Eminem - Kamikaze

The Guardian 60

The hooks are middling and the moans at his critics get tedious – but a flurry of brutal potshots at witless SoundCloud rappers prove Eminem can still hit exhilarating heights

Eminem’s 10th album arrived on streaming services, without any pre-emptory buildup, accompanied by a nonchalant tweet from the 45-year-old rapper: “I tried not 2 overthink this 1 … enjoy.” It’s a theme reiterated within the opening seconds of the album: “I’m just gonna write down my first thoughts,” he mutters, “and see where it takes me.”

Not for the first time in his career, it’s easy to feel that Marshall Mathers III is being slightly disingenuous. Kamikaze is fairly obviously the product of a great deal of thinking indeed, largely of the stewing and fulminating variety. Clearly a not man at ease with the sanity-salving concept of Not Reading The Comments, virtually the entirety of its 45-minute running time is consumed with complaining about the cool reception afforded to his last album – 2017’s weak and audibly confused Revival – and bemoaning the current state of hip-hop.

Related: Eminem attacks Donald Trump on surprise album Kamikaze

The Guardian 60

(Aftermath/Interscope)

Rappers have always roasted rivals. But one of the most amusing byproducts of a genre more than 30 years on from its inception is a fortysomething lyrical ninja like Eminem taking aim at the current crop of laid-back, mumbling, Xanax-ed MCs. In contrast to his previous, more thoughtful outing, Revival, Kamikaze finds Marshall Mathers revelling in his Slim Shady rabid underdog role, fulminating at critics, boggling at Lil Yachty, and sneering at the Migos flow on Not Alike.

How riveting all this finger-wagging is probably depends upon your birth date. Hip-hop has moved on from Mathers’s high-speed, foul-mouthed wit. Perhaps it’s for good – he hasn’t read the Twitter notification about about phrases such as “raping the language”, and Bon Iver has distanced himself from his guest spot on Fall because of a homophobic slur.

Pitchfork 50

All across his 10th album, the more things change, the more Eminem stays the same.