“It just means so much more
To so much more
People, when you’re rapping and you know what for”
Wanted to really listen to this album before weighing in. Now that I have, all I can think of are those lines from The Eminem Show.
Em’s problem since Encore is simple. He ran out of shyt to talk about, and he’s so far out of touch with modern culture he can’t find inspiration in anything except his own brain.
He doesn’t know what he’s rapping for, he’s just rapping to prove a point he proved 20 years ago.
That’s why this album feels like a step forward; he finally found a target to give all those bars some purpose. It still isn’t Em at his best. But at least we can listen for some type of message, as opposed to Em trying to wow us for the 999,999th time with rap gymnastics.
The irony of Em spending so much time on sharpening his technical skills (and if someone labeled him the GOAT technical rapper, I wouldn’t argue it), is that all those rap theatrics can’t cover up how hollow his rhymes have become. Dude needs 10 run-on sentences to say what he used to be able to say in two bars.
The irony of all those wack-ass punchlines is that Em has always been a punchline rapper. A damn good one! Part of the early excitement, especially around the time of Scary Movie and his features on Missy’s album, was checking just how far he could bend words into crazy punchlines.
Then he dropped that trash ass “window pain” line on Love the Way You Lie. And decided that shyt worked! So now all we get are these ham-fisted setup/punchline bars. It’s like either he doesn’t know they suck, or he’s not around people/places that allow him to see how cringey they can be.
Go back to Eminem Show. The way he flips the last words of each verse of White America gives the hook three different perspectives, and more impact than anything he had to say about Trump in his BET freestyle or on Revival.
To say Kamikaze is a return to form is silly. Eminem has done Kamikaze 100x’s better at different points throughout his career. Specifically MMLP/TES Em. It’s good. But primarily in comparison to how bad some of his music has been recently (I tried to give Revival a spin as well, for context. Dear God. What a shytty album).
Em has two options at this point imo: retire, or go outside, experience life, and find a perspective that allows him to find a new voice.
Jay did it. NaS did it. LL was the master of it. Whether Em can do it remains to be seen... but the fact he still has to resort to calling his opponents fa**ots doesn’t speak well to his chances.
Can he keep dropping music? Of course. But this is probably as good as he can hope for going forward.
I’d give it a 3/5.
