Before we begin, a disclaimer. Eminem is one of the most technically impressive and successful rappers in the world. Nothing I write can ever take away from that, nor does writing a critique about a relevant cultural moment revolving around Eminem mean that I am “obsessed” with him, “hate” him, or even that I think about him all that much. Now that I’ve addressed the inevitable deluge of hate mail I’m bound to get — which will almost undoubtedly follow anyway — we can set all that aside and attend to the issue at hand.

Namely: No one should be surprised that the recently-leaked Eminem tracks are awkward, offensive, regressive, tone-deaf, or just plain bad. Eminem, for all his technical gifts, has long relied on offensive shock tactics, on provocation, on style over substance — he has done so for far too long, in fact. It’s just that in the modern context of marginalized voices speaking out on social media, of #MeToo and #TimesUp, of knowing better and therefore accepting a reasonable expectation of doing better, his deliberate deviance has worn thin, looking a lot less novel and a lot more like the desperate pandering for attention it’s always been.

The first leak, a joint effort with Eminem acolyte Joyner Lucas called “What If I Was Gay,” snuck onto rap forums and illicit hosting sites on Halloween. The song is a spiritual sequel to Lucas’ equally cringe-y 2017 viral hit “I’m Not Racist.” Like that single, it finds the two rappers slipping into narrative personas to address bigotry, albeit from a dumb “gotta hear both sides” that critically misses the point. Joyner plays the gay person, while Eminem takes on the role of his homophobic friend. In the song, the two trade cliches like, “But on the real, what if I told you that I was brave? / I grew up different than I was raised,” and “What if I’m a hypocrite who is afraid to just face truth / What if I told you I’m gay too?”

Rolling Stone says that releasing the song would have been a huge mistake for both artists. Not only does the final bombshell land like a wet brick instead of the explosive it clearly wants to be, it rings hollow in light of Eminem’s career spent goading the LGBTQ community. He was just lambasted by half of Rap Twitter over calling Tyler The Creator a “f*****” on his last album, an artist whose own coming out lyric from Flower Boy was met with a collective “meh” after many realized he’d been dropping hints his entire career.

The next leak, a reference track for “Things Get Worse,” leaked this past Monday, November 11. While that song was recorded during the 2009 sessions for Eminem’s album Relapse, the verse was scrapped, re-written, and re-used on B.O.B.’s 2011 “Things Get Worse” from B.O.B.’s E.P.I.C. (Every Play is Crucial) mixtape. In that leak, he name-drops Rihanna, referencing her then-recent assault by Chris Brown: “Let me add my two cents / Of course I side with Chris Brown / I’d beat a bitch down, too / If she gave my dick an itch, now.”

While he did damage control through a PR rep who pointed out the age of the verse and the fact it was re-written, the defense that Eminem and Rihanna “have a great relationship” rings as hollow in light of the fact that the “re-written” verse still contains the line, “You f*****s wanna rassle? / I shove a f*cking jar of Vaseline up inside your asshole.”

Never mind the fact that Rihanna destroyed Snapchat’s stocks after they ran an insensitive ad making light of her assault, the two artists have a “great relationship” — after Rihanna helped Eminem’s 2010 Recovery single “Love the Way You Lie” garner platinum sales and top charts worldwide to become his best-selling single. Of course Eminem wants to save that bridge after he realized how much more lucrative it’d be to save it than burn it — the same way he made “amends” with Elton John at the 2001 Grammys. He scrapped the track because he realized even in 2009 that his schtick was getting old.