“Fall”

“Tried not 2 overthink this 1,” Eminem tweeted last night along with the link to a new surprise album, Kamikaze. The statement reads like a self-justification for just how underwhelming the Detroit MC’s music has been in recent years, culminating in last winter’s Revival: a project of hyper-aggressive rappity-rap and juvenile fart puns, the musical equivalent of a Monster Energy drink.

Now he’s seeking redemption by returning to his roots in battle rap, an arena where overthinking can lead to instant defeat. This is exemplified by Kamikaze’s centerpiece, “Fall,” a Justin Vernon-featuring (and Justin Vernon-disapproving) diss track aimed at anyone who dared question his greatness as a rapper. To his credit, his flow—which had dwindled down to a robotic deadpan on his last few albums—sounds better than it has in years, nodding to his broiling verses of the early Aughts. The song’s production, a pulsing creation of Mike WiLL Made-It’s keyboard fringed with Vernon’s backing vocals, is slighty easier to swallow than the canned Cranberries-sampling beats on Revival. But it’s still a contemporary Eminem song, meaning it’s full of chillingly bad lines, none more reckless than his homophobic dart aimed at Tyler, The Creator—an artist who often went to bat for 2009’s Relapse, a record that not many others defended. He then proceeds to call Earl Sweatshirt “Earl the Hooded Sweater,” painfully asserts his accolades to make sure we know he’s not washed, and, of course, drops a metaphor involving his ballsack. (He also doesn’t hold Pitchfork in higher regard, apparently.) The song is just a catalog of cringe, one that cements Eminem’s status a rusting relic from rap’s past.