A Closer Look At Eminem’s ‘Kamikaze’

Without warning like a summer’s night blackout, rear-end collision, and an alarming moment of Verbal Kint’s knuckle-cracking Söze reveal, Eminem’s tenth studio album dropped sudden and hard, catching many off-guard and giving reasons more for others to smirk while revitalizing Marshall as still one of the greats.  “Tried not 2 overthink this 1,” he tweets on 2018 August 31, though surely a serious listen to the roughly 45-minute 13-track album air-punchingly conveys quite a lot of thinking, strategically calculated and emotional, if not just over. 

First, a brilliant but expected playbook tactic by Jimmy “B-Rabbit” himself - if you can recall a much younger but still equally formidable MC back 16 years ago when Slim shot up onto the big screen for a very memorable autobiographical lead role, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Lose Yourself” off the film’s soundtrack.  During the epic final battle against sideshow Falcon “Papa Doc” (yeah, that’s right, Cap’s wingman), who…

photo credit: Craig McDean, Variety.com

“…went to Cranbrook, that’s a private school. 

What’s the matter, dawg, you embarrassed? 

This guy’s a gangster?

His real name’s Clarence.”

But remember that Eminem didn’t gain real advantage until he manoeuvred his enemy’s arsenal for his own offensive, *fistbump Cheddar Bob* another bold attack who many would liken Kamikaze to a head-hanging clap-backing self-esteem-boosting title reclaimer following a devastating prior album release, Revival. 

“The failures of his latest effort don’t simply center on that side step from audacity to reckoning.  It’s in how that move has somehow left him struggling to write a listenable song,” writes Brian Josephs of SPIN.com on 2017 December 19. 

(SPIN, by the way, is the authority in music magazine/webzine domain multiverse, not because I used to work there like a lifetime ago, but because they are, simply iconic.)

So, like before so many times ago, Marshall Mathers is back, “back again, Shady’s back, tell a friend”, having to prove once again his worth by way of aggression, agitation, defamation, invasion (and not completely without compassion).  A mouthful of his brazen staple, delightfully familiar, but at what cost.

Just the sheer force of his opener is enough to move mountains, the shock of his abrupt release still flaming fresh, as we open with “The Ringer” and get mindfully soul-blown: the command of his rhymes, the “choppy flow [that] everyone copies though? Probably no”, the resounding remembrance of great speed-rapping pushing bars and complex wordplay.  What’s genuinely enjoyable and even enviable are his technical skills as a prodigious MC, a clear pummelling of mild and habitual delivery of lyrics from others within the genre that may be significant but not as intoxicating (that Busta Rhymes, though, Ice Cube still my fav).

Critics are quick to note an almost grumpy bitterness to his rapturous lashings, maybe rightfully so, as the 45+ year old “rap god” has literally cultivated a new generation of talent and underlings who are naturally right in line for replacement and advancement.  It’s surprising though to find a lack of reading between the lines on his track “Normal”, that who he’s really griping about is himself, didn’t he infer so in the beginning: so, your pissant of an existence has become an empire by your hard work and perseverance.  Not only are you striving for relevancy now, you’re cursed to defend it.  Some similarly-stretched speculation has even been made of his benefactor and mentor the unrivalled legend Dr. Dre and all his perfectionism, so much so that his rumored-to-be-a-myth third and most recent solo album took over 15 years to produce (and it is real, and so good).

What is fantastically refreshing is a subtle hat tip to the Pulitzer Prize winning Kendrick Lamar for his 2018 album Damn, the first non-classical and non-jazz collection of work to be awarded the distinguished honor.  Both “Greatest” and “Lucky You” featuring Joyner Lucas have a real delicate Kendrick Lamar gloss-over that is just comfortable to hear, badass to feel, including an eerily remarkable conversion of voices where Joyner’s and Eminem’s aren’t too easily discernible making you wonder who’s blazing now, high-five to Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and all of Donald Glover’s various background vocals. 

“Stepping Stone” dives in the deep end, giving chance to a form of reflection that can only be achieved because some serious depth is reached, i.e. we don’t know the things we don’t know, until we do know.  A sense of guilt can even be felt seeping from the sentimental words and retrospective narratives, leaving the rest of us to wonder and speculate on his uneven path to glory and the bonds that made and broke to get him here, or, what else is left in his closet. 

The head-nod and fist bump to the Beastie Boys via cover art is no accident (how can any one thing like this be anyways, come on people).  By his own disclosure, Marshall’s contentions to Rolling Stone in a 2013 interview could not be anymore relevant or revealing today, as reported by Variety on the date of the album’s release:

“Obviously, yes, there was something about Licensed to Ill - you had the Zeppelin samples and their vibe.  You had Run-DMC, who were so cool, with the attitude of ‘F* you if you don’t like us.’  Same as the Beastie Boys.  ‘F* you.  We f*ing curse.  We spit beer.  We throw it on our f*ing fans.’  And obviously as they got older their views and things changed, as all of ours do.  You can be mad at their s* for not sounding like their last s*, but if it did, then they didn’t grow as artists.  Same as me.”

And the rest is rest: speak what you will about the strike-downs and refs of dick and almost needy pathetic slights of the current state of rap with its signature jabs and controversies (and there’s nothing wrong with tagging on a made-for-major-motion-picture track, however weirdly misplaced it may feel, just look at all the Transformers movies, sigh, we will never be able to hear that voice again).  It’s the culture of this hyper underworld to be territorial and off/defensive, flippin’ the bird to recognize, challenging those who you’ve been learning from just to crush and battle you for your own queue of equally ambitious up-and-comers to eat you alive, but respectfully.  Initial tells can show that this almost-there-but-not-quite master-marketer Beyoncé-level release of an album demands our attention and can outright have it, but can perhaps unofficially be Survival in an age-old custom of generational identities and connections simultaneously falling out of and into magnificence.

// Joey Gu