And in case listeners don't understand what he's up to, he even picks a surreal fight with one of pop culture's most dearly departed, declaring, "I won't stand for this/And Christopher Reeve won't sit for this, neither," and later crowing, "I killed Superman, I killed Superman." He half-heartedly revives the controversy over his anti-gay lyrics with an absurd riff on homoerotic sports, and swipes at an easy target with a Jessica Simpson joke. In "Rain Man," the album's riveting centerpiece, he reels off wildly offensive monologues as if he were merely killing time. But for "Encore" he unveils a new voice, a slurred monotone that hints at boredom. He delivered many lyrics on "The Eminem Show" and the "8 Mile" soundtrack in a nasal, clenched-throat roar. He's not even halfway through the first song before he starts mocking his own petulance: "Woe is me, there goes poor Marshall again/Whining about his millions and his mansion and his sorrow he's always drowning in." You can hear the change in his voice.
But now the movie is over, and Eminem has a tougher role to play: the rapper is also a 32-year-old mogul, too rich and too self-aware to take even his own complaints seriously. The genius of the movie "8 Mile" was that it advanced this story by rewinding it: the pop star became a movie star by impersonating the aspiring rapper he used to be. "Encore" is the sound of Eminem's worst nightmare coming true: it's the sound of a rapper in the studio with nothing but time, trying to figure out how - or why - to get started.
On the contrary, "Encore" is almost willfully uneven: it includes some of the most exhilarating songs Eminem has ever recorded, alongside some of the most inert. That doesn't make it the most entertaining. This is the anxiety lurking behind every song on Eminem's new CD, "Encore" (Aftermath/Universal), which is both his least combative and his most conflicted album so far. What's scarier is what happens when you find that instead of having one moment to prove yourself, you have all the time in the world, and there's nothing more you really want to seize. What's scarier is what happens when that "one moment" has passed. What's scarier, of course, is what comes next, after the triumphant chorus ("You better lose yourself in the music, the moment/You own it, better never let it go"), after the triumphant concert, after the triumphant album. As a pair of guitar chords marched forward, Eminem delivered the vivid opening couplet: "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy/There's vomit on his sweater already, Mom's spaghetti." What could be scarier than that? So GAF, what is your opinion on this particular album? Why is it so hated? Discuss.Įdit: I also forgot to mention that the three songs on the deluxe edition CD (We As Americans, Love You More, and Ricky Ticky Toc) were pretty good as well.Look: if you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it? Or just let it slip?Įminem asked that question at the beginning of "Lose Yourself," the hit from the soundtrack to his 2002 film debut, "8 Mile." It's not the sort of question that demands an answer, but Eminem provided one anyway, in the form of a hip-hop pep talk addressed to an anxious wanna-be rapper. I guess there's also the fact there's a little bit of a nostalgic element involved here since I remember listening to this album as a kid around the time it came out. After Encore, I feel like his music just hasn't been the same. Is it because it came out right off the heels of MMLP and TES? I can maybe see how the album could've been considered disappointing back in 2004, but after listening to stuff like Relapse and MMLP2, I think Encore is the last Eminem album that actually felt like an "old school" Eminem album. The music production is also pretty great and it's probably even better than in the albums that came out after.
I mean, sure, the album does have a lot of weird experimental tracks that sort of bring it down, but I feel like there are more good songs than there are bad ones. Even songs like Evil Deeds, Rain Man, Puke, Yellow Brick Road, Ass Like That, etc are pretty decent as well. It has a lot of good songs like Mockingbird, Mosh, Like Toy Soldiers, Never Enough, Spend Some Time, One Shot 2 Shot, the title track, etc. I've been listening to Encore a few times and I just don't understand why it's considered such a bad album. I've been reading that Encore is apparently hated by many and is considered to be one of Eminem's worst albums. I've listened to all of his albums except for Recovery which I haven't yet listened to fully except for its singles. So I've been listening to much of Eminem's discography lately and I've been reading what people have to say about it.