Review Summary: Half Stiffy.
I haven’t cared about Eminem in over a decade. Actually, my lack of interest goes back way further than that. The last time I seriously considered myself a fan of what Eminem was currently doing was 2002, and even then
The Eminem Show disappointed me. I’m sure as hell not the first one to pick up on this, but the guy is at his best when he’s red with rage, and Eminem’s rage had certainly subsided from the
Marshall Mathers LP to
The Eminem Show. Sure, the subject matter on songs like ‘Business’ and ‘Cleanin’ Out My Closet’ is angry, but compared with songs like ‘Kill You’ and ‘Criminal’, the former lacks the hyper-violence of the latter, the kind of violence that calls to mind a man who will rip out your throat and watch you bleed, vocal chords in hand. Maybe that kind of thing isn’t your cup of tea, but when Eminem’s pen isn’t filled with fury, he doesn’t actually have much to say, if anything at all anymore, beyond the tired clichés of the genre like drug taking and bitches.
Needless to say, Em’s career took a serious dive after ’02. With only a few exceptions (25 to Life, Rap God, and a few others), it’s been all downhill for Mr. Mathers.
Encore and
Relapse were abominable,
Recovery and
TMMLP2 were tepid at best, and we all know about the steaming pile of poop that was 2017’s
Revival. What a fall from grace! Even with all that said,
Kamikaze intrigued me for two reasons. First, artists just don’t make music that fast anymore;
Revival dropped merely eight months ago. Second, even if they do, rarely are they full length LPs. At the least, it takes an artist two years to write, edit, and produce a full length, and Eminem has been no exception to the rule, not until
Kamikaze. Since Eminem is not a workaholic, which is fine, it would appear that during these last eight months he had a lot to say, and a lot to say right now.
So, what is it that Eminem’s so desperate to get off his chest? The first track, ‘Ringer’, makes the answer to that question immediately apparent: getting back at his critics. Em having issues with people who don’t respect his craft is nothing new. He’s been that way for twenty years. But, this time, Em’s sorer than he’s been since 2000, and he brings it hard. Em’s ire takes aim at everyone from talking heads, “
I’m sorry, wait, what’s your talent? Oh, critiquin’/My talent?”, to the state of hip-hop in 2018, “
You got a couple of ghost writers/But to these kids it don’t actually matter/They’re askin’ me, ‘What the *** happened to hip-hop?/I said, I don’t have any answers.”, to the wretched mumble rappers themselves, “
finger-bang, chicken wang, MGK, Iggy ‘zae/Lil Pump, Lil Xan imitate Lil Wayne” to anyone who had something to say about
Revival, “
But sayin’ I no longer got it/’Cause you missed the line and never caught it/’Cause it went over your head, because you’re too stupid to get it”.
It must have been this last group that wounded him. The critique that Eminem feel off is almost twenty years old (ever since ‘99’s
Slim Shady LP, which is ridiculous), so that kind of criticism isn’t new. But the criticism to
Revival wasn’t that Em had simply lost another step or two, it was that he had no more steps to lose, that he was no longer an artist. Surely, it was shocking coming face to face with the reality that if Marshall Mathers isn’t Eminem, then he’s just another lonely nobody in a sea of seven billion faces. He indicates as much towards the end of ‘Ringer’, “
But I couldn’t bottle this *** any longer/The fact that I know that I’ma hit my bottom/If I don’t pull myself from the jaws of defeat and rise to my feet”. Eminem has finally been roused out of his lethargy to deliver the best performance of his post
Eminem Show career.
First off, Em’s lyricism on this project is awe inspiring, and his subject matter goes beyond the simple dimensions of bitterness and anger. Em’s genius with double and triple entendres is unmatched, “
this bar is over your head/So you better have arms if you’re gonna pull up”, “
The closest thing he’s had to hits is smackin’ bitches”, “
But they been puttin’ me through the wringer/So I ain’t ironin’ *** out with the press/But I just took this beat to the cleaners”. More impressively, the title of the first track ‘Ringer’ is a whopping quadruple entendre! Here “Ringer” can mean: being put through the wringer, a tool that’s used to dry clothes, the media platform The Ringer, and the song itself. Feel as you might about Mr. Mathers, you cannot deny that the man is a superior creator.
I’d be seriously remiss if I failed to mentioned Em’s flow on this thing. It’s fire. From machine gun rhyme play, “
I’m ***in’ these syllables, I let them lick on my genitals/I’m a ***ing invincible, indefensible, despicable, difficult prick/A little bit unpredictable, I spit the formidable/That you bitches are ***in’ with, the original” to rhythmic and syllabic shifts—see the beginning of the first verse of ‘Ringer’—to spot on imitation of lesser rappers, “
Do-you-have-an-ny-i-dea-how-much-I-hate-this-chop-py-flow-Ever-ry-one-cop-ies-though-prob-bly-no” Em’s flow, enunciation, and speed are without flaw. He’s surpassed even that which we saw on the immortal
MMLP.
So far, I’ve given a lot of praise to Kamikaze. Here comes the “But” part. This album has serious, serious flaws. For one thing, at times Eminem comes off as an immature brat. The opening seconds of ‘Ringer’ make you shake your head, “
I feel like I wanna punch the world in the ***in’ face right now, yeah!” That line wouldn’t have been cool when Marshall was in his twenties, so it certainly isn’t cool now, Marshall being in his forties. Em’s also got to get over his obsession with tampons, using the words bitch and fa**ot, and telling people to eat dicks. Track two ‘Greatest’ begins with, “
Mother***ers talkin’ crazy (yeah)/Sayin’ I should quit (ah)/I ***in’ tell ‘em make me (bitch)/Eat a ***in’ dick (yeah)”. It gets worse. Track eleven ‘Nice Guy’ opens with, “
Suck my dick, you ***in' suck, man/Suck my dick, you ***in' suck, man/I hope that your heart get hit by a semi-truck/Suck my dick, you ***in' suck, man” At this juncture, I’d like to address Em directly and in a language that he understands. “Dude, you sound like a bitch.” I’m taking it easy on him too, about half of the people who have listened to this record think that
all of Em’s verses make him look like a crusty old-timer.
Anyway, Kamakazi is a clear case of the old saying, “If you mess with the bull, you get the horns”, and just like a bull during
encierro, Em’s rage isn’t over until it’s over, it’s your job to watch the f*ck out. Nine of the thirteen tracks deal with Em’s pain, the most likely cause of which, as I have argued, was the critical reception to
Revival. That’s a lot of ink spilt. Too much. By the time you get halfway through the album, Em’s driven the point home so many times you can’t help but say to yourself, “Okay man, we get it. What else do you have to say?” Don’t get me wrong, from beginning to end, Em’s lyricism and flow on Kamakazi is almost god-tier, so it’s frustrating to this reviewer that Em can only channel that energy through a single lens, wounded anger. I have no doubt he could do bigger and better things with his art. We’ve seen it with ‘Stan’.
I’d imagine that the next thing I have to say would hurt Eminem’s pride a great deal more than the last thing I had to say. Here it goes. For the love of god, Em, you’ve got to stop singing. The guy can’t do it. He just can’t. Rapping and singing are physically different skills, the fact that he doesn’t understand this is difficult for me to grasp. How has nobody, after all this time, pulled him aside and told him he’s chronically flat. Listen to the chorus in ‘Normal’. His throat is closed as he completes the rhyme scheme on each of the following words, extra-lecture-texter-next to her. Em’s flatness is a systemic issue on the album, not one particular to ‘Normal’. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for him. Someone whose currency is their voice should know better. Someone whose currency is their voice should be able to hear when they are flat. Drake is perpetually flat too, by the way.
Eminem’s sometime immaturity and chronic flatness are small potatoes compared to the absolute dumpster fire that he and his producers made mixing and producing this album. Just like his voice, the production is awfully flat. Compressed is a better word. Dre must have “Executive Producer” across his name solely because this thing was released through his label. He couldn’t have had too much hands-on time with the album because it’s way too flat, lacks any semblance of a bass, let alone a full texture, and it’s impossible to differentiate the treble from the mids. One particular moment on ‘Lucky You’ stands out. The end of the first bridge fails miserably to reach a full crescendo. The featured artist, Joyner Lucas, raises his voice during the last three lines, inflecting it with strength and anger as he spits until he’s at the point where he’s yelling on the last couple of words. The immediate second after the end of the bridge would have been the
perfect time to raise the bass to a billion for some club banger skull-***ery. Not only does the crescendo die with a whimper, the volume hadn’t risen one iota to begin with. Mature artists know that there’s nothing more important to their craft than its daily cultivation. Clearly, Eminem’s craft is rapping, not producing; nothing about this album’s production job evokes the same talent and attention to detail Em has with a pen.
In 2018 most people either love Eminem or hate him. On the one hand, Eminem possesses an almost demonic virtuosity on the mic, head and shoulders above the clumsy Dre and 50 cent, and five-hundred stories above the pitiful mumble rappers of today who probably couldn’t freestyle to save their life. On the other hand, Eminem’s childishness tries the patience of both his generation and the ones after. I think it’s possible to see Eminem in both lights at the same time, as a talented guy who struggles to get out of his own way. I wouldn’t, however, tell anyone not to be turned off when Eminem, yet again, calls somebody a f*g.
