If you, like me, weren't raised right, you've probably been familiar with Eminem's music, and depending on the circumstances of your upbringing, you may find a lot in common with his humorous and edgy commentary, and his powerful emotional statements about his family. He was easily the world's most famous rapper. His releases include the underground Infinite, the breakout Slim Shady LP, the personal Marshall Mathers LP, the comedic frenzy of The Eminem Show, and the underwhelming Encore. From 1999 to 2007, everybody was talking about the guy, even after he hit many personal problems that removed him from the spotlight for several years.

Sure enough, he returned and released Relapse, a dark look into the brain of somebody who has experienced deep psychological trauma and faced horrific experiences with drug abuse. This album had mixed reactions from his audience, who criticized his overuse of fake accents and offensive, dark vocal content. Relapse remains my favorite full project by him since his return almost 12 years ago, because it's the only one with a consistent theme with subjects in the media and news that Eminem takes issue with, and retains his signature sense of humor, creative lines, great flow, and solid production choices. This is not done in future releases in nearly the same effective way.

After Relapse, he released Recovery. a follow-up project that sought out exposition on his mental state now that he is clean and away from his previous toxic environment. You would expect the messages in this album to be focused on this recovery like he does in the iconic "Not Afraid," yet instead we get a rather loose collection of tracks that continue his past negativity yet without the same spark or feeling. From Won't Back Down (which I still like) to Love the Way You Lie, there are certain trends found within half of this album that carry out for the rest of his career, and deteriorate heavily as time passes. Alongside the loss of his Slim Shady persona, there became a clear change in his lyrical content. Still, it was decent music that you could listen to all the way through and not find anything too jarring or disinteresting.

Following Recovery, he released The Marshall Mathers LP 2, a sequel to one of his biggest albums. When Recovery came out, he trashed Relapse, and disappointed fans were hoping he'd do the same and try something new. Instead, an album with weak rap rock and pop production topped off with obnoxious features and unmemorable tracks, only this time, we saw a renaissance of his iconic punchlines, only to see them largely fall flat. We see Eminem take on the art of speed rapping over lyrical content. Many, impressed by his speed, encouraged it.

In between 2013 and 2017, the hip hop landscape saw massive change. As social media and steaming services began to take hold, the genre quickly became the most popular in the world. Now, Eminem saw competition from rappers of all walks of life, from the conscious, technical and intelligent artists such as Kendrick Lamar to the melodic, hazy, and trope-fueled artists such as Lil Yachty. These artists all hold their own place within the musical landscape and have their own reasons for being as popular as they are. The problem is that these artists (minus those 2 funnily enough) , by large, did not grow up on Eminem's music, and as a result, they were not influenced by him and sound nothing like him.

Following the positive reception to The Marshall Mathers LP 2, he released Revival. Teased off with a track with a Beyonce feature, fans becoming sick of his proclivity to having several slow, R&B singer backed ballads, got worried. Revival is mess of terrible choruses, bad singing, absolutely abysmal production and mixing, and some of Eminem's least tasteful or entertaining jokes to date. I remember really liking two tracks, Framed and Offended, but they didn't last long in my rotation because of the terrible choruses.

Coming back to the previous paragraph, Revival was widely panned and became his worst selling album since his debut. Eminem was shocked by this, and instead of listening to the criticism about the album's weak hooks, bad production, feature choices, lyricism, and singing, he believed the issue was formed by the newer artists in hip hop, thinking that his flop was because he didn't sound enough like the younger artists that make music for the club.

In comes Kamikaze, a surprise album that came out of nowhere and launched personal attacks on anybody who publicly said they didn't like Revival. His focus on rapping quickly began to consume every aspect of the music. While a return to form in the sheer amount of anger and ferocity he was known for, the album was once more panned for weak jokes and obnoxious R&B features. I personally enjoyed it for its energy and rampage aesthetic, but it fell flat once more because of the weak production and terrible features.

Reeling from the success of Kamikaze, Eminem is born again. People feel like he's the one true white knight guiding us through the melodic rappers with their awful music. Now though, with his poor writing and focus on technicality than content, he began to fall into the pit of corny rappers with the soapbox, the "savior from bad music and morals" complex alongside Logic, Joyner Lucas, Unkle Adams, and Tom MacDonald.

Just yesterday, he released Music To Be Murdered by, another surprise album with a great first single, with a strong political stance and a fiery message that makes you think. Darkness was the best Eminem track in a decade. Then, you dig into the rest, you see a 20 song long tracklist, some impressive features from legends Q-Tip and Black Thought, and he ruined it all with unbearable production, the absolute most eye-roll inducing puns, and more gross singing.

I was an Eminem fan growing up, and now I'm a serious fan of hip hop as a whole. Seeing his decline and continuously holding out for a return, or at least something of substance from him, has not been a fun experience. As a few friends still hold on to his new releases like they're masterpieces, while the others that have listened to their fair share of newer, more conscious rap music, have found a massive regression and a Homer Simpson-esque caricature of himself in his most recent works.

What are your thoughts on Eminem's recent work, are you a fan, or is it just not your thing anymore?

I sort of stopped following Eminem after 2012. In 2013, my entire life basically entered a time capsule for around 4 years, and I've been rediscovering my music tastes since then. However, your very article like piece on Eminem makes me wonder if he's worth following again exactly. I mean, one thing I hate is highly produced, appeal to the masses music. It kinda sounds like he's trying to do something like that based on what I read here. I usually avoid pop for that reason. But the guy definitely has talent.

Kendrick Lamar is a damn meme. Ever since he released Humble, I just can't. It's interesting to know he took inspiration from Eminem though, which I guess got him somewhere. About Kamikaze though. I think it's fair to say that Eminem works best when he's incited by something, don't you? Half of the songs I remember from him are composed of energy filled rap yelling. He certainly is good at that.

I suppose I'll give a few songs from these albums a whirl and come back with a more well informed reply later, if you're still drifting around that is.

I have never really listened to any of his works before mostly because while growing up I never really had the opportunity to and no one that I have ever really been close to has really listened to it either.

I haven't really been paying attention to him stuff over the last 2 to 3 years. The only song that I like from the present is Venom (which i liked a lot) but other than that, I can't get into any of his songs from the last decade or so, it's mostly just his first songs that I really tolerated.