The last major ripples Eminem made were on his muscular verse on Dre’s ‘Medicine Man’, which was controversial even by his standards. It was one of the highlights of a muddled album which relied heavily on guest appearances, and saw Em appearing alongside men of the moment like Kendrick Lamar and exciting newcomers like Anderson Paak. Some took it as a sign that he’d soon be back with his own release, and now, 2 years on, we have our first evidence that one is indeed coming.
On Wednesday, Em dropped ‘Campaign Speech’ via Twitter, and assured us all that he’s “working on an album”. So which shade are we dealing with here? Well, if ‘Campaign Speech’ is anything to go by, a more balanced, introspective one than we’ve seen with a while. The lowest nadirs of Em’s career have always come when he’s ventured too far in either direction, taking himself too seriously, or pushing the toilet humour so hard that he ended up coming across like a drunk uncle making a scene at a wedding.
‘Campaign Speech’ isn’t so much a track as a spoken word piece. It has a sliver of a beat and some almost Yeezus-esque industrial thumps. For the first minute or two I almost expected to be hit with the all too familiar, increasingly unwelcome rattlesnake quivers of a trap beat, but thankfully they never came. What you do get is a nearly 8 minute long stream of lyrical mastery, referencing everyone from Trump (as you might expect from the title) to George Zimmerman to Edward Norton to Catherine Bach, and everything from Black Lives Matter to the Apple Watch to Orange is the New Black.
He’s as on form as he’s ever been, and some of the more choice lines are bound to raise hackles, but that’s par for the course at this point. The main thing to try and ascertain is what kind of album this is going to be. The Black Lives Matter referencing is worth examining. For all his controversy, Em has never been one to clamber onto a soapbox, but the African American rights issue is more prominent in hip-hop than ever before, and in a sense it would be more noticeable if Eminem didn’t mention it, so the fact that he’s actually making it a central theme is pretty telling. We could be looking at something more measured than any of his previous releases, or he could just be slamming the hot button.
‘Campaign Speech’ is interesting, but it’s really just an outburst, a roundup of recent events filtered through the Eminem lens. This is far from a bad thing, it means that the best is yet to come. So far as I can figure, ‘Campaign Speech’ is a warm-up, and whatever comes next will hit far harder, and far closer to the pressure points of these troubled times. Or it could just be some bullshit about hamsters crawling up asses.
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