Album Review: Kamikaze, Eminem

Eminem has never been the calmest of rappers, but he sounds even more furious than usual on his surprise-release new album.
Tyler the Creator, Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone are just some of the many hip hop rivals dissed – as are the journalists who dared point out that Em’s 2017 “comeback” LP Revival was all flash, no heart. Such is his dislike of rhymer Joe Budden, meanwhile, that Eminem actually went ahead and released the album on the musician’s birthday.
Recorded in secrecy, with “executive production” from his old mucker Dr Dre, Kamikaze is from start to finish a vitriolic onslaught. But that’s mostly a positive – assuming we can forgive his deployment of a homophobic slur against Tyler (perhaps we shouldn’t).
“Somebody tell Budden before I snap, he better fasten it/ Or have his body baggage zipped, the closest thing he’s had to hits is smackin’ bitches,” Eminem rhymes on ‘Fall’. It’s obviously in poor taste, but also a reminder of when Eminem was music’s ultimate enfant terrible, his verses packed with hilariously inappropriate broadsides against Paris Hilton and Moby.
He also takes aim at the mumble core “Soundcloud” rap scene – of which Eminem isn’t, it is fair to say, a major supporter. “Do you have any idea how much I hate this choppy flow/ Everyone copies though?” he spits on ‘The Ringer’ “Probably no/ Get this fuckin’ audio out my Audi, yo.”
The unkind interpretation of these attacks is that Eminem is, in his mid 40s, just some old dude who doesn’t get it any more. But such a reading isn’t quite borne out by the beats, which are barbed and urgent – a welcome contrast to the glossy production that contributed to Revival’s soullessness.
Ultimately, Kamikaze is probably too one note and repetitive to rate as a comeback – we get it, Marshall, you’re still the greatest. Yet it does hark effectively back to the rabble-rousing Eminem of the early 2000s. If it was his goal to remind us that he remains one of the genre’s most scandalous talents, he succeeds effortlessly.

Out now