Eminem Relapse
I am a huge fan of Eminem. I have probably almost every song he has ever recorded that you can find. I have tons of his underground stuff, his rap Olympics stuff, his bad meets evil stuff. I have tons of Eminem. I guess you could say he is probably my favorite artist.
Eminem constantly released top notch albums and always appeared on top of his game. Than came Encore. Well it is decent in its own, it is no where near his old stuff or what he is capable of doing. He had a few decent songs on it, but a lot of stupid pop culture shit. So you could easily say it was a disappointment to me as well as to many of Em's core fans.
Next came a huge hiatus for Em, in which he released a very small amount of songs and a bit of production. Later it would become known that this was due to his heavy addiction to prescription medication. In mid 2008 it was revealed that Em was locked in the studio, extremely focused, and ready to drop a new album. Rumor after rumor, from special guests to featured producers surfaced, with most of them being shot down. Than in late 2008 Eminem officially stated that his new album was coming and that it was back to his "old shit". Everyone near the project claimed he was back to his old shit and that fans of his early works would not be disappointed.
Than Crack A Bottle, leaked. To be nice at most, this song was meh, it featured a decent production but lacked any good memorable lyrics. It was a club banger at best. Shortly after We Made You leaked. It was a typical first single and can be forgiven. Shortly after that the song 3AM leaked. While it had a stupid voice, its lyrics were extremely dark and reminiscent of old Eminem. Em would later say after this song leaked that the majority of the album would be like this.
That brings us to today. The album leaked in its fullest early online today. I have only given it a few listens through so far and I can safely say with much confidence, that anyone who commented on this album prior stating that Eminem is back to his old self, is absolutely correct. Some of the songs on here are extremely dark, from relating to his mother's drug habits (My Mom) to being sexual abused by his step father (Insane). The album still has a few light songs such as Crack A Bottle and We Made You, along with with a song with Dre in which they discuss smoking pot (Old Times Sake). It reminds me of Drug Ballad but a lot lighter. The only guest appearances on the entire album are by 50 Cent and Dr. Dre. 50 and Dre are featured in the Crack A Bottle song and Dre is featured one more time in Old Times Sake.
The entire album except one song is produced by Dr. Dre. The other song being produced by Eminem. It is actually funny, the song that Em produced (Beautiful) actually leaked a week or so back on youtube, and it starts out sounding like a nickelback song so I was like "ugh some fuckhead upped a random song and said it was Em" and I closed it. Than I listened to it on the album and well that is actually how it starts. But anyways you can definitely tell that its Dre produced album as it has that familiar Dre sound and its awesome.
I do not want to ruin this for anyone who was anticipating the album, so I won't go to far into the songs, other than what I have already said, and I won't discuss the other songs much.
But to sum this up, the majority of the songs deal with his struggle with prescription drugs and depression. It is a dark album to say the least and is definitely worth a listen if you are an Eminem fan.
Eminem is back and I anxiously await Relapse 2, coming in the fall.
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