Well I’ve been pretty busy the past few days which is why it’s taken me forever to respond. But dry them tears mommy’s back.
bigray wrote:
Show us please.
Either you have the memory of a goldfish and haven't listened to Relapse in a long time, or you need to quit wearing Eminem's nutsack like a pair of goggles. Cause it seems to be blinding your peripheral, for the rest of us it's plain as fuck to see. But since I'm a nice gal I'll oblige and even break some of them down for you.
You can be a permanent fixture in my lyrical mixture
I'm the miracle whip... trickster
My signature sound when a tube of lipstick's around
I'm bound to put it on in an instant, wow man
What an ensemble, what an assortment of pharma-
-ceuticals this beautiful pill dust in my palm, my
Cuticles get residue just from touchin the bottle
Never knew I could remind me so much of my momma
I'll cut ya like Dahmer, pull the butcher knife on ya
The size of a sword boy I'm like the fuckin Red Sonja
Get it stuck in your cornea, nice knowin ya, Norman
You're so fuckin' annoyin', drop the shovel boy
You don't know what the fuck you're doin
I ain't playin' no fuckin' more
Nick Cannon, you prick, I wish you luck with the fuckin' whore
Every minute there's a sucker born, snuck up on
Malachi made the motherfucker suck on a shuck of corn
Chaka, Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan
Hit Jason in the face with a hockey puck and told him it's fucking on
Man what the fuck are ya doin'
You're runnin over the snowblower with the lawnmower
Blowin' your bagpipes from Baghdad
Seriously, what the fuck is this verse about? A complete mockery of lyricism where Eminem puts rhyme schemes at the forefront of his writing and disregards his content altogether, hell he could barely even keep track of the general subject matter before drifting into this shit.
The quality of the rhymes are amateur as fuck too, I don’t mean his quantity but “ You can be a permanent fixture in my lyrical mixture”, is just lazy as fuck and shit that you wouldn’t expect from Eminem when he used to be one of the most creative rhymers in the game. Even his first verse he tends to drift and I tend to see a pattern that’s prevalent in just general Relapse from this song all the way down to Underground where he fills his verse with filler, he can’t even keep track of his topic so to form more rhyme schemes he takes the easy way out and just lists Drugs, Band Members, and assaults you with random imagery. If he’s going for Stream of consciousness type lyrics than he needs to learn how to do it, but I doubt it since that’s never been his style and it seems like he’s generally trying to tell a cohesive narrative but falls flat on his face.
I’m not even gonna break down Medicine Ball because if you don’t think he’s just rapping for the sake of rapping in that song than LOL. Like seriously the song (and lots of songs in Relapse) just rely on utter shock value or deranged humor with no real purpose or cohesion. He just jumps from one line to the next without any context for it and is just plain unfunny, like is there even a topic to this song? Other than him just being plain deranged which he already covered (badly might I add ) with Insane. And yes I know vintage Eminem tended to let the rhymes lead him or for a better word some lines where random non sequiters with no context for the last (prevalent in songs like Role Model, Still Don’t Give a fuck, Just don’t give a fuck) but the difference he’s creative, he’s actually witty, funny and just a general better writer with no expletive lines that makes his verses seem bloated as fuck. Oh and he’s a more creative rhymer, hell I’d argue Nas now in Life is Good is a better rhymer than Eminem in Relapse.
And to show I’m not a bully, I’ll even point to one of the more lauded songs on Relapse with the second verse of Stay Wide Awake (the song also tends to use heavy use enjambment which illmatic was one of the first rap albums rife with it I might add). The second verse is just poorly written, this might be me being pedantic (I don’t give a shit) but
But they can't see what I can see, there's a vacancy in my tummy
It's making me play hide-and-seek, like Jason I'm so hungry
Is a shit line when the hell has Jason ever been hungry, maybe Hannibal Lecter (whom Eminem is a huge fan of btw and aware of) but nyope using Hannibal would hurt that precious rhyme scheme of his.
The last 6 bars of the second verse are just awkward and really ruin the rest of an otherwise decent verse, who the hell cares about him “dancing in red panties” or him dancing to a different drumbeat.
I feel like a bully for this one as it’s one of the more notorious ones but fucking Underground as a whole, is one of the worst displays of lyricism ever. Eminem trying to go back to vintage Slim Shady circa 00 is quite hilarious and sad as he fails pretty miserably.
There’s no coherence to this song whatsoever (same for a lot of Relapse songs but this is the most notorious). I’ll just quote some of his most awful lines which constitute a large portion of the verse.
Enough Oxycontin to send a fuckin' ox to rehab
This makes no sense whatsoever, and he just listed “ox” because it somehow continues his (horrible) wordplay akin to how that Jason line in SWA continues his rhyme scheme.
Jacking off to a hockey mask at a boxing match
Makes absolutely no sense and is just awkward
And throw a fuckin' lesbian in wet cement
Faggoty, faggoty, faggoty, Raggedy Ann and Andy
No! Raggedy Andy and Andy; no, it can't be, it can't be
Not even Rapgenius can help this horrible song save face, this is pretty much the same where he just lists drugs or random paraphernalia as imagery, but this time he tries really hard to have that biting wittiness old Eminem had that could make people go up and arms and really question whether or not he’s homophobic. Here he’s just uncreative with it and it comes off as hollow, oh and also useless expletive filler lines to fill in the scheme
Alright I’ve had enough of wasting my time breaking down his horrible lyrics, pretty much Eminem’s thought process during relapse was to brains storm phrases and words that rhyme with no cohesion and barely link them together when there’s no context for either lines and him trying his hardest to be witty or shocking. That’s a good portion of Relapse in a nutshell.
As for Aeone Eminem was not the progenitor to his horrcore witty style. Big L had him beat in that regard. Whether you think Eminem is better or more clever, whatever. Point is Big L had that horrcore style mixed that was biting yet had punchlines that were humorous and still showed a guy that didn’t take himself too seriously. Listen to Danger Zone, All Black, Devil’s Son or even his verse in Da Graveyard it just screams vintage Shady, also he’s a great rhymer when rhyming wasn’t that advanced yet.
Cage and Rhyme Asylum are nothing alike, other than being underground Hip Hop with some horrcore attached to them. How are you gonna criticize Rhyme Asylum for having varied content in their debut when at the same time you praise Relapse for the very same thing? Hell SSLP had lots of varying shades to Eminem (Rock Bottom, As the world turns, Role Model, Still Don’t Give a fuck, Just Don’t give a fuck). Anyone who’s not retarded could tell they’re not actually crazy but are going for over the top cartoonish style with just mindblowing wordplay.
About that btw, Rhyme Asylum’s appeal was never their brilliant concepts but was taking the art of battle rap and wordplay and pushing it to it’s limit. They are like Big L on steroids or if that nigga was still alive and kicking but his style was suited to the times. No one is even in the same stratosphere as them in terms of wordplay and arguably (skill) they have no expletive set up lines or filler, and just about every line of theirs is a quotable. They’ve taken pretty much every idiom or popular phrase and had a unique spin on that and turned it into a quotable. They’re not one trick ponies either and excel at imagery and storytelling when needed be and I hate to bring this up but they’re also great rhymers without ever feeling forced with their rhymes. Their schemes flow fluidly and it doesn’t for one second make you think that they had to sacrifice their content to fit a particular scheme as opposed to Relapse.
Production wise I was not a huge fan of Relapse though that’s one of it’s strongpoints I admit and if Em gave a better performance than the album’s potential is virtually limitless, it does feel too “loud at times” if you know what I mean. The percussion in MBTG (one of the better songs in Relapse imo) was way too loud. But I’ve never been a HUGE fan of Dre even when he produced for prime Eminem (blasphemy I know).
I get the complaints against State of Lunacy’s beats but I like them their pretty barebones and minimal and suit the rapping, they’re not overproduced at all and don’t take away from the rapping, which is without a doubt the main appeal of the album. It’s like a reverse Black Milk album where the main appeal is the dense cacophonous beats which compliment (or should I say the rapping compliments) the beats and don’t detract from the main substance of the album.
