Review Summary: Imagine Relapse. Now take away 1.5 from your score on that album and that's Refill. It's still not as bad as Encore.
Valium is one f
ucked up drug man… If weed inspired
The Chronic, then valium inspires the inconsistent drugginess of
Relapse. If that’s so, then is
Refill Em’s
2001, a slightly worse, more inconsistent album that sort of states the same issues brought up in the original? Unfortunately for fans of the serious tracks of
Relapse, that’s an undoubted yes, but there’s still some good stuff that resides on this zone.
There’s the overzealously overrated “Forever”, containing an off-kilter verse from Eminem who, although sounds awkward at first in being paired with Drake and Kanye West, puts out with his most masterful attempt at the fast flow in years, while Kanye West continues on his lyrical revival, and drops some funny as hell lines (“Old Money Benjamin Button, what, nuttin/ Now superbad chicks givin me Mclovin”). Then there’s the OTHER good song on the album; “Drop The Bomb on Em”, featuring one of the bounciest beats Dre ever gave Em, with Em considerably just ripping up the beat with some of his funnier lyrics in years (“f-cking fictitional characters and fairytales/prepare yourself for Captain America on Ferris Wheels/but it aint fiction its fact boy beware its real/them lyrics you wield equals zero to a hero’s shield”) along with some slightly misplaced arrogance and regular rap repping.
And then there’s the disastrous middle. Eminem clearly thought that the horror movie lyricism of his last album was the direction rather than the “Beautiful” and “Underground” material. His flow’s are good, the beats switch from lackluster like the generic Arabic dance track “Taking My Ball” to the twinkly, horror dreamy “Music Box”, but other than its terrible. Substantially it’s the same old ***, and it’s starting to get annoying to hear Eminem to rap about the same things for almost fifteen years now. Basically,
Refill is some stuff that we thank that didn’t make it to
Relapse, and we’re all hoping now that
Relapse 2 never gets released. It’s that bad.
