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It is a joy to hear his almost naive and clumsy feelings hitting the paper again on ‘Normal’, where he portrays the role of long-suffering boyfriend on the one hand, but ruining it all by being completely intolerable to live with. ‘Bonnie & Clyde’, ‘Kim’ and ‘The Kiss’? This is not Eminem anymore. One facet of Em’s storytelling in recent years that hits the spot every time, however, is his approach to writing about relationships. And to top it all off we get two fantastic Paul skits. Elsewhere, the soulfully smooth backing of ‘Fall’ is home to the devastating (and liable to be most controversial) blows he lands on Odd Future, amongst others. The mumble rap genre is the target of bar after bar of cheap shots and ribbing during ‘Not Alike’ and ‘Lucky You’, reminding the current crop of Soundcloud rappers of the importance of a sense of humour. Eminem is famously prone to making enemies with the flick of one well-written simile, and in opener ‘The Ringer’ the sizeable list of targets runs from Mike Pence to Machine Gun Kelly, his fans to Lil’ Xan, and before one has time to contemplate the lack of chorus, nearly six breakneck minutes have passed and the sly, satisfied ‘oh, he means business’ feeling, that has been missing for years, returns. Fortunately, once again, no-one is safe from the razor tongue. Eminem has never been lacking in confidence assuredly, but it’s when he has specific targets that his arrogant anger packs the biggest punch. As crassly simplistic as this may come across, the theme of Kamikaze (as with all the best Eminem albums) is ‘f*** everyone else, I’m the best’. Place that against the anaemic backing of ‘Rap God’ and it loses vital impact. In the opinion of this reviewer, this takes away one of Eminem’s most important skills - he is a vibrant and descriptive storyteller, particularly at his most gory and controversial. Often recently it has seemed that Eminem’s flows have been adjusted to compensate for the backing tracks - even on the record-breaking and undoubtedly impressive ‘Rap God’, the bars gave off the impression that they were there as an exercise in performance rather than to fit a narrative. But in breaking the more recent formula and returning to some of his roots, Kamikaze manages to present a leaner version of the updated model to outstanding effect. Much to the disappointment of his listeners, Eminem will never again be the cocky, twenty-something rockstar, as unpredictable in his behaviour as in his lyrics, so naturally a sense of danger will be compromised. Motivation and ability have never been questionable traits of his output, but in moving away from the classic late 90’s Dre-drenched gangsta rap sound, the misfires have been uncomfortably more present with each passing release. It would be a little too expected to label Kamikaze as return to form, or as a more determined version of Eminem. How could it fail to fulfil the hype so drastically again when there was no hype to begin with? Or, even worse, what if there had been an announcement, and it failed to raise any eyebrows in the first place? The concept seems almost unheard of for someone at the forefront of rap relevance for twenty years… As a result, it might not be entirely cynical to contemplate that Kamikaze dropped completely unannounced as something of an exercise in damage limitation. There was the overwhelming feeling that - perhaps not unfairly - the world was giving up on Eminem. Sure, fans and critics alike had been picking up on the inconsistencies in his work ever since the days of Encore, and only the most dedicated fan could make the argument that any album since then could hold a candle to his earlier output.
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Revival was an uncomfortable milestone in the rap career of Marshall Mathers. Review Summary: Peculiar purpose prevents perfection, but never has an identity crisis sounded quite so compelling.