There’s a telling skit on Eminem’s new album Kamikaze. It’s his manager, Paul Rosenberg, warning him not to go through with an LP basically full of scathing disses. You can hear it in Rosenberg’s voice – he’s dead serious about it being a bad idea. And he’s right. The aggro-rap Kamikaze proves two things we already knew about late-career Eminem. One: he can rap. Two: he cannot write an actual rap song. This is an exhausting, borderline-embarrassing album. Should’ve listened to Paul, Em.

Unless you’ve been living under a large music-less rock you’ve probably heard that Eminem surprise-released a new album going full scorched-Earth on 2018 rap. That ain’t no lie. Kamikaze is literally just an album of Em telling everyone that they are shitter than him. With an unrivalled history as a rule-breaking, truly generational rapper, Eminem is one of the few artists who could actually throw out such a boast and back it up. But of course, this is not peak Eminem. This is Old Angry Dad Eminem, the same one who released the verbal diarrhoea “Rap God” and doesn’t seem to remember what a good beat sounds like.

Where do we begin with Kamikaze? There is certainly plenty of rapping on it, enough to make a Genius contributer jizz himself. And no one is arguing Eminem can’t write. It’s no revelation to say this, but he’s a uniquely gifted rapper. Unsurprisingly, he loves Kendrick Lamar – both wordsmiths often sound like they almost have too much to say. In Em’s case, he never stops. Verses keep going and going down janky valleys and peaks. Sometimes it’s like bouncing against the walls of a child’s ADHD-riddled brain. That leads to goofy, vivid moments like on “The Ringer” where Eminem starts off blasting Donald Trump and somehow ends up rapping (admittedly quite funnily) about colour-blindness.

But endless, rhythm-less, in-your-face verses don’t actually make good songs, no matter how creative or goofy they might be. Neither does name-calling people for the sake of it. That would cancel out about two-thirds of Kamikaze. None of the disses are particularly interesting – (“I can see why people like Lil Yachty, but not me though/not even dissin, it just ain’t for me”… ok then?). There’s a particularly embarrassing moment on the title track where Eminem criticises Tyler, The Creator and basically calls him a faggot. It’s an especially weird, ironic moment considering Tyler once worshipped and sounded eerily similar to Marshall Mathers but has since gone on to much better things by drifting miles away from him. By the time that diss has come around, your ears pooling blood.

What else is there to say? Just about every hook or refrain on this album is like listening to nails on a chalkboard – “Fall” gets the trophy for worst of them all. There are some genuinely great contributors on this album – Mike WiLL Made It, Ronny J, Tay Keith and Bon Iver notably. They all somehow all sound pretty bland here. The one honest-to-god decent track is “Normal”, a relatively straightforward number where Em talks about how he’s addicted to a twisted, unhealthy relationship. When he’s given some direction and a concrete topic, he can actually focus and the writing follows that same flow. There’s a great final verse on the track with the sort of detail that Eminem swims through naturally (“who the fuck’s Milo?/the guy at work who drives a hi-lo/I put a tracking device on your Chrysler/and follow you while you drive home”).

But is “Normal” a good song, or does it only sound serviceable next to this collection of audible car-wrecks? Kamikaze is getting plenty of conflicting opinion. Some people are calling it a return to form and ‘real rap’, others are calling it the audio equivalent of Old Man Yells At Cloud. If you do like it, it’s hard to imagine you enjoying about 95% of all rap music out at the moment. It’s ironic that Eminem points out two rappers he actually respects on the album – Kendrick and J. Cole. All three share unique, tongue-twisting lyrical chops. Unlike Eminem, though, they still have some idea of what a good song is supposed to sound like.

4.4