The album is the work of a rapper content with keeping his head firmly lodged up his own ass.
Since the start of the 2010s, each of Eminem’s albums has served as an extended feedback loop. Defined by their near total refusal to engage with contemporary musical trends, they’re bloated, insular, and largely meta in nature, focusing on how hard it is for Em, now well over two decades into his career, to come up with new things to say. And how, when he tries something new, everyone hates it. And how, when he doesn’t try something new, people still hate it. And, of course, how he’s the greatest to ever do it and the haters need to shut it.
Eminem’s 12th studio album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), offers an ostensible twist: Its first half is performed by Slim Shady, an alter ego that’s been killed off several times already, while the second half features Eminem just being himself. The only major distinction between the two is a slightly toned-down level of empty provocation. This allows the rapper to deflect any criticisms of edge-baiting under the guise of artistic expression and gleefully targeting a predictable slew of subjects before metaphorically slapping himself on the wrist.
There’s some air-quotes “fun” to be had, specifically in the run of songs from “Habits” to “Fuel,” most of which sound like pop-rap throwbacks to 2004’s daffy Encore. A leftover from that album, “Brand New Dance” mocks Christopher Reeve’s paralysis after the actor was thrown off a horse, complete with copious neighing sound effects and hoof-clopping—and just in case you missed the joke, there’s a homophone about giving Chris “his chrysanthemums.” It amounts to the basic components of a Family Guy cutaway gag—and yet, it’s catchy, kooky, and hooky, proving that Eminem can still craft a sticky chorus out of the most twisted of nursery rhymes.
But even with nonstop reminders that all of this is meant in jest, that The Death of Slim Shady’s fixation with cancel culture and being “Gen-Z’d” is all part of an elaborate eye-winking charade, it’s often difficult to tell where the act begins and where it ends. This ambiguity is supposed to be the point of Slim Shady, a byproduct of real-world injustices Eminem has suffered, but too frequently the distinction between the two here is ambiguous at best. On “Road Rage,” he fat-shames others to such a ridiculous degree that the intentionality is crystal clear, but when talking about transgender people, his Dave Chappelle-esque logic doesn’t suggest a cartoonish villain so much as Marshall Mathers’s own poorly thought-out views on the topic.

For as much as Eminem is still a technical master at the art of spitting non-stop stream-of-conscious tongue twisters, his purported profundity as a social critic is often wielded axiomatically rather than actually interrogated. The actual content of his lyrics remains as incoherent as ever. Instead of painting middle-class parents as charlatans who are the real cause of America’s cultural woes—as he once did on hits like “The Way I Am”—he now treats his detractors in a similarly straw-man fashion, characterizing them as nebbish nitpickers who can’t appreciate true art. “You nerdy pricks would find somethin’ wrong with 36 Chambers,” he sneers on “Renaissance,” implying an objective standard for greatness that shouldn’t be questioned.
Eminem’s shortcomings as a “serious” thinker are most evident on “Guilty Conscience 2,” the album’s overly theatrical centerpiece in which he verbally confronts Slim Shady and addresses the blatant hypocrisy of portraying himself as the ultimate underdog rapper while simultaneously “punching down on little people,” a behavior he deems as “not cool.” But this moment seems to signal growth on an album that includes lines like “They want me to bounce like a fabric softener.” No real reckoning occurs beyond stating the obvious about Eminem’s alternate persona: “Just immature and literally/You’re still mentally/Thirteen and still thirsty for some controversy.”
Once Slim Shady is finally out of the picture, The Death of Slim Shady, like most of Eminem’s recent work, struggles to figure out where to go next. Its remaining five songs (and one skit) are split between nondescript stunt anthems with a lot of intricate lyrical acrobatics (“Head Honcho” and “Bad One”) or overblown ballads dedicated to his family (“Temporary” and “Somebody Save Me”). Only “Tobey,” with its Danny Elfman-style piano and a particularly goofy contribution from MC BabyTron, effectively stands out from the pack.
In some ways, Eminem’s grievances are understandable. Many a prolific artist, from Bach to Bob Dylan, has at one point or another felt a disconnect between the work they’ve put out and its reception. But the extent to which Em is convinced that his triple entendres are too complex for a younger generation, that his disinterest in being trendy has stopped him from receiving the proper accolades he rightfully deserves, has, over the course of several albums, only narrowed his vision to the point that he can’t see, much less engage with, the world around him.