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Front to back, Revival is a f ucking mess. It’s a hulking mess of every bad moment Eminem has explored since he became one of the most boring, deliberative rappers alive (when that happened is sometimes difficult to agree upon), some 80-minutes spent staccato freestyling over lazily sampled rock beats and sub-“Love the Way You Lie” power ballads. There’s no evident flow, and there isn’t anything to be gained from listening to this that can’t be done by listening to literally anything else. There’s nothing that implies there is potential, there are no guests that make Eminem worth listening to, there are no good lyrics, there are no good production flourishes, and there aren’t any melodies. There are no ‘moments’ that make any of these 18 songs worth listening to. There’s a line on that song about ‘ meeting her like a Taxi,’ so the hypocrisy doesn’t chew all of the scenery, but it’s still reductive to Revival’s attempts to be anything other than Eminem and 2017’s worst album.įor the record, I understand that sounds hyperbolic, or raving, and so I want to make the case as elegantly as possible whilst remaining necessarily straightforward: Revival is a musical miscarriage. Especially because on “Heat,” possibly the worst song on Revival (not a minor achievement), he pretty much trades in that Woke Lyrical Genius shtick to make a shockingly inane joke about grabbing pussy. The mise en scene of Eminem rapping whilst a dozen black men watch on, nodding solemnly, isn’t insightful and I’m bothered that we even continue to entertain it as such.
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It means nothing, just as “The Storm’s” ‘ awfully hot coffee pot’ didn’t have anything to do with the Trump presidency. Behind an album cover, which shows a wincing, incredulous Mathers pushing his forehead into his palms, billows the American flag. Its positioning as an anthem of the ‘Resistance’- which, in the vaguest, most embarrassing sense of the term, it definitely is- has little influence over the thematic consequence of Revival, ostensibly an attack on Trump, but really more of an assault on good taste.
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A lot of people hate Donald Trump I doubt the people of Idaho care. It has no flow, the lyrics are terrible, and the intent isn’t important. “The Storm,” Eminem’s Trump cypher, was a failure. Needless to say, that attention is undeserved and misplaced. Of course, if you’re 45 and disinterested in popular music, the narrative is different, as it would appear those that don’t listen to music regularly seem most infatuated with this overtly political turn Marshall Mathers has since taken. Conversely, for Eminem, the topical Trump tilt has never sounded more like a crutch for music that doesn’t deserve discussion. The music’s also listenable, so there’s that. Fortunately, though, most artists can imbue some sense of good will in developing thematic consequence around the man as an example of this, N*E*R*D’s comeback album, ostensibly revolutions in pop production paired with politically inspired jibes and one-liners, doesn’t service its lyrical topics very well, but at least attempts to grapple with their importance. You can rather easily boil down the influences for major label rap, pop, and rock music in 2017, and come to the same conclusion each time: Donald Trump. In truth, those two cultural movements have inspired Eminem’s album as much as they have most albums these days. The appetite for Rick Rubin and Billy Squire samples was in small demand, and Beastie Boys throwback never really took off. When that album was released, the collective shrug given to its mix of late ‘80s inspired, retro-rap-rock spoke to a lack of enthusiasm for agro posturing, and the critical mood was not in Eminem’s favour. And that’s without discussing the state of rap music, which itself hasn’t changed as much as it has embraced further the sounds Eminem was consciously ignoring on The Marshall Mathers LP 2. Four years earlier, when the President in question was black and the feelings weren't as anxious or as urgent, the symptoms were still there and still ignored by guys like Eminem, who were more furiously occupied with public perceptions of their own vanity and other similarly boring ideas. Many haven’t had anything profound to say about it. Many have since passed comment on that blunder. If you want a sense of where America has gone since Eminem last released an album, the notes are brief spurred by globalization, and the cultural motioning toward decency and respect, more than 60 million voters looked at a ballot that put a polished, milquetoast bureaucrat up against a crude, boorish game show host, and sided with the game show host. Review Summary: Destroying shit even as it’s built.