More than two decades have passed since Eminem’s breakout single My Name Is… arrived, announcing him as the most outrageously skillful rapper of his time. At 47, Marshall Mathers III shows no signs of slowing down – if anything, he’s speeding up. At the frenetic conclusion of monster new track Godzilla, he knocks out 229 words (containing 339 syllables) in 30 seconds; some rap websites are already claiming the average of 7.6 words per second a world record.

What is more impressive is that he makes every word count. He declares “I’m unfadable / You wanna battle, I’m available, I’m blowin’ up like an inflatable / I’m undebatable, I’m unavoidable, I’m unevadable.” I am not sure the latter is actually a word but you know exactly what he means: every rapper who wants to lay claim to the hip hop crown is going to have to get past Eminem first. The grandstanding champion has pugnaciously inserted himself into the new decade by dropping an unannounced double album as punchy, melodramatic and brilliant as anything he has ever done.

The lugubrious tones of Alfred Hitchcock provide spoken interludes and thematic context, sampled from a 1958 orchestral compilation from which Eminem has also borrowed the title, Music to Be Murdered By. Homicide is a repeated subject (as it has been throughout Eminem’s career), although the angle shifts from lurid first person fictional narratives of violence to jokey threats and musical metaphors, with Eminem rapping about poisonous pens and threatening to “murder this beat” on closing track I Will.