MANCHESTER, TN - JUNE 09: Eminem performs on What Stage during day 3 of the 2018 Bonnaroo Arts And ... [+]
Halfway through its first week of release, Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By is doing what Eminem albums do best: selling truckloads of copies and making critics question its merit. The rapper’s second consecutive surprise album and 11th overall studio effort is on track to sell upwards of 300,000 album-equivalent units this week, granting Eminem his record 10th consecutive No. 1 debut. The Juice WRLD collaboration “Godzilla” has held steady at No. 2 on the U.S. Spotify chart and No. 4 on the global chart, pointing to a strong debut on next week’s Hot 100. By all commercial metrics, Music to Be Murdered By is another home run for the bestselling rapper of all time.
That doesn’t mean it’s good.
Quality may be subjective, but it’s hardly revelatory or controversial to suggest Music to Be Murdered By falls far short of the standards Eminem set with his triumvirate of classic albums: The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show. It is a lumbering, 20-song smorgasbord of wannabe pop-rap bangers, bombastic rap-rock clunkers, half-baked revenge fantasies and morose ballads. There are flashes of caustic wit and technical wizardry, but they’re flanked by a gleeful admission of sexual harassment (“Those Kinda Nights”), a wishy-washy attempt at gun control advocacy (“Darkness”) and mockery of a modern-day terrorist attack (“Unaccommodating”).
Perhaps more importantly, Music to Be Murdered By is littered with diatribes against the critics who slammed Eminem’s last album, 2018’s Kamikaze, which in turn excoriated the critics who dunked on 2017’s Revival. On “Premonition (Intro),” Eminem raps: “I sell like four mil' when I put out a bad album / Revival flopped, came back and I scared the crap out 'em / But Rolling Stone stars, I get two and a half outta five and I'll laugh out loud.” Em has built a cottage industry out of insular, rancorous albums that rage against his critics while not actually doing much to prove them wrong. He’s caught in an endless cycle of outrage and revision, arguing his critics have no idea what they’re talking about while making minuscule concessions that, okay, maybe his last album had a few shortcomings, but this time he’s going straight for the jugular.
Lucky for Eminem (and much to the chagrin of his critics), he can rehash these tirades ad infinitum as long as he maintains a palpable level of vitriol, because his fans crave them, and they will ensure he remains a chart-topping phenomenon without ever having to release another good album.
If Eminem’s post-hiatus output has proven anything, it’s that he can commit no musical sin too grievous for his fans to forgive. They lapped up the gratuitous, accent-riddled horrorcore of 2009’s Relapse and the ham-fisted, aspirational power ballads of 2010’s Recovery. They got a reprieve with 2013’s The Marshall Mathers LP2, a fairly consistent showcase of lyrical acrobatics and Rick Rubin’s classic rock-sampling production. The closest thing to a commercial misfire Eminem has experienced over the past 11 years came with Revival, which I formerly (and accurately) described as “a 77-minute cringe compilation of lousy punchlines, antiquated beats and bloated pop-rap crossover bids.” Revival found Eminem questioning his own place in a music industry he had once detonated and rebuilt at his whim, while also lambasting President Donald Trump and the state of America in 2017. Evidently, fans didn’t care for this newly vulnerable, self-doubting Eminem: Revival sold 267,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, roughly one-third of MMLP2’s debut, and it remains his only major-label album to not go platinum in the United States. Revival was the sound of a once-great artist running on empty, and based on its critical and commercial reception, one would be forgiven for pronouncing Eminem’s career dead in the water after its release.
Enter Kamikaze, a much-needed course correction that reintroduced the venomous, chest-beating Eminem his fans craved. He waged a scorched-earth policy against Revival critics and so-called “mumble rappers,” lamenting the sounds of contemporary hip-hop while also interpolating them on the sardonic “Not Alike.” Kamikaze was leaps and bounds ahead of Revival, but it was still riddled with misogyny and homophobia, bogged down by childish skits and movie tie-in songs. It often saw the once-master provocateur lapsing into a curmudgeonly hermit, lashing out at modern hip-hop trends because he didn’t understand them and was afraid to engage with them.
It didn’t matter. Kamikaze moved a stellar 434,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, granting Eminem his largest streaming week to date and scoring a Top 10 hit in “Lucky You.” Kamikaze’s frequent, glaring blind spots were irrelevant, because the album reignited Eminem’s fury. He found a new set of enemies to eviscerate on record, which in turn gave his fans another reason to rally behind him. With Kamikaze, the narrative suddenly became “Eminem and his fans vs. everybody.” It turned out to be a lucrative showdown.
With Music to Be Murdered By, Eminem has repeated himself in nearly every way, from the surprise release to the tirades against his critics to the infuriating lack of quality control. He’s raging against enemies that do exist, but who should hardly matter to him, given his staggering commercial success over the past 20 years. To see Eminem so fed up with the negative opinions of a handful of journalists is laughable and sad; it forces him to keep looking backward and relying on surface-level provocations, rather than reflecting on his insecurities or the adversity he’s faced besides a handful of unrelenting critics.
Until Eminem breaks these old habits, he’ll probably never make another great album. But as long as he stays mad, it doesn’t matter to fans. They’ll keep showing up to witness his motor-mouthed rage spirals and jack up his sales, which he will then use as evidence to refute his critical drubbings. Eminem nailed his symbiotic, albeit dysfunctional, relationship with the press on “Premonition (Intro)”: “We ain't never gonna see eye to eye / But it's funny / As much as I hate you / I need you.”
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