Eminem: Review of Music to Be Murdered By Side B

The new album stays true to the artist's excellent tradition, but intends to push the same old buttons on listeners.

Once upon a time, releasing a "deluxe edition" of an already successful album simply meant tacking on new content. B-sides and live tracks meant to give the record's sales a boost. Or, more precisely, to squeeze the diehard fans who'd do anything for a release from their favourite artist. In 2020, though, hip hop has raised the bar considerably.

The deluxe editions previously released by DaBaby and Lil Baby felt like entire new albums. Rapper Pop Smoke's murder in February didn't stop his label from digging up 15 new tracks to add to the debut album released after his death.

Eminem has been a landmark figure on the hip hop scene for years

Likewise, Eminem's record, Music to Be Murdered By Side B, packs in an extra hour of music to make it a genuine standalone work. It's a record that shares its parent album's preoccupation with Alfred Hitchcock. The legendary director makes an appearance in the intro. The music on Alfred's Theme comes from Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette. A piece of music that played over the credits of the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

It also responds to the mixed reviews of its predecessor and to the controversy stirred up by the track Unaccommodating, which featured queasy jokes about the Manchester Arena bombing. The latter drew condemnation from both fans and the Mayor of Manchester. Eminem's response is a classic sorry-not-sorry: "I don't know anything about the Manchester bombing that's funny," he offers on Favorite Bitch, before cracking a joke about the Boston Marathon bombing.

There's an argument that getting upset because Eminem said something shocking on his new album is like getting upset because the new AC/DC album features a man dressed as a schoolboy playing guitar. That's exactly the point.

In fact, AC/DC make for the opposite comparison. They've spent decades giving their audience exactly what they expect. Which was more or less Eminem's default position on 2010's Recovery. Donald Trump provided a refreshing spark of inspiration. Perhaps because the "alt-right" didn't look much like a significant chunk of his noughties fanbase. "The angry white misanthrope who feels marginalised... with a sense of anguish that's out of proportion to reality," as his biographer Anthony Bozza put it.

There's an argument that getting upset because Eminem said something shocking on his new album is like getting upset because the new AC/DC album features a man dressed as a schoolboy playing guitar.

Eminem's contempt for the current state of hip-hop, which he aired on 2018's Kamikaze, gave listeners the strange spectacle of Slim Shady sounding like a middle-aged dad. A middle-aged man moaning about the music his kids like.

It takes 52 seconds to reach the first lyrics about attacking a woman and three minutes to reach the first one about murdering her, complete with sound effects. Mumble-rap comes in for another kicking on Favorite Bitch. '90s hip-hop is hailed as gospel. There's an insinuation about rappers who use ghostwriters. A bold move given the appearance of Dr Dre, the industry's most famous ghostwriting client.

There's the usual stuff about drugs and madness. There are jokes about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. There's a burst of support for the Black Lives Matter movement on These Demons and on Zeus. "Black people saved my life," he states. He goes on to bring up the coronavirus, especially on Gnat, without having much to say about it beyond comparing it to himself.

"Black people saved my life," Eminem states

On the other hand, age hasn't withered Eminem's astonishing level of technical skill. Even if you've heard most of what he says before, he can still likely dazzle you with how he says it. In one breath, with relentless wordplay, puns and knotty internal rhymes, all delivered in a voice that hits the tracks hard.

The music is less interesting than on his previous record. The best thing here is the bass and drums on Guns Blazing, programmed to sound like a volley of gunshots. Even so, nothing matches the chaotically thrilling noise of You Gon' Learn's production. Nor is there a clear-cut triumph to match this album's Darkness. A brilliant depiction of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting through the eyes of the perpetrator.

The most interesting moments come when Eminem confronts his own artistic dilemma, worrying about the fact that he's approaching 50. "I'm gonna be a grandpa." Or complaining that people "want to change me... I want the new but old Shady." "Where do I go from here?" he asks God on the track. "I honestly have no idea." It feels like a genuinely moving moment of honesty and clarity. Then he slips back into Slim Shady mode and cracks another joke about his balls.