Eminem - Revival (2017) (Official Discussion Thread)

[Okka]

Have you heard the new album from Em? What's your opinion on it?

[doggfather]

like the cover.

[HighEyeCue]

like the cover.

probably the only thing you'll like

I can say its pretty much Em's worst album and one of the worst I've heard from a big name artist

[k1000]

like the cover.

i've just noticed there was a desperate Em in the background  .

[The Predator]

On 1st listen too much painful bubblegum rap-pop-rock ear-ache filler.

[Sccit]

not guna check

[2Relevant]

like i said before the first single i don't have high expectations from this garbage i just want to see all the white people defend him now calling Eminem the best ever lol they gonna be highly meh with this piece of shit especially the new kids who see this guy as the rap god em just needs to hang it up he had his time now he needs to go away for good i dont see big or pac at this age putting out garbage like this

Eminem is highly overrated and making one of the worst 2pac albums the only reason he was successful artist was because of dre and also coming out the the right place at the right time

now someone like a tech n9ne should have been the one with em success still at his age putting out good music multiple times a year and unlike em a successful record label and did it on his own no major backing and still no major backing tech will go down as the greatest independent artist of all time 

here is one of many reviews who will dislike this garbage    http://djbooth.net/news/entry/2017-12-14-eminem-revival-album-review

[Jome]

After a very quick listen, first impressions:

* As poppy as the features suggest.
* Production is not impressive. I see Alex Da Kid is all over this, his production is just stale and bland to me, seems like his sound is just different variants of the same monotone beat.
The Rick Rubin beats doesn't really do anything for me either.

Will give it a second spin, but the new Scarface, K.R.I.T., Dave East, Wu-Tang and Z-Ro trumps this (pun intended) in the pecking order..

[Marco]

Here's the correct production credits from Tidal.
http://www.dubcnn.com/connect/index.php?topic=328376

[Jay_J]

one of the worst shit i heard from eminem.

framed and castle are only joints that i liked. rest is just a bunch of trash.

[The Predator]

Not an Alchemist beat in sight, at least Fredwreck's heat produced 'Framed' is rightly getting praised.

Eminem: Revival review – witless beats and puns in a total rejection of hip-hop


There are tiny twitches of genius on the rapper’s first album in four years, but to get there you have to wade through acres of bad gags, filler and formulaic fury

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. For the last 20 years, two technically versatile and emotionally literate rappers have been vying for the title of “biggest tin ear for beats”. Sorry, Nas: you’ve been roundly trounced at last.

Production-wise, Revival is a trainwreck. If Eminem thinks his verbal box of tricks can overcome the weakness of any backing track, his recent albums have demonstrated otherwise. Revival begins with the Beyoncé-featuring Walk on Water, a song as thrilling as shopping for shower curtains – but were it put at the end of this exhausting LP it would at least provide some sweet respite. Its beat is relatively subtle, lacks bombast and doesn’t have you questioning the sanity of all involved. Much worse are the negligible scribblings of frequent collaborator Alex da Kid, on studio speed-dial for album filler, or the decision to flip Joan Jett for the risible Remind Me. Rick Rubin – the man behind 99 Problems, Run DMC’s Walk This Way and Johnny Cash’s take on Hurt – produced the latter.

Early fans have long since given up on Eminem, which is probably of zero importance to him, but if you played this album to them they’d be baffled. Eminem is clearly a rapper, but there’s hardly a trace of hip-hop here. The guests – Alicia Keys, Pink, Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé – speak to pop-rap stadium-packing ambitions, as does the familiar song structure. We start off slow, he gets angrier, he explodes in incandescent rage, an anthemic vocal hook comes in.

As Alexis Petridis noted in these pages, the most interesting thing about the rapper in 2017 is his decision to turn on many of the people who will have backed him for years. There’s little doubt that past Eminem anthems have provided solace or angry catharsis for the kind of kid that goes all out on 4Chan and shares Pepe the Frog memes, so his recent freestyled tirade against Trump showed a welcome willingness to engage in big, potentially unpopular fights. But sadly you’ll find little cogent analysis of Trump-era America on Revival.

There’s more to like on Framed and the strange but intriguing Untouchable. The former, which nods to Making a Murderer and sees Eminem with Ivanka Trump in the trunk of his car, is vintage horrorcore, and its simplicity and menace marks it out. It doesn’t belong here, really. Untouchable shows him keen to engage with race relations, jumping from the perspective of a racist white cop to that of a black man, with an accompanying beat change. It’s a tricky tightrope, and possibly misjudged, but it shows ambition and breaks up the formula.

Offended, meanwhile, packs in more rhyme schemes, flows and punchlines than most MCs manage in a career, as well as the album’s best beat. But it’s still a mess: too tricksy and undermined by a truly risible hook. Eminem seems to have spent years overworking every last rhyme into a pun-fest that eats itself – a low is reached with Heat’s line, “I’ve got to meet her like a taxi”.

The album frequently sags, as any 19-track album is wont to do, though two introspective moments at the end save the concept somewhat. He writes letters to his daughter on Castle, then atones for his life’s mistakes on Arose as he imagines his deathbed – and then delivers a rewritten take on Castle’s closing verse, seizing life anew.

But this maturity comes too late – we’re already past the point where you can no longer take Eminem seriously. Revival is littered with tracks where he apologises to various people for his behaviour, before he flips into a track about killing someone and does a knob joke.

Is he for real when he raps on Castle: “I’ll put out this last album, then I’m done with it / One hundred percent finished, fed up with it / I’m hanging it up, fuck it”? Much of this album makes you hope he is.

2 / 5 stars

[Marco]

"Believe Me", "Like Home", "Framed", "In Your Head" and "Castle" are the only good tracks for me. The rest are pure trash.

Will give it a proper listen, but I don't have good expectations.

[TraceOneInfinite Flat Earther 96']

not guna check

Come on dawg, of all people your gonna hate on this?

Alright anyway without further ado here’s the official Infinite Review:

As per tradition, when a new Em album is released I do a full ride and perform an uninterrupted listen front to back.  Yes that’s right, I’m old enough (35) that I even had my driver’s Liscence the day Slim Shady LP dropped and as a loyal Dre fan I’d embraced Em before even hearing a verse I was on board.  That said I’m not a complete rubber stamp.  I didn’t like Encore, Relapse, or Recovery—though I never dissed Em over it cause I felt by the time of 8 Mile he’d already done all he’d needed to do—with “Lose Yourself” being his swan song and walk into the twilight.

Then he came back with a fury on MMLP2 and had some other scattered gems like “Guts Over Fear”, or “Where I’m At” that would pop up every now and then and show he could still achieve his old standard.

Upon first listen I must admit I don’t think there is any song on this album that reaches his prime—and there was a lull in the album where I almost lost faith in the new album. But I salvaged enough out of it to compile an EP’s worth of solid material with the possibility of growing into classic shit.

Here’s the tracks that make the cut:

1. “Revival” Interlude-   Strangely this is actually the best song on the whole album and it’s not even a full song, and Em isn’t even on it...hope a full version surfaces at some point.  For now it serves as a beautiful and uplifting interlude.

2.  “Believe” - this song is updated to the current sound that’s popular in hip hop but still hits you over the fuckin head and is vintage Em spitting.  (I even sensed some strange hint of a No Limit Master P vibe (and I mean that in a good way) but whatever it works.

3.  “Arose” - this song is beautiful but it’s kind of like cheating cause it relies heavily on a classic Bette Miller sample.  (A song my first girlfriend actually sung at a 6th grade assembly and used to rehearse in front of me in her bedroom.  Hard for me not to like). But for Em’s part he raps from the perspective of the time he overdosed and almost died in that post Proof dying phase of his life.

4. “In Your Head” - Again a good song, but he’s kind of cheating, relying heavily on the sampling of an already classic song.

5.  “Tragic Endings” - him and Skylar Grey do have a chemistry and her voice is infectious.  I have to admit I like these two together.  I’ve liked her since I first heard her on “Where’d You Go” with Fort Minor.  I know it’s pop meets rap, but how could you not love that beautiful song.  Track is a bit like other good duets from them in the past like “I Need A Doctor” and “Kill For You”.

6.  “Chloroseptic”  I believe this track is actually on some next shit.  It buzzes and hits you over the fuckin head.  In the same vein as “Believe” vintage Em spittin to a more current hip hop sound and it actually works.

7.  “Framed” - This song reminds me of that single from Relapse, that bizzare horror track “3 A.M.” he made a video for that was one of the few highlights this also would of fit as one of the few bangers on Relapse.  His spittin some off the wall shit like he used to—and it works.

8.  “Walk on Water” — this sounds almost accapella like the way battle rappers such as Dizaster would spit only it’s a very personal song—a little like the style he used on the BET Cipher.  The lyrics, thought, and talent behind them are all in a class of their own—that only Em exists in.

9. “Nowhere Fast”  - this is another song that is kind of like a soul/pop song converted to rap—like “Monster” and quite a few others he’s been doing these days.  If you listen to Skylar Grey’s album it seems as if Em is heavily influenced by her sound.  She’s not on this track, it’s a different girl but still a similar sound and vibe.  This seems to be the sound he prefers.  Maybe it’s a grower.

—So 9 solid tracks.  I’d say that’s good enough?  At worst, you got a few gems/bangers—and at best it’s ahead of our ears and could grow into a classic.

[DSOD2476]

Thank you for the review.  It was spot on except for everything you said.  Hands down this is the biggest fall off of any prominent rapper in the history of hip hop.  I can’t believe Dre let this happen.  It reminds me of when Guru left Premier and worked with Solar.

[TraceOneInfinite Flat Earther 96']

Thank you for the review.  It was spot on except for everything you said.  Hands down this is the biggest fall off of any prominent rapper in the history of hip hop.  I can’t believe Dre let this happen.  It reminds me of when Guru left Premier and worked with Solar.

Lol@except for everything you said.

And I think talking about “falling off” for rappers over 40 is a bit superfluous.  It was okay to talk about Em falling off with Encore and Relapse but at this point in his career I think it’s more than spectacular to see what he’s still capable of.  I agree, on first listen it’s not as good as MMLP2 but it is better than Recovery so if you just go backwards a bit you could make a case that he’s still “coming up”