Eminem’s Undeniable Recovery

It’s a rare occurrence that I’m driven to write an album review based on the fact that such a vast majority of professional assessments have missed the mark so badly. Eminem’s seventh album, Recovery, has been called clumsy, lazy, half-assed and unimaginative. It’s been said that the lyrical innovation is nonexistent, that he’s treading familiar ground, there’s no place for Marshall Mathers in a post-Slim Shady world.

All of that, to put it lightly, is unobservant bullshit, gleeful dismissives based on either a perceived failure to adhere to the Slim Shady standard of old, or the land of commercially viable club bangers as his contemporaries largely have. Make no mistake: Recovery is without question the strongest, most potent & versatile offering Eminem has delivered yet, possessing the most devastating and detailed lyrical narratives this side of Fear Of A Black Planet. It certainly doesn’t have Planet’s revolutionary soul, but what it lacks in a greater movement it compensates for in the most clever, obliterating character annihilations and hilarious, rewind-demanding multilayered entendres the game’s ever seen.

We all wondered where he would go next, with a rather strong feeling that Eminem had become nothing more than a pill-addled caricature of the fire he first brought. The new album, a replacement for the scrapped Relapse 2 sessions, traces Em’s journey out of depression and drug addiction and up to a new level of voracious lyrical head hunting. Down to the sing-song sissiness of first single Not Afraid, all the signs pointed to a half-stepper record, a vulnerable and tepid exploration of what it means to be sober now with a new lease on life.

We should’ve known better.

From the word “go” the power present seems as if Em went back and watched the final battle scene in 8 Mile for a month straight, then laid out an attack plan on a genre-capping scale, with all pistons firing on a brand new engine off the line in Motor City. It’s a fucked up scenario to envision, but if anyone’s capable of such gritty celebrity-juxtaposing surrealism it’s Mr. Mathers.

The critical discontent is understandable at a glance; Em’s cheerfully juvenile jabbiness, as on the “oh.. oh oh.. oh oh.. oh” chorus to to opener Cold Wind Blows, is as stabby, grating and teasing as ever before. But don’t miss the syncopated slaughter framed around it, dipping toes on a comeback album to stand taller than any other in memory. That’s right, you can go ahead and call this a comeback.

The first real taste of angled progression arrives in On Fire, with verses that end in downstroke note drops, a vocal fade dropping on the two… or is it the four? That’s the catch in the funhouse dismemberment fantasy – his mastery of the rules allows him to fuck with them relentlessly, a mile-a-minute rhythmic jazz virtuoso: “Those are your wounds? This is the salt / So get lost / Shit, dissin’ me is like pissin’ off the wizard of Oz / Wrap a lizard in gauze / Beat you in the jaws with it, grab the scissors and saws / And cut out your livers, gizzards and balls / Throw you in the middle of the ocean in the blizzard with Jaws.”

Then, anticipating naysayers on the straightforward style delivery, he openly calls out the switch-up on Seduction, a girl-jacking dis track so unnervingly dismantling one prays the rapper he’s speaking to doesn’t actually exist. No Love features an appearance from Lil’ Wayne that’s passably listenable, but after the third listen through it’s tough not to skip ahead to Em’s verse.

In a career-highlight moment of spitfire sunshine, a breathless second-coming flag-planting is proof enough that Marshall Mathers is on top of his game like never before: “I’m alive again / More alive than I have been in my whole entire life / I can see these people’s ears perk up as I begin / to spaz with a pen / I’m a little bit sicker than most / Shit’s fixin’ to get thick again / They say the competition is stiff / But I get a hard dick from this shit / Now stick it in / I ain’t never get an end again / Caution to the wind, complete freedom / Look at these rappers, how I treat ‘em / So why the fuck would I join ‘em when I beat em? / They call me a freak ’cause I like to spit on these pussies ‘fore I eat ‘em / Man, get these whack cocksuckers offstage / Where the fuck is Kanye when you need him? / Snatch the mic from ‘em / Bitch I’ma let you finish in a minute / Yeah that rap was tight, but um / I just spit the greatest verse of all time / So you might want to go back to the lab tonight and um / Scribble out them rhymes you were gonna spit and start over from scratch & write new ones / But I’m afraid it aint gonna make no difference when I rip the stage and tear it in half tonight…” …and that’s only the warm-up.

By the second minute of blazing Pink-guested Won’t Back Down, he hits such an airtight stride that initial dismissive critiques are rendered tellingly feeble. His Hip-Hop detractors are reminiscent of another scandalous blacklisting of an industry trailblazer: terrestrial radio’s total refusal to acknowledge Howard Stern’s revolution of the industry. But I digress; atop the feeling of running uphill next to a lyrical viper, the volume-drop reaction in the final verse is oh snap hilarious, a brilliant use of exactly the kind of cheery hemorrhoidal disposition that makes Eminem so goddamned good.

Having seen the effects of a demographically specific summer anthem in my hometown with Kid Rock’s Sumertime jam, I’ll swear by this: Soon, all across middle America, W.T.P. will become a cornerstone track at summer barbecues, beach outings, backyard shitshoots and roll-throughs for the forseeable future. It’s a proudly scummy, buzz-beat heavy and flamboyantly sinister ode to suburban lo-rider hillbilly culture. Supa Dups’ co-production lays a buttery epic beneath the vocal, an increasingly aw damn rhyme that hits a high note with a dash of standard Em misogyny (comes with the territory) on a crushing delivery.

As far as direct conflict goes, it seems Mr. Mathers is choosing the high road for the sake of getting a greater point across. There are very few open call-outs, lifting the tabloid expiration dates normally associated with such tracks. Though he seems to be trading up from Christopher Reeve to Michael J. Fox in the brutal handicap referential, he still tosses a halfhearted bone in Miss Carey’s direction just in case she thought he’d forgotten about her since this brutal dis: “Take a look at Mariah next time I inspire you to write a song,” he raps in the opener.

The soul-bearing autobiographical and self-deprecating tracks such as Talkin’ 2 Myself and Going Through Changes are a dose of nearly too-real reality, documenting the narrator’s downfall and stepping out of the smoke with shattered mirrors all around. For once, it’s not a challenge of patience to hold a vested interest in the Marshal Mathers story. Perhaps that’s because rather than half-hearted peripherals and digs at his mom, Mathers tuns inward and openly admits he’s been in a slump and went a little too far over the edge in recent years: “I just wanna thank everybody for bein’ so patient, bearin’ with me over these last couple of years while I figure this shit out,” he offers. The “I’m back!” at the end is a little heavy-handed, but that’s a bit like calling a bazooka blast overkill at a knife fight.

There’s also the longshot possibility that middle American teens and twentysomethings have at long last come to realize the Idiocracy symbolism of affluent Silver Spoon kids making suburban messiahs of the likes of 50 Cent, feigning thug pride in a life vessel named Privilege. Em’s laid-bare confessional on Changes, breaking down the story of his kid watching his life unravel as the chemical yes-men suck their fill and take their pound of proverbial flesh, is a gut punch of reality that modern social observation suggests a vast and growing demographic can relate to. The loathing acknowledgement of having fucked up not only his own blessed life but his daughter’s by influence of witness leads to a self-hatred far too many in today’s sedated society will empathize with. The overdose narrative is captivating and heartbreaking, but the seething, misplaced anger of the middle-class millions, as well as their indignant defense of the chemically crutched, faltering lives they lead are spoken for here. It’s a powerful connective device for the iGeneration, the legions of kids who can’t bring themselves to care about the tangible world, who can’t remember the days when they could actually look up to their parents or use them as ethical guideposts in the world, but rather rely on a patchwork standard set forth by social media and popular chemicals.

Recovery features production by Boi-1DA, Just Blaze, Jim Jonsin and DJ Khalil, along with the usual suspects Mr. Porter and Dre. There’s solid production, such as on So Bad and the beat-heavy lyrical obliteration of Almost Famous, but ultimately, a click track would suffice for most of these rhymes for the simple fact that they’re so meticulously crafted, so clearly agonized over, it’s hard to pay attention to anything else.

The strong exceptions are threefold; first is Love The Way You Lie, somber pianos and lush acoustics with a sadistically enabling hook by Rihanna, of all people, given the subject matter. Who but Eminem could possibly have the titanium balls to pull off the flipside of the story, stepping into Brown’s shoes in the aftermath? Secondly is Space Bound, a gutting tale of a man’s suicide after the girl he’s built his life upon decides to leave him. The chorus evokes a Rocket Man case of orbital loneliness, soaring yet delicate vocal over descending acoustic chords issuing a final kiss-off of soul-blooming love. It’s Mathers’ grown-up version of Stan or (insert any of the songs about killing his ex-wife here), visually devastating as per his trademark, but it has that special something that divides true classics from pan-flash seller hooks.

The third exception to note isn’t Dre’s So Bad (which is good, but not great, as it should be), but rather 25 To Life, featuring DJ Khalil’s synths and skittering beats under a hateful surgical-strike metaphor attack on Hip-Hop. It’s a telling assessment of Eminem’s relationship with an industry that’s largely treated him like a freakshow anomaly, a stylistic and racial outcast. He makes performance art out of turning the tables, grabbing the strap back and laying out a beat down on an industry that neglected and clowned him when he was down. It’s hard not to cheer along.

Nine-to-fivers may not have the time to pay attention long enough to peel back the Slim Shady preconceptions and do the focused listening it takes to explore Recovery. I’d hope it’s that, rather than half-assed hack kneejerkery at such a conflicted media character, an easy target, but from the perspective of a 24-hour music junkie, a fanatic for evolution of form and transcendental devotion to the craft, this album reaches new heights of lyrical prowess and delivery. Marshall Mathers has a new lease on the mad scientist lyrical-savant funhouse he calls a life, and he’s earned every bit of praise he’s bound to receive for this one.