Relapse (Eminem album)

Did You Know?

• Eminem's remarriage to former wife Kimberly Scott in 2006 lasted only eleven weeks before a second divorce.
• The album sold 64,000 copies in its first week in Canada and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart.
• A sequel called Relapse 2 was planned but canceled in favor of Recovery (2010).

Recording

Eminem continued recording throughout 2005, releasing most of that work on the compilation Eminem Presents: The Re-Up. He wrote the track "Beautiful" while in rehab and finished it after leaving rehab in 2005; it became the fifth single from Relapse and one of the few songs on the album recorded while he was not sober, along with "Careful What You Wish For" and "My Darling". The main recording sessions for Relapse began in mid-2008, after Eminem completed a 12-step program for his drug addiction. Long-time Detroit collaborator Jeff Bass of the Bass Brothers worked with Eminem on 25 tracks, two years after the rapper had received treatment for his sleeping pill addiction in 2005. Depressed by the death of Proof, Eminem experienced writer's block, feeling that nothing he wrote was worth recording. Bass adopted a production style that let Eminem rap "off the top of his head, as opposed to writing a story"; Eminem would freestyle or record vocals one line at a time, interrupting and then recording another line. According to song rights supervisor Joel Martin, Eminem began collecting additional songs without noticing, often recording material intended for other artists' projects but keeping tracks he liked.

Music and lyrics

Eminem told XXL that Relapse was built around the idea of finishing his drug rehab, then rapping as if he were back on drugs, and bringing back his alter ego Slim Shady. Interviewer Datwon Thomas noted that Eminem drew from his own drug history and from TV shows and documentaries about crime and serial killers, because the rapper was fascinated by "serial killers and their psyche and their mind states". Music critic Robert Christgau saw the opening line's phrase "horror corridor" as a signal that the album is horrorcore. Ben Kaplan of the Vancouver Courier agreed with that label. Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the album's "horrorcore scenes" paint Eminem as "a madman created by the hypocrisy of therapy". Music journalist Rob Sheffield called the album's drug references sensationalist and described Relapse as "a hip-hop version" of Richard Pryor's Live on the Sunset Strip. The album starts with the skit "Dr. West", in which actor Dominic West plays a drug counselor who gets creepier and is revealed to be Slim Shady, who faked his death to possess Eminem and revive his career. That skit leads into "3 a.m.", where Eminem portrays a serial killer on a murder spree. When "3 a.m." came out as a single, Eminem said it matched the album's overall dark tone. On "My Mom", he blames his addictive habits on his mother, showing how he became an addict like her. "Insane" imagines him as a victim of child sexual abuse; Eminem said he wanted the song to disgust listeners and "make them puke", an idea sparked by its first line. "Bagpipes from Baghdad" targets Mariah Carey and her then-husband Nick Cannon, with Eminem rapping over a pungi loop.

Release and promotion

In 2007, Cashis from Shady Records mentioned an Eminem album called King Mathers, saying it would drop that year. Eminem’s publicist, Dennis Dennehy, later pushed back, saying no album was set for 2007 and that there was no confirmed title as of August 2007. Over a year passed without any official word. Then, on September 15, 2008, at a Shade 45 event for Eminem’s autobiography The Way I Am, the rapper finally confirmed he was working on a studio album called Relapse and played a track titled “I’m Having a Relapse.” Rolling Stone’s October 2008 issue reported that Virgin Megastores planned to release Relapse in the US on November 27, 2008. But on October 27, an Interscope spokesperson said there was no official date and that any dates online were baseless. During the finale of Total Request Live on November 16, 2008, Eminem stated over the phone that Relapse would come out in the first quarter of 2009, likely in January or February, and that he was still picking songs for it.

Critical reception

Relapse received mixed reviews. Andy Gill of The Independent found the album "drably repetitive, while its dated tone is emphasised by the return of Dr. Dre as producer." NME's Louis Pattison found Eminem's wordplay "wicked in the depths of its depravity" but felt "the overriding feel is of an album just too jaded, too joyless to truly count as a return to form." Slant Magazine's Eric Henderson viewed that "the further Relapse strays from narrative veracity, the more one suspects his fanbase feels he's tapping into his bottomless well for horror-show grandstanding." The Times called Relapse "an album that sits square between what Eminem is theoretically still capable of and what we feared he has become." Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club panned it as "facile pre-adolescent shock mixed with gory, corpse-strewn, Fangoria-damaged horrorcore." Robert Christgau of MSN Music called it a "dud" and accused Eminem of sensationalism, stating "this is not a Slim Shady album. Slim Shady had a lightness about him." In a positive review, Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called the album a "more painful, honest and vital record" on par with or better than The Eminem Show. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described it as "musically white-hot, dense, and dramatic" and praised Eminem's flow and wordplay. The Daily Telegraph commended its honest depiction of drug addiction. Vibe's Benjamin Meadows-Ingram praised Eminem's lyricism, writing that "Em works wonders with words, expanding the boundaries of the art of rap itself." Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times called it an "impressively focused and clever work" but felt the music was "not transcendent." At the 52nd Grammy Awards, the album won Best Rap Album.