‘Rhyme Or Reason’ spins out a sample of The Zombies’ wistful psych hit ‘Time Of The Season’ to rage against his absent father – familiar ground, true, but brilliantly done, Em fuming with scary intensity. Seldom has Mathers displayed such vigour as on ‘Rap God’, six minutes of semi-automatic rhyming and spleen that hits supersonic pace four and a half minutes in. Where 2009’s ‘Relapse’ and the following year’s ‘Recovery’ faltered, here he hones in on exactly what he does best. Has he lost his powers? Will he end up “the laughing stock of rap”? It’s these fears that power him on ‘MM2’, an album he threatens might be his last: “Behold the final chapter in the saga/Trying to recapture that lightning trapped in a bottle”.īy and large, he succeeds.

But come the final verse, we discover that the kidnapping is only a metaphor, and Marshall is merely hostage to his own tormented psyche. Album opener ‘Bad Guy’ begins as a fantasy in which Mathers is kidnapped by one Matthew Mitchell – brother of ‘Stan’, the titular stalker from ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’.

Like its predecessor, the cover pictures Mathers’ childhood home in Detroit’s run-down 8 Mile, and what’s within both revisits and further elaborates on the Eminem mythology. Punchy rap rock and itchy turntablism of a genus that folk stomped their Adidas pumps to back in the ’80s, it recalls both early Beastie Boys and Run DMC (two groups, of course, with whom Rubin has been intimately acquainted).Įxecutive produced by Rubin and Dr Dre, Eminem’s eighth album is a sequel, of sorts, to 2000’s ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’. Eminem’s comeback singles have generally conformed to a template – comedy voice, scandalous contemporary reference, fart noise – but the Rubin-assisted ‘Berzerk’ is very much a new look. The Def Jam founder and hobo-bearded producer-for-hire is a guru of going back to basics, helping everyone from Johnny Cash to Adele shave away the bullshit and get right to the heart of their music. Looking back now and then isn’t necessarily such a bad thing.

Back to the basics dr dre album cover