The other surprise I found when perusing this week’s top ten charts was that Eminem has already released another hit single.
I featured ‘Berzerk‘ a couple of weeks back and found it a nifty little Beastie Boys homage. I hoped the rest of the album would go darker and deeper, though.
Eminem returns next month with his first album since 2010’s comeback record Recovery. The new album is titled The Marshall Mathers LP 2, calling back to his sophomore release, the one that really put him on the cultural map.
Today’s SOTD, ‘Berzerk,’ is the first single from the new album, and it’s a riotous throwback to the old-school rap of the original white rappers, The Beastie Boys. Produced by Rick Rubin (like The Beasties’ debut record it samples), the song is bursting with fun, inventive touches.
Today’s Jay-Z track features a guest appearance by Eminem, a rapper whose work I know quite well. This track originally appeared on Jay’Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint, and later on a reissue of Eminem’s first greatest hits collection, Curtain Call.
2001 was a year after the release of The Marshall Mathers LP and just about the height of Eminem’s popularity, not to mention the controversy surrounding him.
It’s been almost a year since I last featured Eminem on the blog, and about that long since I’ve listened to him at length. But every time I do, I’m reminded what a fascinating and talented artist he remains.
In fact, I consider his most recent album, Recovery, among his very best work. It lacks the shock value of The Marshall Mathers LP but it’s a more confident record musically and lyrically.
Eminem is perhaps the oddest of all the oddball artists in my musical genome discussion. He is very much a genre artist, but it’s a genre that’s almost entirely off my radar.
The easy claim is that I love Eminem’s music despite not liking rap music at all, but I don’t know if that’s true. I have owned maybe half a dozen rap albums (other than Eminem’s) over the past 20+ years and I don’t listen to any of them very often. But how many great ones have I never heard?
Meet Me In Montauk 