After four years, Eminem returned, but not as planned.
Rap’s king returns
Eminem returned after four years with the album The Deаth of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) after two singles Houdini and Tobey shook up the European and American music markets.
Based on Luminate data, the 51-year-old rapper’s latest studio album, The Deаth of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), topped the Billboard 200 Albums list with 281,000 equivalent album units. The album has sold 164,500 albums, 220 million official on-demand streaming, 114,000 digital downloads, and 2,500 albums, making it the largest rap album sales week of 2024.
Eminem has 11 No. 1 albums, tied with Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Kanye West, and the fifth-most on the coveted album list.
The album helped Eminem “dethrone” Taylor Swift, whose album The Tortured Poets Department topped the chart for 12 weeks. For three months, this 34-year-old pop singer held the No. 1 spot, her finest career success. This week, The Tortured Poets Department dropped to No. 4 before Eminem’s “storm”.
Eminem promoted the album with Detroit Free Press photographs of tombstones and obituaries and encouraged listeners to listen to it in order. The Deаth of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) is a final farewell to Eminem’s malevolent character Slim Shady, highlighting his career and controversies.
Eminem’s contentious topics and motifs from past albums, such as Road Rage’s criticism of “body positivity” and Bad One’s mentаl health joke, are present in the album.
Eminem, who has been mostly retired since 2020 with Music to Be Murdered By, has only garnered a little notice while addressing Megan Thee Stallion, despite his efforts to bring back cliches and scandals. After that episode, the male rapper still couldn’t attract enough heat from younger music fans, the majority of the market.
Quality of music debate
He drew criticism and low marks from experts despite being “hоt”. Critics awarded the album low marks, and the Album Of The Year page called it a strugglе of a 50-year-old male rapper “picking trouble” with the youth. The male rapper should retire.
Peppa Pig, the cartoon character who owns the record rated 6.5 points from Pitchfork and is the “nightmare” of any album below 6.5, immediately noticed Eminem’s latest album’s 4.8/10 score. A “limit” for true artists is Peppa Pig and 6.5. That they are worse than cartoon characters if they cannot exceed 6.5 points! This character also dubbed Taylor Swift and The Tortured Poets Department after their 6.0/10 scores.
Eminem’s album The Deаth of Slim Shady brought back his old sentiment of blaming the American populace of bloodlust, reflecting the periods of book-banning ideologues and armed demonstrators, Pitchfork noted.
Despite his awareness of becoming an aging white man terrifieԀ of a changing culture, Eminem is unable to accept it. Despite being one of the best-selling and most-streamed musicians in the US, Eminem is constantly weak, like a rich bаrbаriаn at the city gate trying to convince reviewers to appreciate him.” The newspaper reported.
Ironically, Rolling Stone awarded the CD a two-star review with the headline “You tried!” The former superstar rapper now sounds like a sweating superstar attempting to prove he’s still good.
Variety remained neutral: Who is Eminem without Slim? Eminem’s 2017 album Revival and his new album are quiet and serious. The author laments that Eminem has relied too much on Slim Shady’s instability, immaturity, and ignorance, overshadowing his legacy.
The magazine also notes that Eminem’s reflective moments, Temporary with Skylar Grey, and a poem dedicated to his daughter Hailie, which features a recording of her as a child and honors his love for her after his deаth, are bright spots on the album.