This is the second of a two-part series on Eminem by Lisa Aslanian. For the first part, see White Rage: Eminem, the Bad Boy from Detroit. -Jeff
Eminem’s Relapse does not deliver a clean rise from the ashes, a smooth transition from high to sober — far from it. The album, which Eminem released after he came out of rehab for the second time, resolutely off drugs, challenges our assumptions about therapy, creativity and what exactly it means to be cured.
Eminem’s sobriety does not blunt the dark and dank isolation that characterizes the artist and his work (there is very little collaboration on the album), it sharpens it. The music and Eminem himself seem looser. The rhymes are still agile and dense, but the subject matter — child molestation, serial murder and exhausting digressions on being high — is even more profane and harder to take.
Critics tore the album apart. Many accused Eminem of trading in shock value and playing for laughs. A few called the work forgettable, the latest in nasty, a summer blockbuster. A critic for the LA Times expressed dismay that the rapper’s critique of therapy was not explicit enough (I have no idea what it means to accuse an artist of not delivering an obvious enough critique) but all critics conceded that Eminem remains an unparalleled linguistic contortionist, bending and twisting words (see reviews here, here, here, and here). He used his skill to chronicle addiction and beating addiction, including all of the filthy phantasms that haunt him along the way.
Relapse showcases his talent and his feel for unbridled truth, and — here is where you should pay attention — the album is linked to his past (immaturity, self-absorption and fear of failure) and gestures, briefly, toward his future, or a sense that maybe Eminem is, even outside of stardom, worthwhile.
As critics and listeners, we ought to say first what the album is, before we can consider what it is not. To get at (and get) the work, three . . .
Read more: White Rage and the Riffing Cure: An Analysis of Eminem’s Relapse