The relaxed idea back The Death of Slim Shady, as reinforced through a few skits throughout the tracklist, is that this is the final showdown between Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady. Slim kidnaps Mathers, a nod to his own early work, and forces the captive to write the kind of weird songs that made him famous. The first half of the album is a dilapidated funhouse, a cheap rehash of Slim Shady's work. He opens “Trouble” with a taunt, “Fack blind people.” “Brand New Dance”, a holdover from I call again sessions, is a three-and-a-half-minute long diss track aimed at the late Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004. He mentions Caitlyn Jenner six times before the 30-minute mark. There are confused, angry rants about pronouns and references to South Park. It would all be outrageously offensive if it weren't so tired, dated and developmentally arrested.
The album's centerpiece, “Guilty Conscience 2,” is the ultimate juxtaposition, the two characters meeting eyes and circling each other with hands hovering over their holsters. Em rap in two voices, one slightly distorted to represent Shady, and one with a drier mix for Marshall. The two characters bicker like drunken reality TV contestants, rubbing their noses and wagging their middle fingers. Marshall blithely explains that Shady's cruelty is simply a product of his addiction, promptly decimating his own point by pointlessly comparing Slim's annoying antics to David Carradine's accidental death by narcissistic asphyxiation. Slim's responses sound like a “debate me” guy who invokes the “it's just a joke” defense. Finally, after one exhausts the other's arguments, the two voices combine. It's probably supposed to be a moment of exoneration, but it's more like an admission of guilt. “I gave you the power to use me as an excuse to be mean/You made me say everything you didn't have the balls to say,” they both scream. Then, as the album title promises, Marshall gains the upper hand and shoots Slim Shady dead.
A day before its release, Eminem he tweeted that The Death of Slim Shady it is a concept album and therefore must be listened to in order. “Guilty Conscience 2” is very difficult to get to, but there are moments of genuine inspiration along the way. Although he deflates “Fuel” with an overly long, heavy technique, Em enlists JID, one of his stylistic progeny, for a breath-taking verse. He eschews the stage bombast of his late career, opting for rhythms that range from the goofy clarinet snare to the crunchy, slippery boom-bap that marked some of his best early work. He's still good for a dumb laugh, even if it's a bit of a walk: “Please that sex with a splash of necrophilia/'Cause when I say I'm really the baddest, I'm fucking dead” from the otherwise bloodless “Bad” . But the album falters, unsure of what it's trying to say. There are five songs after the supposed climax, none of which seem like a direction where the real, insufferable Eminem might travel.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/eminem-the-death-of-slim-shady-coup-de-grace
