Whatever moved Eminem to actually finish and release his new album, it couldn’t have been the money. It wasn’t to add to his fame, which is already secure. It’s not because he had anything to say, any news to share, any opinions or feelings or (please) ideas. It’s not even to remind people he’s an amazing performer, since he already did that at the Super Bowl a couple of years ago. No, it’s probably simpler than that — he’s a sensitive soul, and he needs validation. He needs people to slap him on the back every few years and say, Hey, not bad. You tried. It’s funny how his hyped comeback hit “Houdini” had a joke about participation trophies, since that’s what this album turned out to be. On The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace), he’s a legacy artist who’s turned into a professional collector of participation trophies, so he’s giving himself a new one for his display case. Not bad. He tried.
The Death of Slim Shady is a star with the yips, sweating to reassure everyone — especially himself — he’s still got it. He remembers how great he was at this when he was young, and he hopes to remind you, by repeating old tricks he’s not necessarily so great at in 2024. “Was just a kid from Detroit who knew how to destroy the booth,” he reminisces in the nostalgic “Habits.” That kid sure wasn’t planning on recycling the same jokes for the rest of his life. But Eminem can’t even imagine anything else. How the hell did that happen?
His albums still sell in massive numbers, so there’s that, and he’s got a devoted Gen X fan base looking for signs of continued virtuosity, though not looking as hard as he is. Sometimes he gives his comeback albums an additional reason to exist, as with Kamikaze’s complaints about mumble rap, but this isn’t one of those. He keeps boasting how edgy and controversial he is, but none of the yes-men in the studio had enough clout (or enough respect) to push him, which is sad. Every time he says “woke” or “canceled” or “transgenders,” it makes you think of Hugh Hefner on The Girls Next Door and how none of those girls had the heart to tell Hef how silly he looked in the sailor hat.
The big concept here is Marshall Mathers killing off his Slim Shady persona. It’s not the first time he’s tried that trick, and (you hate to say it) definitely not the last, though some might say Shady’s been in creative hospice care for a minute. Dr. Dre produces the two liveliest tracks, “Lucifer” and “Road Rage.” JID excels on the otherwise flaccid “Fuel,” while Ez Mil, Babytron, and Jelly Roll shine. They’re all paying their respects, trying (and failing) not to upstage the star.
As for his rhymes, this album is basically all the Netflix stand-up specials you watched with Uncle Wally on Thanksgiving 2017, when he was too drunk to drive you home. Em’s got nothing in the bag at all. He goes off on Caitlin Jenner (Google her — a big deal eons ago) and Michael Jackson (he died once) and the “Gen Z” “PC police” (they’re a thing, according to Eminem). His best celebrity diss is a David Carradine joke the Weeknd did eight years ago. He doesn’t mention Drake; he tiptoes up to Kanye and André 3000 flute jokes, but then chokes; he fumbles the lowest hanging Diddy fruit. His craftiest wordplay is on “Bad One,” where he quips, “You said you’re looking for miniature golf/Thought you said ‘men to jerk off.’”
The Death of Slim Shady comes on the 25th anniversary of his classic 1999 major-label debut, The Slim Shady LP, when his creative possibilities seemed wide open. He was a fresh voice, back before he was a superstar, rapping about shit jobs and getting bullied in high school, instead of celebrity overdog problems. But he had a bigger hit the next year with The Marshall Mathers LP, and once he found success with that angle, he decided, at a surprisingly young age, that he was done thinking up new ideas. He’s still young — barely into his fifties — but he takes a bizarre amount of pride in clinging to opinions he formed in his teens, and making those his whole point. Still blaming his problems on women, scared of trans folks, enraged by the idea of weird people doing weird shit, still moaning about his mom? He begs to get canceled by audiences who don’t think about him and have no idea he thinks about them.
It’s kind of shocking when you think of all the people who signed off on this album without telling their cash cow he could do himself a favor by learning some new jokes, or listening to some new music, but he sounds closed off tight from outside voices. “I suck my dick better than you do” — that isn’t the putdown he hoped it was.
The Death of Slim Shady evokes one of Eminem’s peak oldies: “Purple Pills” with D12, way back in 2001, with an uproariously offensive high-speed rant where he’s “Mr. Mischief with a trick up his sleeve/To roll up on you like Christopher Reeve.” You might have laughed at this gag back then, or gotten mad, or felt sick. But it’s fair to say that nobody, not even his worst enemies, would have predicted that two decades later, he’d still be making Christopher Reeve jokes — in fact, he’d devote an entire song to repeating the same joke that once took him three seconds. “Brand New Dance” is sad enough in itself, but it gets sadder later on the album, when he hedges his bets by claiming it’s an old outtake that got censored (yeah right) for being too edgy (totally, sure), as if he’s too embarrassed to admit it’s the best he can do right now.
This is quite honestly not the future that anyone would have hoped for Eminem back in 2001. Hell, not even Christopher Reeve would have wished this kind of fate on him. After all these years, you wonder if anyone will have the heart to tell him that he’s still got plenty of life and music ahead of him — but only if he wants it bad enough to get up and start moving.
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