The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)
by Eminem

This is the first Eminem album I've brought since the early noughties... Is it as good as his earlier stuff? Nope its not unfortunately... Is it better than any other Hip-Hop artist around today?? God yes and by some distance! (Edited)

Only ever given three 5/100 ratings on here and this doesn't seem to be all the way hated so I feel like I ought to explain myself. For some time I've wondered if Eminem's late career slump could be helped by going back to the more laid back, technical and zany flow associated with the Slim Shady character. So much of his 2010s output sounds ugly because that shout-rap which takes over so many songs just isn't nice to listen to. This made me a bit hopeful going into a new album which mentioned his alter ego by name, but this is not the Slim Shady of those early records. Over some of his best tracks the Slim Shady character allowed Eminem to showcase his sheer creativity and word play, whilst also letting him speak about the stuff that bothered him (his family situation, his place in society) without ever sounding whiny and bitter. It was also wildly offensive in a way so extreme that it was impossible to take very seriously. Sure, Eminem probably was fairly homophobic/misogynistic at the time, but I don't think anyone took him very seriously when he was rapping about some of the stuff he planned on doing in a track like 'Kill You'. Instead it had this shock value comedy which went so well with the inventive flows and unique approach to rapping.

Then we get the Slim Shady of this record, who whines about all the stuff he can't say and says it anyway. The comedy's gone, the inventiveness is gone and all that's left is Slim asserting that he can't be stopped from saying this stuff. Like since when did Slim Shady actually care if people were offended by what he was saying? Here he's reduced to an embittered old guy desperate to provoke outrage from people who probably don't really care (the skit where a crowd protests the release of this album is really revealing of the gap between the way Eminem sees himself and reality).

So why does the record take this tone? Eminem's been trying all sorts of career directions over the last 15 years, whether that's the motivational rap of Recovery, the (sometimes) introspection of MMLP2, the emotion laid bare of Revival, the combative battle rapper of Kamikaze or the hip-hop elder statesman of Music to be Murdered by. On the Death of Slim Shady he's given up. Instead after seeing all of these avenues close up he's instead looking for someone (anyone but himself) to blame. He does this by completely misidentifying the causes of his recent failure. By pretending that he's been cancelled by younger people (apparently the same ultra-woke generation that loved Xxxtentacion) he's trying to rewrite the reasons for why his reputation as a rapper's been falling apart for 20 years. Anyone with any memory of this time knows that Em has been disappointing because of a mixture of poor choice of beats, unbelievably bad lyricism and his decision to focus on a really unpleasant sounding flow. For example, I'd consider 'Untouchable' from Revival to be one of his worst tracks ever, even when his lyrics are as progressive as I've heard him be, that anti Trump freestyle was similarly terrible. Eminem wants us to think that the world's changed and just can't handle him anymore, in reality his output has dropped off a cliff and people have responded accordingly. This complete commitment to an obviously false point is what makes this so empty as a listening experience. Even on Revival it felt like he was at least trying to get something about himself across. That record was an exploding on the launch pad style disaster, this one's like a wet fart. (Edited)

I absolutely love this album. It may be bcos of how I absolutely relate to it or the storyline of the album. (Edited)

This is definitely one of the albums of all time. It's not bad and it's not good. I did like the song with JID (Edited)

As good as music to be murdered by and kamikaze, few highlights but a lot of cringe lyrics and forgettable songs (Edited)