The only salvation for a lot of these songs is Eminem’s alchemical control of rhyme and diction, but even that can be a liability. But in 2013, in the wake of the message of redemption he feverishly pitched us just an album ago, Eminem’s return to ruffling feathers carries the stink of desperation. It was an error of youthful carelessness. (“Bitch, you complain when you listen to this/ But you throw yourself at me/ That’s what I call pitching a bitch.”) Earlier in his career, Eminem delivered similarly gutbucket content with the shock of incredulity that anyone would find it offensive. “Love Game”, the hotly anticipated team up with Kendrick Lamar, is similarly assailed by lunkheaded chauvinism, both in Eminem’s gross rendition of a woman giving him oral sex and Kendrick’s barbs about a guy who “drowned like an abortion” and a clingy ex for whom “chlamydia couldn’t even get rid of her.” Elsewhere two songs are dedicated to crucifying the mother of his children and anyone else foolhardy enough to get involved with him. “Rap God” is a gobstopping display of Eminem’s champion technical prowess that’s waylaid in every verse by brazen homophobia. It also revels in its predecessor’s worst behaviors, bandying about misogyny and gay slurs as if Eminem’s conciliatory 2001 Grammys performance with a pink polka dot suited Elton John never happened. But MMLP2 revisits more than just the characters and stories of the first installment.
Old nemeses like Insane Clown Posse, Everlast, and the Backstreet Boys are lampooned as well. “Rap God” revisits a crass joke about the 1999 Columbine school shooting initially censored on the first LP’s “I’m Back”.
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Opener “Bad Guy” is a sprawling epic that finds the brother of “Stan”’s titular obsessed fan hatching an elaborate revenge plot, and “Parking Lot” inexplicably revisits the heist in the middle of “Criminal” to inform us that the getaway driver split, and the shooter died.
The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is an album-length bout of moral recidivism, Recovery’s motivational rehab narrative ditched wholesale for a second helping of the celeb-hating, self-deprecating juvenalia of Eminem’s beloved third album peppered with samples of and references to the source material. Serious Eminem proved a drag despite Recovery couching its penitent 12-step dispatches in rivulets of the usual Slim Shady chicanery, so here we are staring down a once-more radioactive blonde Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP 2. 2010’s Recovery maneuvered out of Relapse and Encore’s chum bucket humor by detailing the artist’s struggle to overcome a long-simmering prescription drug dependency.
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Relapse sold well but its serial killer shtick was uninspired, as Eminem openly admitted on the next year’s “Not Afraid” (“That last Relapse CD was ‘enh’”). After showing his first signs of wear with 2004’s patchy Encore, Eminem rebounded with 2009’s Dre-beats-and-horrorcore-rhymes retrenchment Relapse. As such, Em’s last decade worth of albums has suffered under jarring shifts in tone. The more the triumphs of Eminem’s world beating Slim Shady/ Marshall Mathers/ Eminem Showtrilogy recede into memory, the more each subsequent release struggles to strike a tone that leverages an audience raised on the crass iconoclasm of “My Name Is” and “Kill You” with the aging, now sober father of three behind the music.
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