It’s unfortunate that there are at least 3 or 4 other tracks on the album that share these problems, and cause the middle of the album to be nigh unlistenable. Even when it seems like he’s trying to set other than “monotonous”, he ends up leading us into another veritable cock-tease.
The problem here is Em’s delivery: despite the fact the rhymes are very solid (when you rhyme “jerk circle”, you’ve done your job reasonably well), he sounds extremely bored. Moving on, My 1st Single is a strange little beast, as the beat is silly but still irresistible. The tease of when “the rap breaks down” only serves to remind you of how average this song really is. Despite having a good line occasionally, the song is still filled with poor lyricism and riddled with a dance beat that Em just doesn’t compliment well. Remember that silly thing I mentioned earlier? Made just to ensure success? Yeah, Just Lose It is the perfect example of that. My name is…I forgot my name!” is plain tripe, and its unfortunate, as Em’s rhymes in he chorus are some of the best on the album, despite the once again crap lyrics. Rain Man’s chorus is another one of those moments, being completely and plainly stupid. Talking about how hot Hilary Duff is, all while attempting to make parody of a puppet, also serves as one of the most shameful moments in music history. The sampled sitars, however much I try to like them, become annoying, and the “big bass” isn’t even neat to have blasting in you car. The infamous Ass Like That is an absolute shamble of a song in nearly every sense of the word. This is essentially the joke song section of the album, an easily features the worst songs of Em’s career. The biggest sign of this is the track span of 7-14. When Eminem is bad on here, he can become quite terrible. Which side outweighs the other, however, is quite a task to decide. He did, however, still have that flair as an MC, and despite the redundancy he was getting into, his lyrics were still fairly top notch on his more serious songs. It was filled with mediocre beats, the same topics, and unlike any time before, funny songs that weren’t funny, just uncomfortable to listen to. Was Eminem going to finally fall into the trap with his third release? Encore came out, and too many, he finally did. While he was a stronger rapper and lyricist than ever before, some of what he was writing about was getting tired, and his production skills were noticeably inferior to anything else that he ad put out to that point. Eminem was one of the artists who tried to balance out the two while he always had fairly bland beats that were manufactured to be hits rather than anything unique (even when Dre was the primary producer), unlike many mainstream rappers, he still controlled the song with his incredible MC skills and (some would say) brilliant lyricism.Īfter The Marshall Mathers LP showed he was an elite MC, Eminem released The Eminem Show a dividing factor among both his detractors and benefactors.
However, some rappers try and transcend that, ditching memorable choruses and beats for a strong set of lyrics and a powerful voice. To stay commercially successful in today’s current environment, rappers are forced to fall into that same old “dark, heavy beat” with very little variation, or “absolutely silly, inane beat” with plenty of variation…on levels of annoyingness. It’s a sad trend in rap that an artist usually takes a giant leap forward on their second (occasionally third) release, and then immediately falls off.