Returning from a Recovery that was anything but that, Eminem has released an album that harks back to his glory days and rightfully bears the title The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
After the announcement of a second Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem set himself a number of seemingly insurmountable expectations. The upcoming album would have to do justice to the original, widely regarded as not only the best Eminem album but also one of the defining hip-hop albums of the 2000s. Even it wasn’t going to be a direct sequel, it would have to capture its essence: that hybrid of morbid humour, nonchalance, and honest introspection that made him the icon that he is. He would have to make up for the abominable “windowpane” line from ‘Love the Way You Lie’. He would need to find a way to channel the technicality, disquieting eloquence, and comedy of Relapse (the Gettysburg Address of psychopathic serial killer wet dreams) without alienating half of the listeners with unnecessary accents. It would also need to sound like a new album, not one stuck in the early 2000s; after all, he is in his 40s now. In short, it looked like Eminem had a gun pointing straight at his foot, ready to pull the trigger.
What followed was 80 minutes of Eminem proving once and for all that when he names an album The Marshall Mathers LP 2, he means it. Bookended by ‘Bad Guy’ and ‘Evil Twin’ (i.e. ‘Bad’ meets ‘Evil’), the album is saturated with references to his first three albums, and, in particular, MMLP. The opener is a 7-minute sequel to ‘Stan’, told from the perspective of Stan’s younger brother Matthew. And it is perfect. This is Eminem musing over how his music can, and does, affect others; he’s calm, he’s angry, he delivers fantastic lengthy verses, he effortlessly weaves in references to ‘Stan’ without sounding disjointed, and he finishes with a dramatic coda. His style has evolved quite a bit since 2000, becoming less smooth and more staccato, and the production is much more modern, which is why this song works so well. It’s self-referential without being melodramatically nostalgic. It’s old but very new. It’s exactly what you would expect from MMLP2.
The rest of the album is filled with less obvious references, but they’re there. Half of the fun of listening to this album is trying to pinpoint every reference, of which there are plenty. There’s a skit that follows directly on from the one in ‘Criminal’, there are allusions to ‘My Name Is’, ‘I’m Back’, ‘Square Dance’, “Lose Yourself’, among others, and, following on from the tradition of ‘Brain Damage’ and ‘Insane’, there’s a typical “Slim Shady is missing a brain” track in ‘Brainless’.
‘So Much Better’, in particular, is classic MMLP-era Eminem. In the vein of ‘Kill You’ and ‘Criminal’, it’s a hyperbolic furious rant, disproportionately hateful and wrapped in an infectiously memorable hook. If that weren’t enough to make every fan of Slim Shady feel warm and cuddly on the inside, the last line of the song takes listeners right back to ‘Kill You’ and ‘White America’ with Eminem explaining, “I’m just playing, bitch; you know I love you.” You could not ask for a better song for this album.
Tracks like that help us forget that he recorded an album in 2010 that was less Slim Shady and more the illegitimate son of Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift. Eminem is finally rediscovering the balance between comedy and solemnity, and with that confidence, he is able to pull off things he shouldn’t be able to. For example, after a few humourless songs in the second half of the album, he goes into ‘So Far…’ and ‘Love Game’, both of which are extended jokes about his life. The former starts with a reworking of Joe Walsh’s ‘Life is Good’ before devolving into an eclectic mix of pop-country clichés while Em laments having to sign autographs in public toilets. He should not be able to get away with a curveball like that, but he does.
The latter is even more ingenious: a laid-back, cheerful singsong story of love, complete with overt cynicism and not a single serious line. Plenty of other artists have done something similar, combining contradicting lyrics and music, but what makes ‘Love Game’ special is that this is a collaboration between Eminem and Kendrick Lamar (notably, the only featured rapper on the album). Eminem is, as everyone knows, a ruthless lyricist who has no qualms about taking down anyone he doesn’t like. Meanwhile, Kendrick has spent the past year making it abundantly clear that he is one of (if not the) most talented rapper in the business right now and will not shy away from lyrically murdering anyone he doesn’t like either. A collaboration between those two could result in a cataclysmic onslaught of words and insults. Nope. They recorded a faux pop song about love instead, and it was beautiful.
Of course, MMLP2 is not all fun and games. There is enough immature prejudiced Eminem to keep anyone happy, but that’s not all he does. ‘Stronger Than I Was’ and ‘Headlights’ are two very personal songs about his favourite subjects, his ex-wife Kim and his mother Debbie, respectively. While the first still shows his bitter resentment, it’s a far cry from the murderous rampage he described in ‘Kim’. Most of the song is actually sung, and Eminem is surprisingly adept at it, much better than he was when he recorded ‘Hailie’s Song’ years ago.
‘Headlights’, however, is the biggest shock on the album. In it, he apologizes to his mother for everything he put her through, specifically for ‘Cleaning out my Closet’, and forgives her for all of her shortcomings, because at some point he realized he loves her. This is Eminem at his most honest and most mature. The song is such a stunning display of conflicted emotions that it even makes the poppy hook, sung by Nate Ruess of Fun., sound fitting.
This was especially surprising because the biggest flaw on the album is its hooks. When Eminem does his own, they’re fantastic as usual. But his collaborations with Skylar Grey and Rihanna leave a lot to be desired. Grey’s contribution to the song ‘Asshole’ is an unfortunate cookie-cutter hook that was lifted straight from Recovery, and which puts a damper on an otherwise solid track with an interesting beat and an even better final verse.
At least ‘Asshole’ has redeeming qualities, though. ‘The Monster’, featuring Rihanna, is an inexcusable travesty that singlehandedly keeps the album from reaching its potential. I can defend Eminem’s psychopathy in Relapse all day, but I can’t defend this. It is catchy, but it’s catchy in the same way that anything you will hear at a club is catchy. The problem is not that it’s a poppy song, considering that ‘Love Game’ is terrific and ‘Berzerk’ has really grown on me (even ‘Survival’ isn’t as bad); the problem is that it adds nothing to the album. Thematically and stylistically it feels out of place on an Eminem album that isn’t Recovery. At other points on MMLP2, he does favour the style he developed on his last few albums (‘Legacy’, for example, has him doing more of that staccato, punch line rap that he dabbled with on Recovery and Hell: The Sequel), but in those cases he expands on that style. They don’t sound like they could be on Relapse, Recovery, or Hell: The Sequel. ‘The Monster’ does. In fact, ‘The Monster’ sounds like it could be on any album that follows the formula ‘[Bottom of the barrel rapper] feat. [Female vocalist with a current top 40 hit]’.
It’s very difficult to fault what Eminem does by himself, though. His rapping is more varied than it has been in recent years, and he’s found a way to fuse the long multisyllabic, alliterative storytelling that he did on The Eminem Show and 8 Mile with his more recent choppy helicopter-like punch lines. Although I prefer the former, lyrically, the album is outstanding throughout. From lines where Eminem has found more words that rhyme with each other than anyone thought conceivable, to a song (‘Legacy’) that keeps more or less the same rhyme scheme for five straight minutes, simply listening to the sound of the words he’s saying is entertaining. Culminating with ‘Rap God’, the album is often pure lyrical exhibitionism, to which Kendrick contributes just as well as you would expect from the man who dropped the ‘Control’ verse this summer.
At times, Eminem does try to get away with lazy punch lines that wouldn’t be out of place on something post-Tha Carter III Lil’ Wayne would release. On ‘Legacy’ he remarks that he “[connects] lines like crosswords,” while on ‘Asshole’ he tells someone, “If you think you’re special, you’re retarded.” Eminem should have enough self-awareness to know that if a line he writes sounds like something Childish Gambino would be proud of, he should rewrite it.
All minor issues and ‘The Monster’ aside, the album finishes with Eminem’s most appropriate closer since ‘Criminal’. MMLP ended with the rapper calling out everyone for thinking he is serious by launching into a (facetious) tirade against every minority he’s ever picked on, finishing with “If it’s not a rapper I make it as, I’mma be a fucking rapist in a Jason mask.” It was a perfectly offensive giant middle finger to anyone who misrepresented him, his alter egos, and his shtick. ‘Evil Twin’ does something similar with six minutes of unadulterated Slim Shady ranting, taking shots at his nonexistent competition and various celebrities (acknowledging that he’s run out of Backstreet Boys and NSYNCs to laugh at), while discussing his two personas, finishing with, “Still Shady inside, hair every bit as dyed as it used to be when I first introduced y’all to my skittish side, and blamed it on him when they tried to criticize. ‘Cause we are the same, bitch.” After years of Slim Shady and Eminem, he finishes his album with the bold proclamation that he is everything he says he is in his music. If you don’t like it, he could not care less. It’s a perfect closing statement after a monumental 80 minutes of everything Eminem is known for.
2013 has been a tremendous year for hip-hop. There seemed to be a quality album or mixtape released every other week. But Eminem has set the bar ludicrously high. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is a record that addresses every criticism levelled at him and every self-doubt he’s levelled at himself, wrapping it in jokes and impeccable lyricism. Is it as good as The Marshall Mathers LP? No. That album didn’t have ‘The Monster’, or ‘Survival’ for that matter. Nevertheless, it is the closest Eminem has gotten to recapturing the spark that spawned The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show. It’s undeniably his most consistent and well-crafted album since 2002, nearing, but never quite attaining, perfection. Forget Yeezus, Run the Jewels, Old, Born Sinner, or Nothing Was the Same. This is the hip-hop album of the year, and Eminem is still the untouchable rapper he was in 2000.
Fantastic review. The Nouse review of MMLP2 was shocking. You actually know what you’re talking about!