how f**king dissapointing.
I was having a discussion recently about how musicians either:
a) following a ‘creative hiatus’ deteriorate inexplicably with the comeback album relying on old habits and formulas while attempting to shoehorn old tricks into the current style.
b) completely ‘revamp’ their style with changes in what made them good in the first place, only to find that they really, REALLY suck at it.
c) lose their talent.

All three apply to Eminem.
His latest, “Rehab”, is 80 minutes of a painful realization that the innovation and lyrical ability that made Em so diesel are dead and long gone. I wasn’t sure if i was just holding him to an unfairly high standard (based on his body of work), until I thought about it further.
The entire reason people download buy followup albums (or see sequels) is that they have an expectation of at LEAST the same level of greatness than made them get into the artist in the first place. That weak-ass sing-songy style of constructing a song is overplayed so much on this album that I ended up not getting through more than two verses on each song.
This is a seriously terrible album, and I can only be consoled by listening to the Marshall Mathers LP whenever I need to get my Em fix. But even when I do decide to go back in time and listen to him when he’s still good, the stink of ‘Relapse’ will be all over every track.
Usually the incredibly talented artists lose their minds at some point (see exhibit #1 and #2), but for Em I wonder if binging on pills and the sauce made him so great in the past. If so, I will certainly forge prescriptions so he can get back to making good shit worth listening to.









