EMINEM’S The Death of Slim Shady is a middle-of-the-road album by a rapper that took the hip hop and rap world by storm in the 2000s but it is also the best Eminem has sounded in over a decade.
Developed around the concept of killing his Slim Shady musical alter ego, The Death of Slim Shady is the rapper’s version of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour as he channels the flow and beats from his great and mediocre albums into the tracks of his latest project.
This much is obvious from the album’s opener Renaissance that harks back to the era of The Eminem Show and extends to many of the remaining tracks: Houdini is another The Eminem Show track, Brand New Dance is an Encore track, Fuel has a heavy Kamikaze-esque flow.
That said, the first half of the album is a rollercoaster of quality, violently ricocheting between retreading tired old material and excellent tracks that sound like they belong on his timeless albums while showcasing the occasional classic Eminem lyricism.
A clear, repetitive example of how the album’s A-side hinges on derivative material is the constant name drop of Christopher Reeve. Thrown off a horse and paralysed from the neck down, Reeve passed away in 2004 and in 2024, Eminem continues to beat the dead horse throughout the album, along with other dead horses such as Caitlyn Jenner.
Then, Eminem makes a hard pivot with the 13th track, Guilty Conscience 2.
Looking in the mirror
Antithetical to The Slim Shady LP’s comically deranged Guilty Conscience, Guilty Conscience 2 is the core of the album’s concept as Eminem openly admits to the regret he has over the arrested development music that made him notorious and famous.
Rapping “Still thirsty for controversy. You still picking on Christopher Reeves”, Eminem’s change of flow and lyricism is commendable but it also shows the glaring problem with the album’s B-side, in that it should not exist.
After Guilty Conscience 2, the album continues with the tracks Head Honcho, Temporary, Bad One, Tobey and Somebody Save Me. Three of these five songs sound terribly out of a place and should have been bonus songs.
Dedicated to his daughters Hailie Jade and Alaina Marie, son Stevie Laine and brother Nathan Kane, Temporary and Somebody Save Me would have been the perfect tracks to end the album directly after Guilty Conscience 2.
As good as some of the tunes are, they still lack the punch and raw edge from the albums they were riffing off, particular how aged the lyricism is, other than the entire verse about P. Diddy and Jeffrey Epstein on Antichrist.
The lack of real world relevance, especially from the mouth of the Slim Shady alter ego is the final nail in the coffin on whether the already uneven and back-end bloated The Death of Slim Shady will age as well as the albums that it uses as a crutch.
