Bloody fantastic stuff here, & I predict that most people will despise this album and miss the potent subtext. Will they recognize Dr. West? Will they get "My Darling"? "Tonya"? "Insane"? Not likely.

Relapse will probably cost Eminem more than a few long-term fans and I suspect only professional-level drug addicts will actually be able to appreciate the seriousness & pathos of the struggle depicted -- & the victory achieved -- particularly in the allusions to multiple murders committed during blackouts. Just wait for the outrage of those who think he's talking about killing people. Without a certain ironic insight into addiction, the danger of literalism interpreting the epic narrative behind Relapse is sure to horrify the ignorant & unimaginative interpretation. I expect many folks will miss the lyrics that practically spoon-feed the metaphor (can you say self-destruction?).

There are a thousand redundant reviews of Relapse out there taking the album to task for self-reverence & cliche & (subjectively assigned) substandard tracks. If you want negative criticism of this album, go find one of those. The sort of shit being turned out by authors of such reviews is guilty of its own redundancies & cliches. You all sound like each other. This doesn't imply I've just swallowed whole everything Relapse brings to the table, but dissing it isn't my objective here.

I love that Em lives barely half an hour north of Detroit even though he's got so much money he could build his own island in the south Pacific & buy Hawaii so he wouldn't have to have any neighbors. I love his contempt for the mindless adulation he suffers everywhere he goes, particularly when it comes from shallow women (which isn't to say he won't exploit them when it serves his purposes, libidal or lyrical). I love his scorn for fame. In defiance of all judgment, he lays the innermost layers of his heart out as if in autopsy, giving it all up: the tough & the tender & the insecurity, as well as the judgment he knows full-well is coming back to bite him in the ass. This he does not fear. Hyperbole, always there in his writing, is handled with humor & sarcasm; half the people on the receiving end of it won't recognize they've just been insulted. Always, always with a sense of humor... which is not to say he didn't mean it. I'm always surprised by how few people -- even some serious fans -- don't see Marshall's rampant sense of humor in almost every single song. I could be reading it in, I suppose. I'd hate to think so, since that wry, dry black humor is one of Em's greatest qualities. He almost always makes me laugh, however awful the images in the songs may be. How can you listen to his stuff and not see the humor? He's so self-deprecating. It's really priceless.

All of this elevates the real Slim Shady above the abilities of his, er, colleagues in craftsmanship & inherent literary quality. Yes, I said literary; the medium is unorthodox for the term, perhaps, but within its own parameters, Marshall brings hallmarks of literary excellence into play: thematic development, tension, style, mastery of the language, form and meter when he feels like it -- to say nothing of metaphor, simile, et al -- without pretension or affectation. On the whole I'd much rather hang out with him than most of the department at the university where I teach.

Shady's definitely a raging misogynist & homophobe. Well, nobody's perfect. The life experiences so far publicly related support a certain logic behind development of these characteristics; whether they're accurate or not only Marshall and possibly his mother, brother, & Kim know. If you're at all familiar with the content of his ouvre, nothing in this new installment will surprise you. Shock is part of the territory of rap. Do most people believe that the screenwriters & actors in the innumerable Saw movies are actually killers in everyday life?

In Relapse, Em's trademark metrical near-perfection & alliterative felicity (which initially hooked & made me an admirer) are back, big & bad as ever, on especially powerful display in "3 AM" and "Beautiful". "Beautiful" may be my new favorite piece; at the very least it's close behind my all-time favorite, "White America" from The Eminem Show (poignant since people always mistake Mohawk me for Erica Whitey).

The monotonous tone of the vocals in "Beautiful" underscores its subjects: depression & profound despair at the demands of maintaining responsibility to one's own heart despite certain fallout. Just like the end of the love affair with his drug(s) of choice, here's the first indication in song that Eminem's love affair with rap might be likewise wrapping up. As it were. But more on this below. The toneless voice in "Beautiful" might carry the whole song on its own if the writing packed less of a punch. Consider:

... just can't admit
or come to grips
with the fact that
I may be done with rap
I need a new outlet
I know some shit's so hard to swallow
but I just can't sit back and wallow
in my own sorrow
but I know one fact
I'll be one tough act to follow
one tough act to follow
one tough act to follow
here today, gone tomorrow
but you have to walk a thousand miles

[chorus]
in my shoes
just to see
what it's like
to be me
I'll be you
let's trade shoes
just to see what It'd be like to
feel your pain
you feel mine
go inside each other's minds
just to see
what we find
look at shit through each other's eyes

And:

... starting to lose my sense of humor
everything is so tense and gloom, I
almost feel like I gotta check
the temperature in the room
just as soon as I walk in it's like
all eyes on me so I try to avoid any eye contact
cause if I do that then it opens a door to conversation,
like I want that

I'm not looking for extra attention
I just wanna be just like you
blend in with the rest of the room
maybe just point me to the closest restroom

I don't need no fuckin manservant
tryin to follow me around and wipe my ass
laugh at every single joke I crack
and half of them ain't even funny, like
Waah! Marshallyou'resofunnyman
youshouldbeacomedian,Goddamn!

Unfortunately, I am...

But you've got to hear that monotone, that vocal colorlessness. It's the sonic manifestation of depression. Caveat: people who don't know Eminem's other albums won't get anywhere near the full impact the flatness in this song carries. Its force is powerful beyond his typical rage precisely because this lack of inflection is such a divergence from his top-volume range ("White America" from The Eminem Show), or his fantastic sense of sarcasm ("Kim" from The Marshall Mathers LP, "Business" and "Superman", The Eminem Show). Those who know the Marshall Mathers of the last 10 years will witness first-hand the results of the serious damage he's seen recently in "Beautiful". It brought me to tears. No lie.

Further laudable: "Same Song & Dance", "We Made You", "3 AM", the "Mr. Mathers" skit, which grabbed me by the heart. & "Deja Vu". Lord. I'm right there. "Careful What You Wish For" is the perfect exit line, also rending the heart. God. How do you survive this? I ask you.

I once considered a tramp-stamp of "EM2" in the font of the Detroit Tigers "D":



After Relapse, this might actually happen.

Listen. By knowing what we know about Em, what he's given us to know him by, however limited, fictionalized though it may be, we can tell that there are so many of his own handprints in his own blood all over these albums, enough of his raw gut & full-throttle heart torn & woven throughout 90% of his songs to see that the man has shredded himself for the sake of words. If these words are that important, then I take what they have to say seriously.

Now, about the toll his career has taken on him. On his marriage. On his family. On his relationships. On his sense of identity and his peace of mind and his very fucking survival, which is now in question. This is what most of his songs are about. If you look at this guy's work with any kind of eye toward understanding why he says these things, you come out the far side of Relapse wondering if Relapse itself isn't the actual relapse, the comeback album where none should have been for the sake of the sanity of the man. The size of the album even reflects the nature of a real relapse, that breaking under the pressure back into indulgence after a period of self-denial. A real bender, as long as you're blowing it anyway. & should that be the case, what, then, was the primary addiction?

Seeing Relapse in this light would mean you'd have to take at face value everything he's been saying about fame and his sense of his own identity, the meaning of what fame has actually done to him, & to the people who are most important to him. Relationships are a huge part of Eminem's subject matter. He never married a Mariah Carey or a Brittney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan. He easily could have. Instead, twice, he's married the girl who's the mother to his kids and loved him before the world knew who he was. What does that say?

There was extensive speculation about whether Eminem was actually taking a break or retiring during the 4-year hiatus between Encore and Relapse. Having been through this album backwards and forwards going into the double-digits now, I'm leaning toward the possibility that this one could be the real goodbye.

My approval is limited, though. I draw the line at the commemorative pill bottle available with the deluxe set. SHAME on you, Marshall Mathers. It's obvious from Relapse you've seen the damage and utter destruction of hardcore addiction in the experiences you've captured so powerfully. ROMANTICIZING that? Like I could carry my own Vicodin problem around in your little Relapse bottle and feel like we bonded over it or something cause it came with your album? Because that sort of was my first thoughtless thought. Close on its heels was the realization that that cute little bottle wouldn't even hold a full day's Vicodin addiction, and that thought sort of disappointed me. You plan to use these bottles for your pills if YOU re-relapse? Why not just include a big old fat prescription pad with every sheet pre-signed by Dr. Dre? After living through the material for this spectacular, massive album, you should know better. Since you don't, I should kick you in the junk. Fuck you for that. It almost made me pass up the album. Instead of pre-ordering it before 5/19 as intended, which was the reason I was on your site & saw the "deluxe package", it took me 2 weeks to get over it & finally get Relapse.

Overall, well done, Marshall, but now I'm never going out with you.