Eminem dropped new surprise album "Kamikaze" late Thursday night, the follow-up to 2017's "Revival." At midnight on the East Coast, he tweeted the link to the album and wrote, "Tried not 2 overthink this 1... enjoy" along with a middle finger emoji. The rapper posted album art from "Kamikaze" as well. The cover shows the tail of a fighter plane that says "FU-2," while the back of the album shows the front of the plane crashing. Eminem teamed up with longtime collaborator Dr. Dre to executive-produce the album. The 13-track album features artists Joyner Lucas, Eminem's manager Paul Rosenberg, Royce Da 5'9" and Jessie Reyez. The album also includes Eminem's track from upcoming Marvel villain movie "Venom," starring Tom Hardy. On Thursday, Eminem teased his song from the movie on Twitter. Eminem released his last album, "Revival," last December. He promoted the movie with a spaghetti pop-up in Detroit. Last year, Eminem made headlines when he slammed President Trump in a freestyle rap called "The Storm" at the BET Hip Hop Awards. "This is his form of distraction, plus he gets an enormous reaction when he attacks the NFL, so we focus on that instead of talking Puerto Rico or gun reform for Nevada or these horrible tragedies, and he's bored and would rather cause a Twitter storm with the Packers," Eminem rapped. Eminem told his fans they had to pick sides. "Any fan of mine who's a supporter of his, I'm drawing in the sand a line -- you either for or against," he said. After using an expletive, Eminem said "the rest of America, stand up." Eminem "Kamikaze" track list<doc-sep>Eminem has released a surprise album, Kamikaze, just months after his last full-length project, Revival. “Tried not 2 overthink this 1 … enjoy,” he wrote on Twitter announcing the release. On the first track, The Ringer, the Detroit rapper claims that following his two freestyles last year in which he castigated Donald Trump, the US president “sent the Secret Service to meet in person / To see if I really think of hurtin’ him / Or ask if I’m linked to terrorists”. He also says of Trump: “I empathise with the people this evil serpent sold the dream to that he’s deserted.” In the first track alone, Eminem dismisses new-school rappers such as Lil Pump, Lil Xan and Lil Yachty, attacks the media over poor reviews of Revival, and makes reference to vice president Mike Pence’s scrotum. Other rap peers who receive his ire across the album include Tyler, the Creator (“I see why you called yourself a faggot, bitch”), Machine Gun Kelly and Joe Budden. Another track, Stepping Stone, addresses the death of his former D12 bandmate Proof and the subsequent dissolution of the group, while Not Alike makes reference to the Weinstein scandal: “I Harvey Weinstein, a bathrobe hanging open / My code name is groper, I roleplay with lotion / I fucked on the world then I throw away the Trojan.” Kamikaze is the latest release in a prolific period for the rapper, who until Revival had not released an album since 2013. While generating mixed reviews, Revival went to No 1 in the US and UK, while Eminem recently performed a series of UK stadium shows. Since its release he has also performed some high-profile, technically impressive guest verses for Nicki Minaj and Royce Da 5’9. The latter also appears on Kamikaze, along with Justin Vernon (AKA Bon Iver), rapper Joyner Lucas and Canadian R&B singer Jessie Reyez. The album was executive-produced by longtime collaborator Dr Dre. One track, Venom, is taken from the soundtrack of the forthcoming Marvel movie of the same name.<doc-sep>At 12:00 am on Friday morning, Eminem casually tweeted out a link to a surprise new album, Kamikaze, and set the late-night internet on fire. The 13-track album, streamable on Apple and Spotify, is the rapper’s first release since his 2017 LP Revival. Produced by Eminem and Dr. Dre, it pays homage to the classic Beastie Boys album License to Ill and features collaborations with Joyner Lucas, Jessie Reyez, Royce da 5’9, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. More importantly, it features Eminem in full-on old-school mode, dropping a litany of classic Marshall Mathers verses. It’s an occasionally uneven album, but it’s full of fire and full of Eminem’s always-impressive skill. It also reminds us, as few Eminem moments have lately, why so many hip-hop fans believe he’s the GOAT. This might sound surprising after the negative reception to Revival, which drew the worst critical response of Eminem’s career despite sporting flashy collabs with the likes of Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran. But on Kamikaze, Eminem is clearly back on his bullshit, and so much better for it. Kamikaze takes aim at the unoriginality of recent rap — and it has plenty to say Throughout Kamikaze, Eminem takes aim at the stagnant feel of recent rap and its purveyors. From the very first track, “The Ringer” — which opens with a brutal litany of rap disses before seamlessly shifting to the rapper’s well-established anti-Trump rage — we get Eminem at his self-aggrandizing, self-deprecating, dizzyingly self-assured best. Along with savaging a bunch of people (“Lil Pump, Lil Xan, imitate Lil Wayne,”) he devotes a whole verse to professing himself mystified by recent rap trends, à la “Gucci Gang,” with their “subpar bars” and “choppy flow.” Em makes the point again and again that he’ll never stint us of a good rhyme or a well-crafted run-on lyric. In stellar tracks like “Lucky You” (his utterly fire collab with Joyner), “Not Alike,” and “Fall,” he asserts his confidence that he still has a place in rap — and that rap desperately needs him. He does this musically, especially through the use of trap beats (“Not Alike”) and musical references to other artists. By using duplicated clips and structural mimicry, he summons musical memories of Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Migos to ironically illustrate how overly copied their work has become, and how lazy it is to simply lay down a weak verse over someone else’s song structure. Lyrically, so many people get dissed on Kamikaze that it’s easier to talk about who doesn’t. Naturally, Em’s longtime mentor Dr. Dre, who co-produced, is safe, as are his album collaborators. But “if you ain’t Joyner, Kendrick or [J.] Cole or Sean then you’re a goner,” he promises. By the time the album ends, pretty much everyone is dead: Eminem just dissed: Tommy from Rugrats John Wick Lil Yachty Eddie Murphy MGK Tyler, The Creator Drake Charlamagne Bill Gates Joe Budden Trump Mike Pence Ellen Ohio Chicago Bears My moms spaghetti And he ain't done yet — Kraken (@SinktheKraken) August 31, 2018 Eminem went in on Tyler, Budden, Hopsin, Logic, Drake, MGK, Tech, Xan, Yachty, me, my dog, my 6th grade teacher, the state of Delaware, an entire school of goldfish, the aurora borealis, industrial microwaves, semen, ewoks, fishing lines... — KS3T (@sIipspace) August 31, 2018 He’s also good to the likes of Hopsin, Cypress Hill, and Travis Scott. (Kathy Griffin also gets a shoutout on the title track: “Kathy Griffin, stackin’ ammunition / Slap the clip and cock it back on competition.” She has already tweeted her delight over the reference.) But there’s narcissism in Eminem’s benevolence, too. “Don’t tell me ’bout the culture,” he sings in “Fall.” “I inspired the Hopsins, the Logics, the Coles, the Seans, the K-Dots, the 5’9s, and, oh, brought the world 50 Cent” — the latter a reference to Eminem signing Fiddy onto his label and jumpstarting his career. “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up,” explained Notably, there’s one artist who briefly shared Em’s Kamikaze spotlight, despite not performing on the album: Tay Keith, who produced “Not Alike,” Eminem’s collaboration with Royce da 5’9. Keith is a wunderkind, a 21-year-old producer from Memphis who just graduated college but who’s already worked with major artists — including Drake. That’s why Drake’s song “Nonstop,” from his recent album Scorpion, begins with the low-level introduction, “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up.” This line is Keith’s producer tag — the verbal equivalent of an artist’s signature. Including a producer’s signature tag on a song or album they contributed to is a longtime industry trend, recently on the rise, to shout out the creative collaborators working behind the scenes. It’s also a great way to call attention to a producer’s specific style and aesthetic. Keith’s tag of “Tay Keith, fuck these ni**as up” has become something of a meme since Drake released Scorpion. So when Royce shouted it out on his collab with Eminem, “Not Alike,” fans turned heads because it was such an unexpected thing to hear on an Eminem album — and Keith, who did indeed produce the track, was such an unexpected collaborator. In working with Keith, Eminem is clearly trying to send a message: He’s not only on top of his game, but he’s working with the best and brightest in the industry. Of course, it might not be entirely successful — see Twitter’s skepticism that he’s just an old fogey trying to fit in with the cool kids — but we laud him for trying. Eminem is always best when he’s self-deprecating and confessional Of course, since this is Eminem, he’s also ready to diss himself. “What I’ll never be is flawless,” he assures us; “all I’ll ever be is honest.” In typical fashion, his most boastful songs are also inundated with references to his failures and errors. Throughout Kamikaze’s second track, “Greatest,” he interpolates Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble,” most brilliantly when he self-mockingly notes, “Revival didn’t go viral!” The theme of overcoming Revival’s failure reverberates throughout the album, but Eminem also second-guesses his way through his approach to relationships — most notably in “Stepping Stone,” when he addresses his now-defunct rap group D12 and his conflicted feelings about their dwindling friendships and fragmenting career trajectories. He also questions his personal approach to combating President Trump. Referring to his incendiary anti-Trump freestyle “The Storm,” Eminem notes in “Ringer” that while he feels committed to critiquing the administration, he feels more sympathy now with the Trump-voting fans he initially rejected: “If I could go back, I’d at least reword it / and say I empathize with the people this evil serpent sold the dream to that he’s deserted.” But while Eminem is letting his liberal colors show in reference to Trump, elsewhere on the album, they’re a lot muddier. Eminem is in a familiar place in terms of “shock rap” doubling poorly as social critique, in that he’s still dropping homophobic slurs and frequently deploying homophobic gay panic without apology. On Kamikaze, the virulent misogyny of his past, which has often been presented as tongue-in-cheek, gets funneled into a darkly satirical critique of virulent misogyny called “Normal.” In it, he takes on the persona of a violently possessive, controlling boyfriend — arguably in order to critique toxic masculinity, but because this is Eminem, you’re never quite sure. See, for example, his character’s confession that “I slipped up and busted her jaw with / a Louisville Slugger ’cause all’s it / really does is make our love / for each other grow stronger.” He follows this up later with the pair of tracks “Nice Guy” and “Good Guy,” which both trade on the popular conception of the “nice guy” as an embodiment of the kind of entitled misogyny that leads to the violence we see in “Normal.” It’s not exactly groundbreaking, and as always, it’s so difficult to uncouple Em’s critique of misogyny from actual misogyny that it might as well be one and the same. But for what it’s worth, it looks like he’s at least read “Cat Person” like the rest of us. The album finishes out with “Venom,” Eminem’s contribution to the soundtrack for the upcoming Tom Hardy superhero movie.<doc-sep>
Eminem unveiled a surprise album, Kamikaze, at midnight on Thursday. The LP includes a song from the Venom soundtrack, which he teased on Twitter prior to Kamikaze‘s release. A surprise release is a first for Eminem, who has rarely bent to the changing whims of the music industry over his 20-year career. If the release strategy was new, though, the Kamikaze cover pays homage to a hip-hop classic, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill album. In addition, the content of Kamikaze appears to be vintage Eminem, prizing provocation over all else. In a skit — remember those? — featuring his longtime manager (and current CEO of Def Jam Recordings) Paul Rosenberg, Eminem is berated via voicemail: “Are you really going to reply to everybody who you don’t like what they have to say?” Rosenberg says. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea.” That sentiment is echoed by the album’s copy advertising on Apple Music: “Shady punches back, and he’s naming names.” Sometimes that’s true — he goes after Die Antwoord on “Greatest” — but more often Eminem keeps his references general, taking aim at young rappers who “put out 10 million albums” and use “a couple of ghostwriters.” In addition to dissing youngsters, Eminem appears very concerned about the reaction to his last album, 2017’s critically panned Revival. “How do I say this?” he raps on “Fall.” “Last year didn’t work out too well for me.” He’s more explicit on “Lucky You”: “I took an L when I dropped my last album/ It hurt me like hell but I’m back on these rappers.” Kamikaze is executive-produced by Eminem’s longtime collaborator Dr. Dre. Mike Will Made-It is also credited on several tracks, along with Illadaproducer. Several of the credits will be familiar to anyone who listened to Drake’s Scorpion — Memphis producer Tay Keith (Drake’s “Nonstop”) makes an appearance here, as does Boi-1da (Drake’s “8 Out of 10″). Features come from another longtime Eminem foil, Royce da 5’9”, plus rising rapper Joyner Lucas and the young singer Jessie Reyez. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Kendrick Lamar are credited as writers on Kamikaze; “Greatest” features an interpolation of Lamar’s “Humble.” Kamikaze Track List 1. “The Ringer” 2. “Greatest” 3. “Lucky You” featuring Joyce Lucas 4. “Paul – Skit” 5. “Normal” 6. “Em Calls Paul – Skit” 7. “Stepping Stone” 8. “Not Alike” featuring Royce 5’9″ 9. “Fall” 10. “Kamikaze” 11. “Nice Guy” featuring Jessie Reyez 12. “Good Guy” featuring Jessie Reyez 13. “Venom” from the Motion Picture