Kamikaze is good, more so than any of his latest output, but still a far cry from his earlier work. The problem for me with Eminem is that he has become the one thing he himself loathed when he was younger; an old and grumpy dude who tries to reignite his career into relevance by attacking and bullying others.
When Em beefed with Everlast in the late 90s he attacked him with lines such as "Sittin on stage, strummin acoustic guitar in your ear, so you start to get scared, sit back and spark an idea, figure you can diss me to jumpstart your career." And in previous lines he said "peckerwood mad cause his record went wood, no respect in the hood, fled to his neck of the woods, and said heck, country western rap records are good".
This reminds me of current Eminem. His latest albums, with Revival as the recent, were so fucking embarrassing that he has begun to lose respect in the hiphop community. Revival failed big time, both with audiences and critics, that he sparked an idea to create buzz for himself by dissing other, more relevant rappers as much as he could on Kamikaze, all for the sake of being in the spotlight again. And the line about "country western rap records are good"? Well, just switch out country with pop, and you have the Eminem of today. He can collaborate with any rapper in the world, yet he chooses to make pop songs with Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Beyonce, artists that he would have dissed the fucking shit out of in his younger days. Everlast did a transition to cross genres and Eminem mocked him for it, yet Eminem does the same thing years later.
On Bully, one of the greatest diss tracks of all time, Em viciously attacks Benzino and Source for trying to destroy his image and fuck with his livelihood. He raps "he uses his magazine to trash me, sits with both his feet up at his desk, smokes a bag of his weeds and starts imagining things, and he just can´t see he´s manically depressed".
Yet again, very reminiscent of current Eminem. He bullies Machine Gun Kelly by banning him from his Shade 45 studio, all for the sake of one lousy tweet six years ago. For what, calling her "hot as fuck"? I would have understood it if it was a 50-year old creeper, but here it was a 5-year gap between his daughter and kelly, with him being 21 and Hailie being 16. I agree that you shouldn´t involve other family members, and it is known that Em is very protective of his daughter, but this is just Em being paranoid and taking things to far. Talk about having a grudge if you wait six years to respond.
I made an analogy before about Eminem being Benzino when those two squared off, because it just so resembles who Eminem is right now. He´s turning 46, well past his prime, and now he goes after those he thinks are fucking with either him or the industry. Benzino did exactly that when he dissed Eminem. He was old and grumpy, mad because he missed his boat and lashed out at Eminem for being successful, not because of his talent, but because of his skin colour. He said that the hiphop industry was at fault for allowing Eminem (and white rappers in general) to talk about personal topics, whereas black rappers could only rap about bitches and parties in order to chart.
I used to have the biggest respect for Eminem. He stood up against a lot of shit and he was clever about it too, creating some of the best songs in the history of rap. But now his flame has faded so much I just think it would be better if he put the mic down. I´m all about growing up and evolve, both as a human being and as an artist, but given Eminems history and the way he presented himself as a rapper and musician in the beginning, his new output just makes him come off as a giant hypocrit.
, although it doesn’t change the hierarchy of music and where em is now as opposed to the height of his career.
