Eminem - Revival

Drowned In Sound 70

So does that mean this Revuval is going to be a pitiful canter through past glories from an artist long past his best? Well, no, not quite: in Eminem world things are never quite that straightforward, are they?

This is an album that could certainly have done with some editing – it feels about four or five tracks too long at a total of 19. But it'sone whose high points do more than justify their existence. There’s a marked excellence to the melodies and vocals of a string of female guest spots from the off. Beyonce’s stand-out appearance on the impressive opener ‘Walk on Water’ is a stunner of elegiac piano and gospel singing, a heartfelt expression of vulnerability (“If I walked on water, I would drown”) that sees our hero scratching around audibly for inspiration, swearing and sweating over his verses while B’s voice soars above. The trend continues with the (uncredited) guest vocalist on ‘Revival (Interlude)’, Skylar Grey’s contribution to ‘Tragic Endings’ – regret parcelled up as country rock, Kehlari, gentle and sorrowful on ‘Nowhere Fast’ and Pink (a great pairing for Eminem) who brings the power ballad grandiosity on ‘Need Me’.

But man cannot live by collaborations and guest spots alone. Smart as Eminem has been to surround himself with such talents (and, ahem, Ed Sheeran, on ‘River’), how does the erstwhile ‘Stan’ auteur’s own part in proceedings stand up?

Surprisingly well, in fact. Get beyond the hackneyed rehashings of his much-examined relationship with Kim (‘Bad Husband’), and the cartoon misogyny of tracks like ‘Remind Me’, (letching over “big old tits” and “an ass that won’t quit” – yawn) and there are some golden moments to be found. The Alicia Keys collaboration ‘Like Home’ is worth the price of the album alone: a surprisingly emotional, passionate and proud defence of America in the face of Trump’s premiership, the track has been rightly lauded elsewhere and is elegiac and heartfelt, angry and lucid.

A seam of rock music - not least on ‘Remind Me’ which uses Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock and Roll’ as its bed – runs through the album, from ‘In Your Head’’s heavy sampling of The Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ (making it one of the more irritating moments) to the riffing guitars on ‘Untouchable’ and the (rather dull) ‘Heat’. For all the childish, brattishness of a track like ‘Offended’, the whiney poor-misunderstood-me complaints (“I feel like I’m a piece of shit”) and the slightly clunky racial politics of ‘Untouchable’, Eminem still – somehow – wields a certain charm.

He’s clearly having great fun on ‘Remind Me’, and the outlandish ‘Framed’ (our hero gets framed – or DOES he? – for a series of gory killings), and the series of letters to daughter Hayley at various points in his and her life of ‘Castle’ is endearing: cute, even. The album closer ‘Arose’ is a ‘Sliding Doors’-style tale when we see his life either ending by overdose or him choosing to flush the pills down the toilet and start over. Like so much of this album it’s surprisingly effective, his apologies to his children and death-bed reminiscences gripping rather than self-pitying. It seems that despite decades of oversharing, self-analysis, bombast, outrage and drama, Eminem does, still, have something to say, as well as the means to say it.

Pitchfork 50

On his overtly political ninth studio LP, Eminem is fueled by self-doubt. But with many bland hooks and cringe-worthy punchlines, Revival is another late-career album that does little for his legacy.

The Guardian 40

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.

Related: The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump

The Guardian 40

(Interscope)
The demands of his core audience and bland beats hamper the rapper’s ninth album

Eminem has been older and theoretically wiser now for almost as long as he was Slim Shady – a rapper obsessed with outrage and doing unspeakable things to his ex-wife, Kim. It is worth remembering what a nasty piece of work this exquisitely talented rapper has been, as you contemplate Revival, his ninth album.

The cover finds Marshall Mathers literally face palming, the US stars and stripes superimposed over his despair. A number of tracks find Eminem raging at an even more deplorable moral vacuum than Slim Shady: the current US president. Following on from his pugilistic freestyle at the Bet awards in October, Eminem remains on the warpath. “You ain’t ruining our country, punk,” Mathers snarls. Revival takes a word previously sacred to another musical form – Americana – and transposes its religious connotations to the national discourse.

Related: The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump