It’s been five years since Eminem’s last album — the mediocre Encore — and I’m torn on whether his new one, Relapse, was worth the wait.
On the one hand, it is a return to form in many ways — the rhymes are fast and furious and Dr. Dre’s production particularly strong — but on the other hand, I wonder if Eminem in form is really enough of a draw anymore. The violent sexual fantasies that were so shocking and unsettling on his first two albums, especially when you found yourself guiltily chuckling through them, feel like retreads all these years later.
Want Two contains a lot of ambitious and emotional music: album opener ‘Agnus Dei’ is a string-drenched, hyper-passionate Catholic hymn performed in Latin; closer ‘Old Whore’s Diet’ is a 9-minute epic alternating between a capella crooning and Mediterranean dance beats; ‘Little Sister’ is a baroque treat that, stripped of its vocals, would sound like it was written in the early 18th century.
Want Two came out a year after Want One, and the main distinction I’d draw between the two albums is that this one takes a more feminine perspective while the first was more masculine.
Another of the Want One tunes that immediately grabbed me and refused to let go, ‘Beautiful Child’ is a hurricane of a song with so much going on at once that it threatens to spin off into oblivion almost every second it’s on. But somehow it tiptoes on that edge and manages to never fall off.
It’s appropriate that chance has put me in a position to choose as my 300th Song of the Day a tune I consider one of my very favorites ever.
Meet Me In Montauk 