Still, one can only upchuck Mom’s spaghetti so many times before it resembles puke more than pasta. Trotting out his handful of two-dimensional characters as he does on the regressive Framed will no doubt appeal to his base, even as he undoes all that anti-Trump work in seconds on Heat. So he slinks back into the scatalogical for The River, rehashes well trod relationship drama with Bad Husband, and returns to T&A titillation on the Blackhearts interpolation Remind Me. A well-intentioned attempt, Untouchable engages directly with white privilege, a for-profit feat of elite mental gymnastics coming from the rapper who benefited – and continues to benefit – the most from it. Like Shawn Carter he tries to use his platform for social commentary, lambasting Donald Trump and hailing Heather Heyer on Like Home while Keys’ chorus tosses off motivational pablum. Over these 77 minutes, Mathers proves unsure of his place as one of the few rap veterans with a substantial audience. He makes multiple assuredly cynical plays for the pop charts with millennials like Kehlani in tow, hoping their relevance will refurbish his own. Hardly a new strategy, he employed it twice previously with Rihanna for chart-toppers Love the Way You Lie and The Monster. His career in no danger of downfall, his self-concern manifests via popwise anteing up.ĭespite revitalisation plans for Shady Records that include dealings with Boogie, Conway, and Westside Gunn, Mathers bypasses rebuilding his rap empire by leaving them off in favour of safer bets Alicia Keys, P!nk, and Ed Sheeran. Arriving in the same year as 4:44, with roughly as much time separating it from fellow renegade Jay-Z’s prior album Magna Carta Holy Grail, Revival chooses conservatism over comeback. Given that Eminem’s last album, 2013’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2, went quadruple-platinum in the States, that defense mechanism seems needlessly spring-trapped. His vivid imagination sends the sometime Slim Shady down the path of doubting rap game doomsayer, a less seen yang to the genre’s far more common braggadocious yin. Apparently burdened by outsized expectations of greatness, he spends the track narcissistically labouring over his ostensible conundrum. Yet before uttering a word of his own, Marshall Mathers finds a way to undermine his distinguished guest, her semi-sacrilegious Walk On Water hook interrupted by crumpled pages and performative scribbling. The very first voice you’ll hear on Eminem’s new album is Beyoncé’s.
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