Eminem – ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)’ review

It begins with a ‘hawk tuah’: ‘Renaissance’, the first track on Eminem’s exhaustingly self-obsessed 12th album, finds him spitting on a grave. That might be a very modern reference, but he’s clearly trapped in the early 2000s. The rapper even says so himself on ‘Antichrist’: “Somebody needs to come and hit the reset button / Back to 2003 ’cause how did we get stuck in / This woke BS?”

Here is the modus operandi of ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)’, which is 51-year-old Marshall Mathers yelling at clouds for a claustrophobic 64 minutes, albeit within a narrative that occasionally gets him off the hook. He’s described the record as a “conceptual album” and implored his stans to consume it in order. Otherwise, he warned, the story “might not make sense”.

In truth, Em might be overestimating the complexity of what unfolds throughout these 19 tracks. The aforementioned grave is that of Slim Shady, the outrageous, say-anything alter-ego who swung a chainsaw through turn-of-the-century pop. The idea is that Slim has crash-landed in 2024, leading him to affect bug-eyed rage at so-called wokery, snowflakes and, y’know, increased awareness of the challenges faced by people who aren’t white, male millionaires.

So there’s a bizarre, extended tirade against body positivity (‘Road Rage’), a joke about Kanye West/Ye’s mental health ‘(Bad One’) and several sarcastic references to being ‘cancelled’. The provocation is leavened by a device that sees Eminem repeatedly chastise Slim, like Dr. Frankenstein wrestling with his monstrous creation. At times, it’s an effective dynamic; however distasteful you might find the jokes on ‘Guilty Conscience 2’ (the gag about deaf people is stunning in its cruelty), they are delivered in the context of an appalled Em insisting that what Slim’s said is unacceptable. “You’re still mentally 13,” he marvels, “and still thirsty for some controversy.”

Later in the track, just in case anyone missed the point, Eminem informs his unruly charge: “You just sound like a dick.” If the same scene were depicted in a film, nobody would decry the actor delivering the egregious lines. This was the thesis of Eminem’s 2020 album ‘Music To Be Murdered By’, which featured ominous vocal samples from master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, who crops up here too. “The ‘coup de grace’,” the director intones on ‘Lucifer’, “is the final shot right between the eyes.”

There’s drama in a man who came from poverty going toe-to-toe with the dubious means he achieved stardom, and it’s true that we live in a conservative and somewhat risk-averse cultural climate. In theory, then, ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)’ poses compelling questions. What would it look like if one of the most controversial characters of the pre-9/11 world happened to collide with the social media age – and what would it tell us about what’s happened in between?

The answer, it turns out, is that the intrigue would soon wear thin. Catchy lead single ‘Houdini’, which interpolates 2002 mega-smash ‘Without Me’, indicated the album’s obsession with nostalgia; it’s barely believable that Eminem is still banging on about South Park, his mum and Christopher Reeve (the latter of whom died two full decades ago). When even Eminem seems to know it’s beyond the pale to deadname Caitlin Jenner, as Bizarre does on ‘Antichrist’, you know the routine is showing its age.

On the plus side, Eminem does fulfil the promise of ‘Houdini’. This is the most musically accessible album he’s released since 2013’s ‘Marshall Mathers LP2’. He largely eschews the malfunctioning robot delivery that’s defined his output since 2017’s Trump-baiting ‘Revival’. The production is appealingly cartoonish and rubbery, from the elastic bassline that twangs through ‘Brand New Dance’ to the wailing horror movie synth on ‘Trouble’. And, of course, you simply can’t fault him technically: ‘Fuel’’s Diddy gag should take its place in the pantheon of his greatest disses. These are undeniably well-crafted songs, whatever the content.

As its lead single suggested, Eminem is attempting to have it both ways here – to emulate his 2000s hits while lampooning Shady as a cultural relic who makes geriatric barbs at sensitive Gen Z-ers (as on ‘Trouble’), which enables him to say the same old thirstily provocative stuff. The extent to which he does so only overshadows the point he’s apparently trying to make. Much more powerful is ‘Temporary’, a genuinely moving ode to his daughter, Hailie, which proves Marshall Mathers can say something that matters when he wants to.

So, who killed Slim Shady? In bringing him back to the light and showing him up as irrelevant, perhaps Eminem’s done his old pal in for good. OK, we get it – Shady was a shocking character. Now that he’s dead, how about getting some new material?