Eminem - The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) (2024)
The last few Eminem albums have been a chess game with his critics. He's owned his mistakes, like 2017's Revival, revived here again as a punchline. For this turn, he's barricaded himself behind his personas in preparation for some offensive moves. Get it, as he would say, offensive?
The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) is organized as a personality war, between his one side that stirs up trouble and the other that bears the brunt of it. It's a tightrope walk, further complicated by his complaints about "woke BS" while also dissing the right wing grifter faction who use that as their rallying cry. Coherent messaging has never been his thing. His flows are like a kid showing off on a dirt bike, spinning loops on Caitlyn Jenner to turn around and defend transgender equality.
The album comes off as an update to 2002's The Eminem Show, when his contradictions and fame were both peaking. It's an impossible task, to match not only that material but the circumstances around it. Drugs were a huge part of his content, and presumably his creative fuel. I imagine that he had to teach himself how to rap again after getting clean in 2007. Which he did spectacularly on 2009's Relapse, without sacrificing, and even doubling down on, the edgy content. The ensuing years got spottier, from his corporate seminar theme song era to his anti-Trump freestyle overshadowed by the opening line ("that's an awfully hot coffee pot" became not just a meme, but a totem of his antiquated rhyme style).
It's odd to say that it seems like he's in a better place, on an album in which he murders himself. Here at least his confusion and rage are part of the show, as they should be. Much of his recent work just seemed confused, with his double-time flows flying by like a wanking lead guitarist, disconnected from any groove. He's at his best when spewing venom from the id ("Lucifer"), or shadowboxing his critics ("Habits"), or performatively battling himself ("Guilty Conscience 2"). Those are good Eminem songs, and they do the heavy lifting on this tracklist. There's some formula here too - the "I'm back!" lead single ("Houdini"), the daughter dedication ("Temporary"), the rehashing of his addiction battle ("Somebody Save Me").
Eminem has also turned into Angry Dad, raging at the kids. The assumed truth that "Gen Z" is "soft" feels like a surface level complaint. This is a generation that scrolls past war atrocity videos, their valorization then commodified by their algorithms. Based on streaming numbers, they're still playing his classic material, perhaps identifying with the scattered rage against a system that wants to put them in a box. The thought has occurred to me that if I were a middle-aged adult in 1999, I would have written Eminem off as a ridiculous clown. I wouldn't have "got it." So what about the new energy out there that we don't "get" now? It's the cycle, and perhaps it would be more interesting to hear Eminem reflect and riff off that than rebel against it.
As far as Eminem "murdering" Slim Shady - I've been listening to him for a quarter century and I still can't tell the difference between the two. The real battle here is between the reclusive, responsible multi-millionaire father and his megabrand controversy-baiting persona. "Part of me gets it and wants to say I'm sorry and fix it/ So all of my statements are basically contradictive."