Deluxe versions of previously released albums by DaBaby and Lil Baby both came with what looked like entire new albums attached; the murder of rapper Pop Smoke in February didn’t preclude his label finding 15 new tracks to add to his posthumously released debut album a month after it first came out.
Artwork for Music to Be Murdered By Side B.
Likewise, Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By Side B features an hour of additional music to make it a fully realised piece of work. It is one that shares its parent album’s preoccupation with Alfred Hitchcock – the late director appears on the intro; the music on Alfred’s Theme is derived from Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette, which played while the credits rolled on the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents – and it reacts to its predecessor’s mixed reviews and the controversy it stirred with the track Unaccommodating, which featured queasy jokes about the Manchester Arena bombing. The latter provoked condemnation from both fans and the mayor of Manchester. Eminem’s response is a classic sorry-not-sorry: “I know nothing about the Manchester bombing is funny,” he offers on Favorite Bitch, before making a joke about the Boston marathon bombing.
There’s an argument that getting upset because Eminem has said something appalling on his new album is like getting upset because the new AC/DC album features a man dressed as a schoolboy playing guitar: it’s rather the point. In fact, AC/DC are an apposite comparison. They’ve been in the business of giving their audience precisely what they expect for decades now, which has more or less been Eminem’s default position since 2010’s Recovery. Donald Trump provided a flash of re-energised inspiration, perhaps because the “alt-right” looked not unlike a significant section of his noughties fanbase: “the angry white young misanthrope who feels marginalised … with a sense of aggrievement that is out of proportion to reality,” as his biographer Anthony Bozza put it.
Eminem’s scorn for the current state of hip-hop, which informed 2018’s Kamikaze, offered listeners the curious spectacle of Slim Shady sounding like a middle-aged dad, bemoaning the music his kids like. Other than that, it’s been business as usual.
And it’s business as usual here: it takes 52 seconds to reach the first lyrics about assaulting a woman and three minutes to reach the first about murdering her, complete with sound effects. Mumble-rap comes in for another kicking on Favorite Bitch, 90s hip-hop is hymned, there’s a jab at rappers who use ghostwriters – daring, given the guest appearance from Dr Dre, the most famous user of ghostwriters in the business. There’s the usual stuff about drugs and madness; there are jokes about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. There’s a burst of support for the Black Lives Matter movement on These Demons and Zeus [“black people saved my life,” he avers] and he keeps mentioning coronavirus, particularly on Gnat, without having much to say about it beyond comparing it to himself.
On the other hand, age has not withered the rapper’s astonishing level of technical skill. If you’ve heard most of what he says before, it’s still possible to be awestruck by the way he says it – a breathless, relentless barrage of wordplay, puns and tricky internal rhymes, delivered in a voice that builds in intensity as the tracks go on.
The music is less interesting than on its predecessor: the best thing here might be Guns Blazing’s churning bass and drums programmed to sound like a succession of shots fired, but there’s nothing to match the chaotically thrilling noise of Music to Be Murdered By’s You Gon’ Learn. Nor is there an unequivocal triumph along the lines of that album’s Darkness, a brilliant depiction of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas through the eyes of its perpetrator.
The most interesting moments come when Eminem confronts his own artistic dilemma head-on, worrying about the fact that he’s nearing 50 – “I’ll be an old fart” – or protesting that people “want you to change but don’t change … want the new but old Shady”. “Where am I supposed to go from here?” he snaps on Higher. “Really I have no idea.” It feels like a touching moment of honesty and clarity. Then he snaps back into Slim Shady mode and makes another joke about his testicles.
Shady Records / Interscope
- Release Date: Jan 17, 2020
- Summary: The surprise release from the Detroit rapper features guest appearances from Anderson.Paak, the late rapper Juice WRLD, Q Tip, and Ed Sheeran.
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- Record Label: Shady Records / Interscope
- Genre[s]: Rap
- More Details and Credits »
Top Track
Unaccommodating Oh, this what we doin'? Alright Amen [Young M.A:] I like a bitch that like to wobble, wobble Shake it, shake it, break it, break it Nigga, we made... See the rest of the song lyrics
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Score distribution:
- Negative: 0 out of 17
- Eminen’s 11th album offers over an hour of the world’s greatest rapper blasting away on all cylinders. It is the first great album of 2020, so lethally brilliant it should be a crime.
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- As a whole, Music to Be Murdered By is as hit-and-miss as anything Eminem has released this side of the millennium. But remove the skits, the relationship songs, the family songs, the morose gun control song, and the quirky Ed Sheeran club goof and you still have 36 solid minutes of the daffy, one-of-a-kind rap genius that keeps captivating true-school heads and longtime fans. Or, if you’d like, keep it all and you still have the most solid work he’s done in a few years.
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- He splits the difference on ‘Music To Be Murdered By’, indulging his immature ego [griping at bad reviews, stirring controversy for the sake of it] even as he offers salient social criticism and admits his missteps. He’s ready to pass on hard-earned wisdom before running his mouth like he hasn’t learned his own lessons. And he offers casual fans a hook or two before embarking on another lyrical work-out.
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- Music to Be Murdered By sees Eminem pulling himself out of Kamikaze's wreckage somewhat, though he still falls victim to moments of willful dumbness and a tedious self-obsession that's become par for the course. On the album's best tracks, there are still hints of the fire that made Eminem a rap legend.
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- For what it's worth, we know Eminem is an incredible lyricist. We know he has punch lines that can pierce your mind and make you laugh. But what we don't know is whether or not he has anything real to say, and to his detriment, Music to Be Murdered By puts that in the spotlight.
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- Eminem belittles the trauma of a then 26-year-old Ariana Grande for kicks on “Unaccommodating” by comparing himself to the Manchester Arena bomber. The sour taste of this track lingers well beyond the album’s centrepiece, “Darkness”, which is intended as a searing critique of America’s toxic gun culture. Instead, his use of gunfire and explosion samples feels grossly exploitative.
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See all 17 Critic Reviews
- This man keeps getting better! Insane album start to finish with a little something for everyone.
- This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.Fuccin lit io lm dukekd8ddilwlwmwnrjfieopelwnehfyyudoelqmendjufiwowlemnfjfjudiwl2mnruriekel… Expand
It's Eminem's best album since Recovery. Good music production & some banger tracks make this album great.
Was music to be murdered by a success?
Eventually, Music to Be Murdered By was the 9th best-selling album [in pure sales] of 2020 in the United States, with 287,000 copies. The album debuted at number-one in other countries. It became Eminem's 11th number-one album in Canada, while debuting atop the Canadian Albums Chart with 33,000 album-equivalent units.
Was kamikaze a good album?
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Kamikaze received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 62 out of 100 from 16 critic scores. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave the album 5.6 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.
What is the order of Eminem albums?
Here, we unpack Eminem's long but distinctive line of solo work..
Infinite [1996].
The Slim Shady LP [1999].
The Marshall Mathers LP [2000].
The Eminem Show [2002].
Encore [2004].
Relapse [2009].
Recovery [2010].
The Marshall Mathers LP2 [2013].