Eminem Is Officially Back With "Recovery"

Though the album isn’t officially available until the 18th, Eminem’s new album Recovery leaked this week, and it is, quite frankly, amazing.

I have no problem saying that Em’s last two albums were pretty shitty. Hell, even Slim Shady himself admits that in “Talkin’ 2 Myself”:

Them last two albums didn’t count. Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushing ‘em out. I’ve come to make it up to you now, no more fuckin around. I got something to prove to my fans, ’cause I feel like I let ‘em down.

That’s a pretty powerful statement to make about oneself.

The self deprecation is a common thread throughout this album. Em seems to be pretty proud to have cleaned himself up and be off whatever plethora of drugs he was using before. The wit that was so absent on his last two albums is back with a vengeance on Recovery, which makes this album feel refreshing. It’s a return to his Marshal Mathers era intensity. With no holds barred, against himself or others.

In the same song, “Talkin’ 2 Myself,” Em relates that he “Almost made a song dissing Lil Wayne” and continues to say:

Anybody who was buzzin’ back then coulda got it. Almost went at Kanye, too. … Thank God I didn’t do it, I’da had my ass handed to me. … Are you stupid? You gonna start dissin’ people for no reason. ‘Specially when you can’t even write a decent punchline?

The lyrics here, and throughout the album, are poignant, impressive, and down right fantastic.

He shouts out to DJ AM, repeatedly uses Michael J. Fox as a punching bag, gives a quick slap to Ben Roethlisberger (and many more), and samples both Black Sabbath and Haddaway (among others). And all the while realizing that none of it even matters when he says, “Fuck the words, you don’t listen to ‘em anyway” in album opener “Cold Wind Blows.”

He has some pretty awesome guests in Lil Wayne, Pink, and Rihanna and others, but still carries the majority of the album on his own.

“No Love,” produced by Just Blaze and featuring Lil Wayne and sampling Haddaway, features one of Em’s best rhymes since he was rapping about killing his baby momma.

Get these whack cocksuckers off stage, where the fuck is Kanye when you need him? … Snatch the mic from em, bitch I’ma let you finish in a minute. Yeah that rap was tight, but I’m bout to spit the greatest verse of all time.

And then continues to skewer the collective, unnamed rappers who he thinks are “whack”.

Though the beats themselves aren’t mind blowing (“Cinderella Man” kind of sounds like Gwen Stefani’s “Holla Back Girl”); they are all very fitting for the lyrics Em puts over them. There isn’t a party anthem on this album, per se, but there are some amazing moments in this collection. I don’t doubt that he’ll have some radio hits from Recovery.

Eminem’s sixth major label release, Recovery, will be released June 18th on Interscope Records.