The Death of Slim Shady is an album filled with memorable lines. Some are memorable because they display their author’s nonpareil skill as a rapper: they whiz past in a perfectly enunciated, rhythmically precise gust of homophones, references and wordplay. Some because their scabrous, nihilistic wit induces precisely the reaction their author presumably intends: a kind of horrified bark of laughter despite yourself, followed by a surge of guilt so overwhelming that you don’t want to highlight the line in question, lest you be damned by association. And some are memorable because they land with a dull, shrug-inducing thud, the unmistakable sound of an artist trying too hard to shock. The most telling line may come on Lucifer, which, with its Dr Dre-produced, bouzouki-sampling beat, has a strong claim to be the album’s strongest track. “But Marshall,” offers Eminem, addressing himself, as is so often his wont, “it’s like you came from 2000, stepped out a portal.”
It’s a lyric that seems to strike at The Death of Slim Shady’s raison d’etre. Eminem has cut a curious figure over the last decade. He’s still reliably chalking up incredible sales figures – every album he’s released has gone platinum in the US; his 2020 single Godzilla shifted something close to 10m worldwide – while apparently struggling to find a place for himself in a musical landscape that’s altered dramatically since his early 00s heyday. Is he the grumpy keeper of traditional hip-hop values discarded in an era of mumble rappers and Auto-Tune, as suggested by the indignant verbal assaults he launched at a younger generation of artists on 2018’s Kamikaze? Is he a noticeably different character to the twentysomething nihilist who sold 25m copies of The Marshall Mathers LP, deploying his splenetic lyrical approach against the “alt-right”, as a string of freestyles and guest appearances released in 2017 implied? Or is he simply the huffy middle-aged reactionary that his more foresighted detractors might have predicted he would become, decrying millennial snowflakes and wokeism like a Daily Mail columnist?
Handily, an ongoing wave of early 00s revivalism has provided Eminem with a more straightforward route on his 12th studio album. The august keeper of the hip-hop flame and the Maga-hater of 2017 both make appearances (the former in the lyrical references to Big Daddy Kane, Poor Righteous Teachers, Wu-Tang Clan and underground duo Cella Dwellas; the latter in a couple of lyrical attacks on rightwing commentator Candace Owens). But its driving purpose is a kind of historical re-enactment of an Eminem album from 20 plus years ago, bound up in a slightly convoluted storyline about the reformed, mature Marshall Mathers being once more possessed by his nihilistic alter ego Slim Shady, who’s intent on turning him back into the person he once was. There are tracks that sound like reminders of Eminem’s past: the single Houdini features an obvious throwback to his 2002 hit Without Me; there’s a distinct hint of Lose Yourself about opener Renaissance. There is a sequel to Guilty Conscience, an infamous track from 1999’s Slim Shady LP and an interlude called Guess Who’s Back, which features the return of longstanding character Ken Kaniff.
It’s so single-minded in its recreation of the Eminem of the early 00s that it occasionally seems weirdly anachronistic. There is the occasional barb thrown the way of “woke” culture, but far more lines that use the long-superseded term “political correctness”. There are references to Eminem’s addictions, despite the fact that he’s been clean and sober for 16 years. There’s an entire song devoted to mocking Christopher Reeve, who died 20 years ago: it turns out the track was actually written for 2004’s Encore, but pulled after the actor’s passing. There are tapes of Eminem’s daughter Hailie, now a 28-year-old married woman, but in the context of the recordings here, still a small child, as she was on 2002’s My Dad’s Gone Crazy. There is an interlude that suggests the album will be greeted with protests so furious they spill over into riots, which it’s hard to listen to without thinking: yeah, he wishes.
The days when Eminem could provoke that kind of angry response feel long gone, as evidenced by the reaction to Houdini. Some people online made a half-hearted attempt to summon up outrage over its line mocking the incident in which Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion, but nobody really bit, perhaps because there were more diverting things happening in hip-hop. Where does a sick gag about Megan’s shooting sit next to Kendrick Lamar claiming US No 1 with a track that claims Drake is a paedophile? Complaining about Eminem making sick gags feels a bit like complaining that the toilet paper aisle of the supermarket contains too much bog roll.
Clearly that fact hasn’t escaped Eminem, who nevertheless goes all-out to cause offence. There are jokes about people with disabilities, about rape, about the sexual misconduct allegations made against rapper/mogul Diddy, about overweight people and finding trans women unattractive. Eminem indulges in a certain degree of having his cake and eating it, following a lot of these lines up with a lyric that disputes or apologises for them, locked as he supposedly is in a battle with his alter ego. Occasionally, the grim stuff lands a queasy punch. More often, it feels so desperate that it ends up committing the cardinal sin of being boring and repetitious: put it this way, if Caitlyn Jenner got a royalty for every time her name was used as a punchline, she’d be an even richer woman.
That said, there are things to enjoy about The Death of Slim Shady. Eminem’s technical abilities are as striking as ever: striking enough that when he claims rappers go after Lamar because they’re too scared to come after him, it doesn’t feel like an entirely hollow boast. The guest appearances by underrated Atlanta rapper JID and Shady Records affiliate Ez Mil are strong. As well as Lucifer, a handful of tracks work in purely musical terms. The brooding menace of Road Rage shifts thrillingly into acid-fuelled electro. Guilty Conscience 2 gradually and effectively ratchets up a sense of tension. The staccato strings and soul vocal of Bad One are put to eerie good use.
But for all its attempts at time travel, The Death of Slim Shady feels like just another late-period Eminem album. It has successes and misfires in equal measure. It’s not bad enough to count as terrible, not good enough to count as great. It’s bolstered by technical ability but afflicted by a creeping sense of purposelessness. It’s doubtless another huge hit, but there isn’t enough to counter the incisive line about Eminem recently posited by Questlove: that he’s a man “maybe with nothing to say any more, but with quite a talent for saying it”.
