Hell hath no fury like a superstar rapper whose grand comeback receives a lukewarm reception from a once adoring public. Such is the message relayed, loudly and at length, on Eminem’s surprise new album Kamikaze – a high-kicking, low-punching riposte to the haters who shrugged off his deafeningly-hyped 2017 LP Revival as the sound of a middle-aged superstar treading water (in the ultimate humiliation it was unseated from the US charts by Taylor Swift’s Reputation).

“Are you really going just to deride everybody who…you don’t like what they have to say about you or the stuff you’re working on?” asks Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg in a voice message midway through this sharp and anger-fuelled record.

Eminem’s responds to Rosenberg with another voice mail several tracks later, venting his frustration towards a reviewer who questioned his abilities as a wordsmith. But it’s confirmation we don’t need as he has already unleashed his verbal water-cannon with impunity.

He rags on the journalists who failed to recognise the genius of Revival – in truth a bloated and tedious stab at reclaiming relevance – and then turns his sights on a younger generation of "Soundcloud" rhymers who, by Eminem’s telling, didn’t have things as hard as he coming up.