Hey young world, let’s talk about some of that new-fangled rapping music. More specifically, Eminem’s new album Relapse and how the mainstream music reviewed it in a way that shows their own biases and aesthetic preferences, and not in a way that actually reflects the quality of the music.
The basic consensus on Relapse is that it’s mediocre at best and Eminem seems to have regressed back to a middle-school level of sophistication. Regardless of the reviews, the album is outstanding. The beats were provided almost exclusively by the good Doctor himself, Dr. Dre, which means sonically the album is flames. And oh, the rapping! Eminem weaves verbal tapestries with rhyme schemes and flows so incomprehensibly dense that his subject matter is really inconsequential – the point isn’t what he’s saying, it’s how he’s saying it. And for the record, he’s saying it with more intensity, clarity, and technical virtuosity than he’s had since his days as a subterranean rhyme slinger.
Anyway, let’s look at Relapse through the prism of two seemingly antithetical publications – mainstream paragon Rolling Stone and those plucky indie tastemakers at Pitchfork Media. RS gave Relapse a stellar four stars out of five (read the review here), and Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen awarded it a tepid 4.8 out of 10.0 (which you can peruse by clicking this lovely little hyperlink). Neither review does much to enlighten its readers as to the actual quality of Relapse – instead, it’s much more enlightening to look at what each review says about its respective publication.
Rolling Stone’s take on Relapse reflects the mag’s tendency to reinforce the musical status quo via their lead reviews. The first review listed in every issue of Rolling Stone is generally that which is considered the most notable release of the week, and is routinely given an overly generous review. Examples of this phenomenon include the last two Bruce Springsteen albums as well as the most recent U2 album, all of which received a perfect five stars. And while I understand that both The Boss and U2 get a lifetime pass as far as reviews go, let’s be real – those three discs only had like six good songs between them. Ideally, the critical pass should exist so that canonical artists never face the shame of a critical flogging; however, RS takes the principle to the extreme, anointing thoroughly mediocre albums as false classics. Relapse is given a similar treatment with the RS four-star review, which it probably would have gotten even if the album was terrible.
Pitchfork, on the other hand, steamrolled Relapse, slapping it with a dismissive 4.8 out of 10.0*. Regardless of the rating, Cohen had some nice things to say – he claimed that Em was “more (‘on’) than he’s been since 2002,” and admitted that the fact that Dr. Dre had provided wall-to-wall production on the disc was “cause for celebration.” Yet Cohen claimed to pretty much hate the thing. I posit that this has nothing to do with the actual quality of the record and everything to do with the “Pitchfork Aesthetic,” Pitchfork’s general preference for lo-fi recordings**. In the rap arena this means the site loves stuff with beats that sound like they were recording on a child’s Casio keyboard. Seeing as the beats on Relapse are so expensive-sounding they come off as the sonic equivalent of an eighty foot yacht, it was almost inevitable that the album would be poorly reviewed, not because of how it was, but because of what it wasn’t.
* It should be noted that so far for the month of September, Pitchfork has given out an average review of 7.0/10.0. If its review system were refinagled so that a 7.0 were equitable to an average (C) grade, that means Relapse got an F. Interestingly, Relapse scored better than only one album this month, The Entrance Band’s self-titled release, which was lambasted by Ian Cohen (the same guy who reviewed the Em disc) because the band’s guitarist had the sheer audacity to have been influenced by Jimi Hendrix. It should be noted that I listened to some of T.E.B.’s cd, and it wasn’t half bad. 7.6 territory at worst, but then again I like the Grateful Dead so I’m pretty okay with guitar noodling.
** Well, as of late. Pitchfork tends to switch it up every once and a while. It really liked anything that sounded remotely like The Arcade Fire for a while, too.
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