Eminem - The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grāce) (Album Review)
Monday, 15 July 2024
Written by Will Marshall
Much has been made of Eminem’s decision to revive his iconic, foul-mouthed alter ego Slim Shady only to kill him off — supposedly for good this time — but ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)’ isn’t really interested in the big question. Namely, do we need Shady in 2024?
Instead, following a series of more mature albums — bar 2018’s ‘Kamikaze’, perhaps — this is very much a return to the shock value of his earlier work, skipping around any sort of satisfying answer.
That’s not so say ‘The Death of Slim Shady…’ is a bad record. Rhythmically, Eminem is in fine form, his rhymes skipping along at a speed that would tie most rappers’ tongues in knots.
He offers up breakneck switches in cadence, flow and accents in a technical masterclass, teeing up punchlines with unmatched skill decades into his career.
The lyrical content, though, is another matter. Em is clearly painfully aware of how unacceptable much of what he says is and there is a self-consciousness to his boundary pushing as he takes early aim at pronouns and Gen Z while cracking multiple jokes about Christopher Reeve and Caitlyn Jenner.
Trouble, for example, is a short, blistering tirade of offensive lines, while Antichrist roils and seethes against the usual edgelord targets in a deliberate attempt to stir as much trouble as possible.
But tracks such as Temporary, dedicated to his now adult daughter as if she were still a baby, and Somebody Save Me, stick out like sore thumbs amid these tirades. In the hands of someone else they would currently be on the cutting room floor, particularly as this is an album that’s more than an hour long.
Eminem is trying to come to terms with his alter ego — the character who made his name before being left behind by time — but is ultimately still him. If you can put aside the slurs and punching down, ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)’ is an album that reaffirms a lot of the reasons he’ll go down in rap history.
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