Eminem Album Review: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)

The concept behind it The Death of Slim Shadyas a few sketches sprinkled throughout the track listing point out, this is the final showdown between Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady. Slim kidnaps Mathers, a nod to his early work, and forces the captive to write the kind of outrageous songs that made him famous. The first half of the album is a ramshackle house of horrors, a cheap reconstruction of Slim Shady’s oeuvre. He opens “Trouble” with a sneer, “Fuck blind people.” “Brand New Dance,” a holdover from the Bis sessions, is a three-and-a-half-minute diss track aimed at Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004. It mentions Caitlyn Jenner six times before the 30-minute mark. There are confused and angry rants about pronouns and references to South ParkThis would all be terribly offensive if it weren’t so tired, outdated and behind the times.

The album’s focal point, “Guilty Conscience 2,” is the ultimate showdown, with the two characters staring into each other’s eyes and circling each other, hands above their holsters. Em raps in two voices, one lightly distorted to represent Shady, the other in a drier mix for Marshall. The two characters argue like drunken reality-show contestants, wrinkling their noses and waving middle fingers. Marshall lamely explains that Shady’s cruelty is just a product of his addiction, immediately decimating his own point by pointlessly comparing Slim’s embarrassing antics to David Carradine’s accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation. Slim’s lines sound like someone saying “argue with me” and invoking the “it’s just a joke” defense. Eventually, after exhausting each other’s arguments, the two voices combine. It’s probably meant to be a moment of absolution, but it feels more like an admission of guilt. “I gave you the power to use me as an excuse to be bad/You made me to say everything you didn’t have the courage to say,” they both scream. Then, as the album title promises, Marshall takes over and takes down Slim Shady.

The day before its release, Eminem tweeted that The Death of Slim Shady is a concept album, and thus should be listened to in order. It’s a long road to “Guilty Conscience 2,” but there are moments of genuine inspiration along the way. Though he deflates “Fuel” with an overlong, overly technical tirade, Em enlists the help of JID, one of his stylistic descendants, for a breathtaking verse. He avoids the stadium-tap bombast of his late career, selecting beats that range from goofy clarinet trap to the crisp, slithering boom-bap that marked some of his best early work. It’s always good for a laugh, even if it’s a bit of a ramble: “Call it sex education with a touch of necrophilia / ‘Cause when I say I’m really the evil one, I’m a fucking moron” from the otherwise bloodless “Evil.” But the album flounders, unsure of what it’s trying to say. There are five songs after the apparent climax, none of which seem like directions the real, unburdened Eminem might head in.