Eminem - Relapse

Track Listing
Dr. West
3 a.m
My Mom
Insane
Bagpipes From Baghdad
Hello
Tonya
Same Song & Dance
We Made You
Medicine Ball
Paul
Stay Wide Awake
Old Time's Sake
Must Be The Ganja
Mr. Mathers
Deja Vu
Beautiful
Crack A Bottle
Steve Berman
Underground/Ken Kaniff

He's having a Relapse! 
Eminem made a massive impact on both Hip-Hop and the wider music world when he exploded onto the scene in the late 1990's. He became the scourge of a new generation of parents, as he gathered an enormous following and proved that white guys who weren't idiots (Ahem, Vanilla Ice) could be great at this game too. In the process he created fantastic songs such as Lose Yourself and Stan. Em returns on this record after a long spell out of action due to addictions to medication, and the problems this caused. It is his first album since 2004's Encore. So is it any better than his previous effort? 

Well, the signs were good from the get-go. Dr. Dre is back producing, allowing Eminem to concentrate on his rhymes and lyrics. Despite the fact that collaborator Mike Elizondo is now absent, the music provided is fantastic. Huge string arrangements and bass-heavy beats provide the perfect stage for a new selection of songs. Guests are pretty thin on the ground on this album, which seems to have been for the best. Only Dina Rae, 50 Cent and Dr. Dre get spots on just 3 songs. 

Sure enough, Shady delivers his side of the greatness too. The biggest theme on the album is that of his struggle to remain sober, hence the title, and the subject of the intro, a dream where he is in therapy with his doctor who turns into some kind of monster. This theme resurfaces on songs such as Deja Vu, and the album's ballad Beautiful. The latter track is one of the best and possibly a future classic. It's probably the most serious song here, dealing with his feelings of depression and perseverance with sobriety, also featuring a great sample of the Paul Rodgers/Brian May song Reaching Out. 

Many other songs are humourous, although they are also very dark. This is surely proof that Mr. Mathers hasn't mellowed out at all after his break. Familiar themes are knowingly explored in songs such as My Mom (his mother's drug problems), Medicine Ball (the poor late Christopher Reeve gets another going over, but he is allowed to hit back via Eminem), and We Made You (the typical Just Lose It-style lead single taking swipes at celebrity figures). But there are some changes, his children get a little less of a mention this time around, although they do crop up in a couple of songs, and (thankfully) there is no standard Kim-bashing track. However, he does resurrect the strange Jamaican accent he began using on Encore, although it gets a lot less weird after a few listens. 

New and gruesome topics include killing Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, incestual rape, and being locked in Mariah Carey's wine cellar. There is some pretty hardcore stuff here, and the easily offended will be. Very much so. But, Eminem fans should come to expect a lot of this anyway, and should find a lot of it extremely funny (I did). 

Overall, this may not be as strong, fresh and vital as The Slim Shady or Marshall Mathers LP's but it should more than prove to the world that Eminem has not lost his fighting spirit, his aggression, his sense of humour, or most importantly, his talent for creating genuinely great Hip-Hop songs.

Off the hook!!! Eminem back to his best!!! 
I never write reviews on Amazon but just felt compelled to write a brief note on Eminem's latest album 'Relapse'. 

This album is dark, disturbing and lyrical genius. Eminem looks his demons right in the face and knocks them out! The skeletons come out of the closet in this album. 

If your an Eminem fan or just a fan of ingenious rapping and lyrical flow then buy this album. The production by Dr Dre is slick, the skits are funny and tell a story, the tracks are awe inspiring. I cannot praise this album or Eminem enough.

back to his best 
I was getting really bored of Eminem. I was one of the earliest into him and his music before the slim shady album came out, but the bigger he got he seemed to get worse as an artist culmanating in the dreadful "Encore" album and hits album that quuickly followed before his self imposed retirement. Fortunately 4 years out of the game has re-energised him..not just lyrically but musically too..infact this album is virtually all produced by Dr Dre..another message to say he's gone back to the beginning as over the last few albums theres only been maybe 3 or 4 dre prod tracks..but this is exclusively prod by dre and the two have found a new synergy together as Dre has provided some of his best beats for a long time on this.