It’s usually a bad sign whenever Eminem
titles an album Re-something. Both Relapse and Recovery were big duds in the rap icons’s career. Then the Marshall Mathers LP 2 came along in 2013
and seemed to restore Eminem’s legacy – whilst I may have been a little forgiving
of the corny choruses and bland beats in my review, the album had enough head-spinning
flows and choppy rhyming to make up for it.
Sadly, Revival is a big backward step – Regression would have been a better name for it. It’s not that
Eminem isn’t trying new things. He boldly addresses race politics, spends a
whole track attacking Trump and even incorporates some trap-flavoured beats
into the mix. He even takes the brave step to confess about the way he used to
treat his ex Kim, having spent numerous tracks in the past throwing death
threats at her. All of this, I respect – but why is it all so badly executed?
Honestly, I like a good bit of
Trump-bashing, but ‘Like Home’ is
just Em spewing out insults we already thought up ourselves, peppered by corny puns
such as ‘Like a dictionary, things are
looking up’. This isn’t even the corniest line on the album – this award
has to go to ‘I’m looking at your tight
rear like a sightseer/ your booty is heavy doody like diarrhoea’, which had
me sighing out loud.
The lyrics aren’t the only source
of corniness. Hearing Eminem pull out a trap rap flow on ‘Chloraseptic’ makes
him sound like Migos crossed with a muppet, backed by the blandest trap beat available
so that the whole thing sounds like a parody. Then there are the multiple rock
instrumentals as on ‘Remind Me’ and ‘Heat’, which only serve to make each track
sound like some terribly dated Beastie Boys song. Then of course there are the
countless mushy choruses from guest pop stars such as Ed Sheeran and Beyonce,
taking away any intimacy from Em’s bars (there’s even a track almost entirely
dedicated to Pink - is this really what Eminem thinks his fans want?).
The rapper might have created a
less messy album is he hadn’t tried to appeal to so many audiences at once. He
seems to be out to impress everyone from mainstream pop fans to rock fans,
whilst covering subject matter as expansive as sociopolitics to poop jokes.
There are so many incarnations of Eminem on this album that it’s like listening
to a compilation album, when all you want is the real slim shady.
It’s irritating, because there
are glimpses of brilliance on Revival
that could have been the entire premises of the album. If all the tracks were like
‘Bad Husband’ and ‘Like Home’ without the corny choruses and corny lines, this
could have been Eminem’s long-awaited grown-up-rapper album – similar to the
recent confessional Jay-Z album. Alternatively, I would have loved to have seen
an experimental album from Em, as the track ‘Offended’ gives us a taster of. The
crazy rhyme schemes, avant-garde beat and playful nursery rhyme chorus show
that Eminem still has the talent and innovation in him. Even the celebrity
disses in this track are funny (I chuckled at ‘like R Kelly with a full bladder’). A whole album of similar songs
probably wouldn’t have got much radio airplay, but it would have impressed
people enough to restore his legacy. Instead we’re left with a tin of corn with
bad beats and no focus.
★★☆☆☆
TRACK TASTER: