eminem the marshall mathers lp 2 600x600

Everything from the pop culture references to the subject matter seems as outdated as many of the beats. With the exception of the track “Headlights,” in which Em expresses remorse for his public feud with his mother, the MMLP2 doesn’t bring anything that Eminem hasn’t done before and more effectively. When it comes to the art of rhyming words and fitting into the pocket of a beat, Eminem is the best in the game and nowhere is this more apparent than on the album’s third single, “Rap God.” Throughout the track, Shady switches flows effortlessly dropping double-syllable rhymes and witty wordplay. There’s no denying, from a technical standpoint, Em is on a level very few rappers are or have ever been. With all that said, my grievances with this album all stem from my high expectations for it and Eminem as an emcee. With the Kendrick Lamar feature, the song I was most looking forward to when I first saw the track list, “Love Game,” sounds like something you would hear in a fifties diner or on the “Grease” soundtrack. While it is unlike the typical hip-hop sound, I’m not so sure it works. As expected due to Rick Rubin executive producing the album, there are several songs that fuse modern Hip-Hop with rock and eighties hip-hop. The beats on the album weren’t anything special, either. With the exception of a few tracks, Slim didn’t make any song concept that he hasn’t already released multiple times. Instead, MMLP2 sounds like the same song, over and over again. There isn’t a single song channeling an almost tangible amount of frustration (“The Way I Am”), no extraordinarily creative narrative song (“Stan”), not a chilling “love” song (“Kim”).

However, after listening to it, I didn’t hear any of the aspects of that made the first LP so appealing to me.

Eminem the marshall mathers lp 2 600x600