Eminem Grows Older but Not Up

Despite all this we have barely seen Eminem grow up. His preoccupations are largely fixed his toolbox constant. He has almost certainly been the greatest technician working in hip hop over the last decade and a half but those skills an outrageous command of language a gift for harrowing storytelling are often put in service of the familiar.

Eminem is 41 now and still staring down the same barrels of old on The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (Aftermath/Shady/Interscope) his relentless demanding and often convincing seventh major label album. Notionally it s a sequel to his second major label album from 2000 which has sold more than 10 million copies in this country and remains one of his indelible pop masterpieces. But really he s been staying the same course for years.

The themes here are the usual the persistent disapproval of his mother ( Brainless ) the absence of his father ( Rhyme or Reason ) the lack of trustworthiness of the women he invites into his life ( So Much Better ). From the beginning his pure essence has been puerility and much of this album for better and worse finds him frozen.

What this album does differently in places is attempt to sew up old wounds. Part of Bad Guy is written as a revenge fantasy from the perspective of Matthew the younger brother of the rabid fan in Stan one of Eminem s most affecting songs. The moving Headlights is Eminem s apology to his mother for years of verbal abuse his plea for a united or at least less dysfunctional family.

On one song with a vulgar title he rewrites the story of his ascent with an overlay of regret Came to the world at a time when it was in need of a villain he raps continuing

That role think I succeeded fulfilling

But don t think I ever stopped to think that I was speaking to children

Everything was happening so fast it was like I blinked sold three million

Then it all went blank.

He has regrets then which is reassuring in a way. But like most savants Eminem is interested in pyrotechnics above all else Rap God and Berzerk especially are overwhelming barrages of rhyme. His lyrics are best viewed under a microscope to see how each syllable functions not only in its own line but how it plays with the ones just before and after to emphasize the persistent double entendres and the unending assonance to see how he gets from one rhyme to the next in unexpected ways.

Because of that often the music he s rapping to barely matters he ll dominate almost any sound. Over the course of his career he s succeeded most when his production is either whimsical on his earliest hits or dolorous on his latest. Both styles appear here.

Rihanna rescues him again on The Monster her blank power elevates his scratchy ramblings and the melancholy piano on Legacy seems to calm him a bit. On Love Game he uses a Wayne Fontana the Mindbenders sample the way the Native Tongues might have for a dose of oddity while on So Far... he s rapping over Joe Walsh s Life s Been Good for a track that were it not for all the bleeping it would need could be easily played on Country Music Television.

Those songs are only a reminder that Eminem has never settled on a musical aesthetic only a strategy of rhyme. Brainless which could have been played on The Dr. Demento Show is immediately followed here by Stronger Than I Was which is a virtually unlistenable agglomeration of shrieks and atonal singing the rare moment where Eminem s rage outright trumps his dexterity.

The only signs of maturity he s showing are the flickers of self doubt that pepper this album. He frets about not having his old pop culture subjects to rap about I m frustrated cause ain t/no more NSync Now I m all out of whack/I m all outta Backstreet Boys to call out and attack or not being as in touch as he once was. He stresses over having to find music on the Internet.

But he still has some old bad habits still heavy handed with the homophobic slurs and still explaining them away in interviews by equating his current creative frame of mind to that of his less enlightened battle rapping days a weak and tiresome excuse. He still excels at baleful and downright mean records. Unlike say Jay Z who s found new subject matter and new targets as he s aged Eminem is still rapping from deep inside his cave as if he s had no new experiences to draw from.

That is though just a form of self protection. After the drug phase documented on Relapse and the overcoming of it captured on Recovery his last two albums Eminem may well be done putting himself in the spotlight. He still lives in his hometown Detroit. His daughter was just crowned homecoming queen. He undoubtedly has new wounds we just may never get to hear about them.

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