Eminem first emerged as that push-the-envelope rapper of the late 1990s, he could hide under the guise that he was immature or tongue-in-cheek. But the world has evolved, and he probably should have, too. Also, the Jackass-esque humor doesn’t even land like it used to. When he compares his penis length to Cher’s hair length, it sounds more half-hearted than any true attempt at brilliance.
The sophomoric humor and homophobia from a middle-aged rapper just doesn’t have a place in 2018.
It’s clear why Eminem made Kamikaze. He wanted to redeem himself for the horrible Revival album and make it known that he still has it as an MC. After all, at the heart of his whole career is a guy who just wants to be respected as a lyricist. And in that regard, he shines. Kamikaze works as an album to turn your brain off to, much like the music Eminem claims to not be a fan of anymore. When he tries his hand at relationship songs like “Normal” and “Nice Guy”—previously a strong point in his catalog—the album falls flat. There’s only so much meandering about abusive relationships with no real point that we can take, and it’s been going on 20 years of the same old love songs.
But when Eminem just lets loose on a beat, tearing through every person he has a grudge against—from the aforementioned Joe Budden, to Lord Jamar, to clones like Machine Gun Kelly—Kamikaze works. It’s the Eminem we’ve always wanted, and the one he’s always wanted to be: a good-ass rapper. Sometimes, it’s just that simple.