2009’s Relapse is Eminem’s second-worst album, but it has its moments. ‘Beautiful,’ on the whole, is one of them.
Much of this album is bogged down by silly accents and cartoonish violence even more cartoonish than the violence on Eminem’s best albums. But a few tracks aim for something deeper.
Eminem couldn’t have picked a more appropriate title for this lazy effort from his 2009 album Relapse.
This track is a sloppy retread of a dozen other, and better, songs about Slim Shady working out his issues through violence against women. What was edgy and disturbing — and a catalyst for discussions of how far art can go — nearly a decade earlier is yawn-inducing here.
Best Songs of 2009 – #7
Following 2004’s disappointing Encore, Eminem’s Relapse was a welcome return to form, sort of. Like most of his work, it is split about equally between the frivolous, the violently misogynistic and the powerfully personal. This time out, though, that formula felt a bit strained.
I found myself tempted to skip the “shocking” stuff (ok, ok, you cut off her head, next!) to get to the confessional material. Eminem is not going to grab headlines for being outrageous and controversial — not anymore — so he should settle down and craft an album that sounds, start to finish, like it was written by a grown-up.
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.
Meet Me In Montauk 