ArchStanton
All Star
A lot of reviews I've read trash it largely because of him using the f-word to describe Tyler. For what it's worth.
Eminem - Kamikaze (Discussion Thread)
- Thread starter Victorious Secret
- Start date
A lot of reviews I've read trash it largely because of him using the f-word to describe Tyler. For what it's worth.
Eminem, like Drake or Jay or any massively popular, mainstream-leaning act will always float in the 60-70 Metacritic range
Critics don't really fukk with them at all
Kanye used to be the exception until he gave mainstream media and outrage-culture the finger over the past year lol
ArchStanton
All Star
Crooked I's take on the album is interesting and a good perspective from someone that can actually spit.
Crooked I Responds to Negative Eminem 'Kamikaze' Album Reviews
Crooked I Responds to Negative Eminem 'Kamikaze' Album Reviews
You really have to be a niche or pseudo-eclectic type to get critical love
Either you go the Playboi Carti route of unapologetic disregard of artistic talent, while doubling down on high-art sensibilities like intentionally poorly spelled song titles, abstract album art and fashion-virtue signaling to win them over. Or the Shabazz Palaces/Death Grips route of making the most inaccessible and complicated for the sake of being complicated ass rap music that's not really aimed at rap audiences to get top marks.
Kendrick is in that, innocent until proven guilty tier that Kanye used to be in, and Outkast before him, and maybe De La Soul/Beasties before them. The designated critical darling who can do no wrong.
Either you go the Playboi Carti route of unapologetic disregard of artistic talent, while doubling down on high-art sensibilities like intentionally poorly spelled song titles, abstract album art and fashion-virtue signaling to win them over. Or the Shabazz Palaces/Death Grips route of making the most inaccessible and complicated for the sake of being complicated ass rap music that's not really aimed at rap audiences to get top marks.
Kendrick is in that, innocent until proven guilty tier that Kanye used to be in, and Outkast before him, and maybe De La Soul/Beasties before them. The designated critical darling who can do no wrong.
Columbo
Lieutenant
Nobodies got some mustard to pass me? 
\\//JohnnyCA$H\\//
Pillmatic
Nobodies got some mustard to pass me?
It’s 2018 hit up Spotify, Apple Music, deezer, soulseek, a torrent, bearshare if you still got it
at this reviewKamikaze is a tantrum disguised as a course correction. More depressingly, it’s a 45-year-old multi-millionaire screaming into the void hoping someone, anyone is listening.
On Eminem’s surprise tenth studio album, a long-simmering frustration finally boils over. From a purely technical standpoint, it’s breathtaking to behold the renewed MC rapping with tightened flows over crisp production, weaving in and out of pockets with near the same dexterity as he did nearly two decades ago. Unfortunately, the fabled technician fails to cure the malignant disease that’s been eating away at his career for almost a decade.
Kamikaze’s meta-experiment marvels at its self-awareness, but never takes a moment to reckon with the criticisms that birthed it into existence. Eminem lays so much of the blame of his artistic decline at the feet of his various critics -- the media, rappers, time -- he fails to realize his tactics have turned him into hip-hop’s Trump, a man preaching the “Make Rap Great Again” ideals of a past that never really existed.
The narrative of Eminem’s tenth studio album is an antagonistic rebuke of the media and their response to Revival. The argument could be made that if Em’s last project received favorable reviews, there would be no need for Kamikaze’s reactive existence. On album opener, “The Ringer,” Mathers spends the bulk of his time complaining about how “a journalist/ can get a mouthful of flesh/ and yes, I mean eating a penis/ 'Cause they been pannin' my album to death.” In short, Eminem yells “fake news” for almost six-minutes at anyone who dares to critique him, almost like the President he’s aptly named “Agent Orange.”
What makes Eminem’s takedown of the press in 2018 so much worse is that he’s done it with far more nuance in the past. Seventeen years ago, during his scene-stealing turn on JAY-Z's “Renegade," lyrics like “we as a people decide if Shady's as bad as they say he is/ Or is he the latter, a gateway to escape?/ Media scapegoat who they can be mad at today” showed a level of self-awareness that he’s lost in 2018. Devoting an entire skit to one criticism from one review seems like a weird way for one of the best lyricists of his generation to spend his time.
At Eminem’s peak, he could lord his vision of “true hip-hop” -- lyrical precision, vivid storytelling, and blind loyalty to the genre’s past -- upon the masses. But as his dominance waned, so did the restrictive stylistic boundaries of the '90s and early 2000s that he cherished. The genre mutated past his singular vision and, throughout Kamikaze, he sounds like a man lost and bewildered in time. Marshall wags his hands like an old man griping at the kids from his metaphorical porch as he screams at and about Lil Yachty, lean, Lil Pump, AutoTune, Lil Xan, Drake, ghostwriters, and face tats.
The most telling part of Kamikaze is how Eminem deals with potential criticism from his peers like Tyler, the Creator and Joe Budden. In one of the album’s most offensive moments, Eminem falls back into his homophobic tendencies rapping, “Tyler create nothin', I see why you called yourself a f****t, bytch.” Next, he takes his Shady Records signee to task, spitting, “Somebody tell Budden before I snap, he better fasten it / Or have his body bag get zipped / The closest thing he's had to hits is smackin' bytches.” Never mind the fact that the hypocritical Mathers alludes to a past of domestic violence and raps about busting “her jaw with a Louisville Slugger” on the cringe-inducing “Normal.” So why this much vitriol for Joe Budden?
On a December episode of Everyday Struggle, Budden encapsulated the problem with Revival -- in particular, the topical advance track "Untouchable," and the album's cover image, which featured the rapper looking ashamed behind an American flag. “This seems disingenuous,” Budden said. “It doesn’t seem sincere. It seems like a ploy and a fukking gimmick to sell records, which I don’t think that you need... It seems like you are taking the very common water-cooler conversation today of racism.”
Budden’s words make songs like “The Ringer” that much harder to swallow when Em laments he’s watching his “fanbase shrink to thirds” as a result of him criticizing Trump. When Eminem finally admits he wishes he could “reword” some of his rhymes about the president and “say I empathize with the people this evil serpent/ sold the dream to that he's deserted,” it sounds like a mogul upset that his “message” messed with the profit margins.
The insidiousness of the white male ego is that it disguises its fixation on unchecked ownership behind a veneer of nostalgia. Eminem was once a titan of hip-hop, but he never owned it. AutoTune, non-sequiturs, and freewheeling flows are now all big parts of the language of modern rap -- which doesn't need to adhere to Em’s myopic view of the genre.
Kamikaze soars when Em forgoes shaming the present and decides to reckon with his past. “Stepping Stone” sees him shedding the facades of Eminem and Slim Shady and instead come to terms with the sins of Marshall Mathers. When Em raps, “One minute you're bodyin' shyt, but then your audience splits/ You can already sense the climate is startin' to shift / To these kids you no longer exist,” it’s a rare and needed moment of vulnerability. The world and rap might not need Eminem or Slim Shady anymore, but it could do with a little more Marshall.
BK The Great
Veteran
Rayzah
I'm Everywhere you ain't never there
Seriously people actually look to these places for reviews in the digital era where you can just stream any album you want and judge for yourself?
I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of the people that didn’t like it or gave it a bad score were the ones he was addressing on the album and were in their feelings. You don’t sell 300k albums with no promo coming off what was considered a trash album. And you can’t say it’s all cacs cause I’m sure that 100% of those reviewers are cacs
Rayzah
I'm Everywhere you ain't never there
100%
Rayzah
I'm Everywhere you ain't never there
Nobody cares about Eminem anymore, despite the fact that 95% of the threads made here over the last couple days have been about him in some way.
The internet in general has jumped the shark, this website is a parody of its self. The coli has no idea whats hot or relevant, 50, Kanye, Em, drake, Jay z, and Nas are all irrelevant according to the masses on here yet they are all multi millionaires, selling products to and for the average hip hop fan, and when there is an album or anything related to them going on there are 13675475555656234675634 threads made about them all 505858 pages a piece.. with 3424 of those posts saying how irrelevant they are.
If an old washed up irrelevant white "vulture" sales 300k plus records in 3 days,how is the 3k ( dont know or care for the real number) plus active posters on the coli going to say all those people are wrong and they are either CACS or koons
But when Jay drops something dope it’s 80+ , Drake is close to 80 as well. Beyoncé too, and any major I can think of
300k with no promo? Every news outlet in the world reported on it. News flows fast in this digital age. And I’m pretty sure trash music can sell a lot. Not saying that it’s trash.
And yes people do read reviews from people they trust because life is too short and there’s too much good shyt to listen to weak shyt. I listened to it, it was aight. Nothing new, no new sounds and on but his delivery was solid and he was spitting. It’s definfely worth 1 play for anyone who ever fukked with him.
Rayzah
I'm Everywhere you ain't never there
Is don’t want to argue but naw, these dudes ain’t qualified to tell me what’s good or not. I would rather listen for myself