Eminem has spent the past five years of his life cooped up in his Detroit mansion addicted to an assortment of drugs, mourning the loss of his best friend Proof, and trying to piece together his life that had become a disaster from fame and publicity. As a hip hop fan this seemed to be the perfect environment for a deranged psychopath like Em to be making a studio album in. I thought he would thrive off the depression and craft the album we'd all been waiting for. I'm not saying he necessarily failed in doing so, Relapse is just as disturbing and alarming as anything Em has ever created, but this album seems more like a call for pity than a glorification of his troubles.
For some reason Em decided it was a good idea to rap much of this album in his annoying ass Pee Wee Herman voice. I couldn't get over it for the first couple listens but once I got used to it I could appreciate the album for what it's worth. The simplest way to break down this album would be two separate the first and second halves. The first half being shitty and the second being sick.
The album starts with a short intro that features no rapping and is therefore not worth talking about. "3Am" is the first true song and kicks off the album to a promising start. Em's rhyme schemes are amazing and gives us some insight into his murderous and diabolical brain. This momentum doesn't last long as the following song, "My Mom", is easily one of the worst on the album. The opening bars ring true and maybe Em should have heeded his own sentiment, "My mom my mom I know youre probably tired of hearing about my mom." Well yes I actually am, but the song unfortunately goes on for another five minutes. "Insane" details the horrors of a child molestation incident, I suppose there is enough moral demand to write a song about this matter, but all Em succeeds in doing in this song is making the listeners feel uncomfortable... like REALLY uncomfortable. Looking at the tracklisting I was excited for the next track. Titled "Bagpipes From Baghdad", I figured Em might be getting political and anti war on us, and would maybe offer us a song that we could actually take something from and relate to, not one about raping stepfathers and eating arteries and shit. Unfortunately he spends the entire first verse dissing Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon. In all honesty I'm not sure what the hell Baghdad has to do with this song in the first place. Several more songs make up the the shitty half of the album including "Medicine Ball" with Eminem's inevitable Christopher Reeves diss and "We Made You" which has slightly grown on me since my
initial review. But enough about the negative, let's get to the goods, which the second half provides. "Stay Wide Awake" picks up the momentum with one of the albums best beats and Em's best flows. "Soon As My Flow Starts I Compose Art Like The Ghost Of Mozart," says MM on the hook and for the rest of the album its mostly good art. "Old Times Sake" follows with Dre impressing in a surprisingly dope stop and start flow, this song is very similar to
"One Last Time" off of Encore, and I liked that song a lot, so uhhh I like this one as well. "Must Be The Ganja" is the sole weak spot of the second half, but the decline doesn't last long. "Deja Vu" gives a view into the drug problems that Em had coming to the point where his daughter found him passed out. "Beautiful" has Em both on the mic and the boards, and the beat utilizes a perfect sample to compliment the self assuring anthem. A rare song of positivity in this dark album. "Crack A Bottle" follows and is "Beautiful's" main competition for best track on the CD, Dre blessed this song with his best beat of the album, despite his otherwise boring and disappointing production. "Underground" closes the album with a bang.
Using simple math we can calculate the rating of Relapse easily. If the first half of the album was given a shitty, and the second half a sick, that would equal a....
Relapse- Whatever
