Review Summary: just my thoughts, i guess. man i'm tired.
Y'know, realizing that the stuff you loved as a kid is actually kind of sh*t? That's a pretty disheartening feeling. It doesn't just put a whole new context on whatever it is in question that hasn't aged well, but it kinda throws into question everything
else you were into at the time, whether it's good or not.
As you could probably tell by my reviews, I was a
huge Eminem fan as a kid. I liked how silly and explosive and clever he was - he's basically the reason I even got into hip-hop at all. There was something about his big, over-the-top persona that just worked for me and interested me; it made me want to dive further into his material and listen to more and more of it.
Infinite,
Slim Shady LP,
Marshall Mathers LP,
Eminem Show, hell, even
8 Mile and some of D12's stuff? I was all over that. I adored it. Eminem even made me want to try my hand at being a rapper (something that, both thankfully and regrettably, never went through, it would've been mad lame but also mad epic). Even to this day, these are still some of the best rap albums out there, period.
But here's the thing. Most of this amazing material is either over twenty years old or nearing it. It's... well, it's all in the past, it's over and done! Maybe Eminem just pumped out too much good sh*t too quickly? Maybe he just didn't adapt as well as he should have? Maybe he got arrogant and sloppy over time? Hell, maybe all the above! Whatever the case,
Encore was the first nosedive into Eminem's downward spiral - and ever since, not only has Eminem been falling and fading out of relevance, but, coincidentally, his music's gotten worse. A lot worse.
It took me a while to finally accept that. It took some
unambiguously dumpster-fire music from the likes of
Revival that made finally realize that, actually, Eminem didn't turn bad the moment he started letting Ed Sheeran onto his songs (although that was terrible, too). He turned bad the moment he cashed in and decided he had nothing more to say. This tone-deaf laziness started with
Encore, it bloomed into full-on garbage with
Relapse, and here, on
Recovery, Eminem's lost-touch fingers just bring... nothing to the table. Nothing at all! It's lifeless, it's lame, it's kinda ranty and mumble-y... and it's just got none of the magic, control, and pizazz of even half of his greatest hits.
It feels like more of a chore these days to sit through these "mature, serious" songs. The chorus on "Cold Wind Blows" is downright TERRIBLE, like, that hook, man, that nasal, ear-grating hook - what was Em thinking? What were his producers and entourage thinking? "On Fire" has a fun flow and fun rhymes, but they're just that: rhymes, not words, totally lacking in depth and meaning. These words, they're thrown in because they rhyme, not because they contribute to the stories these songs are trying to tell - which is absolutely something SSLP and MMLP avoided, and were all the better because of it. There's just a lot of... nothing happening here. Nothing, plain and simple. This is a brooding filler arc. The fake-90's-hiphop Black Ops song "Won't Back Down", the corny and pretend-inspirational "Not Afraid", the over-serious and kinda hackneyed "Love The Way You Lie", the utterly weird running-gag motif on "Cinderella Man", the weak and limp-wristed attempt at capturing that classic Slim Shady voice and style on "W.T.P." and "Untitled"... none of it's
terrible, sure.
But nothing about it feels genuine in the slightest.
When I sat down to listen to this album for this review (the first time I'd ever really tried listening to it in about seven-eight years!), I found I just... couldn't finish it. I couldn't. I couldn't do it - maybe
Encore,
Relapse, and the knowledge that everything after this was gonna be complete and utterr horsesh*t... maybe all of that affected my listening experience. But I know better than that. This album's weak flows, strange beats, weak rhymes and pretentious self-seriousness
actually killed it. Time hasn't been kind to Eminem, it seems. After a momentary burst of lightning in the spotlight, a moment in hip-hop and pop culture history where he kept pumping out banger after banger, a period in time when there wasn't a soul that
didn't know his name... well, Eminem just went stir crazy without the spotlight, like a moth without a flame. He had five years to decide what to do with himself, how to change his life... and then he comes back, and from that moment onward he started making terrible songs, stupid choices, and awful life decisions instead. and, in the process, Eminem wound up completely losing a lot of what made him fundamentally 'him'.
Recovery's not the worst album. But
Recovery *is* one of the worst I've ever heard.
