Eminem’s surprise album kills the game

Guest contributor Ana Toro shares her thoughts on Eminem's surprise album released on Jan. 17, 2020.

SHADY - AFTERMATH - INTERSCOPE • 2020

Guest contributor Ana Toro shares her thoughts on Eminem’s surprise album released on Jan. 17, 2020.

Ana Toro, Guest Contributor

Slim Shady is back with more controversy. Eminem’s new surprise album Music To Be Murdered By, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, is here. The album consists of 20 tracks, all in which Eminem proves that he is in fact the rap god.

The album begins with a more sincere side of Eminem as he raps about the questionable loyalty that his fans, referred to as Stans, have shown since his album Revival came out in 2017.

Per usual, Eminem is constantly subliminally dissing some rappers he has had beef with over the years like Machine Gun Kelly, Ja Rule, and Joe Budden, throughout the album.

However, it’s not an Eminem album if it’s not met with any controversy. He is under fire from Ariana Grande fans for having rapped about the Manchester attack, when a suicide bomber set off his vest at one of her concerts in 2017, on his song “Unaccommodating” featuring Young M.A.

The most notable song on the album is “Darkness”. This track is Eminem’s way of using his platform to advocate for gun control laws in America. The track dropped along with a music video to accompany it. In the video he begins rapping and it cuts to a man with a hoodie over his head, in a hotel room in Los Angeles. Eminem compares the life of a singer to that of a gunman with a tremendous amount of double entendres. The song ends with a news anchor reporting the Los Angeles shooting and later turns into many news anchors all speaking at once reporting all of the school shootings that have happened in America.

The album continues on into tracks with featured artists like Skylar Grey, Juice WRLD, Royce Da 5’9”, and members of the old rap group Slaughter House. On the track “Godzilla”, which is Juice WRLD’s first posthumous feature track, Eminem breaks his own record for most syllables in one second. On his hit “Rap God”, he reached 9.6 syllables per second, he beat that on “Godzilla” by reaching 11.3 syllables per second.

The album continues on into more heartfelt songs in which he apologizes, once again, to his ex-wife, Kim Mathers when they were together. He also speaks to his biological daughter Hailie Jade Mathers as well as his adopted daughters Alaina Mathers and Whitney Scott.

The album ends with Alfred Hitchcock bidding the listeners farewell in a somewhat scary fashion by saying “If you haven’t been murdered, I can only say, better luck next time. If you have been, goodnight, wherever you are.”

Eminem’s entire discography is an absolute work of art, but this album is definitely one of his best.