everybody.” It turned out to be a lucrative showdown. With Kamikaze, the narrative suddenly became “Eminem and his fans vs. He found a new set of enemies to eviscerate on record, which in turn gave his fans another reason to rally behind him. Kamikaze moved a stellar 434,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, granting Eminem his largest streaming week to date and scoring a Top 10 hit in “Lucky You.” Kamikaze’s frequent, glaring blind spots were irrelevant, because the album reignited Eminem’s fury. Revival was the sound of a once-great artist running on empty, and based on its critical and commercial reception, one would be forgiven for pronouncing Eminem’s career dead in the water after its release. Evidently, fans didn’t care for this newly vulnerable, self-doubting Eminem: Revival sold 267,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, roughly one-third of MMLP2’s debut, and it remains his only major-label album to not go platinum in the United States. The closest thing to a commercial misfire Eminem has experienced over the past 11 years came with Revival, which I formerly (and accurately) described as “a 77-minute cringe compilation of lousy punchlines, antiquated beats and bloated pop-rap crossover bids.” Revival found Eminem questioning his own place in a music industry he had once detonated and rebuilt at his whim, while also lambasting President Donald Trump and the state of America in 2017.
They got a reprieve with 2013’s The Marshall Mathers LP2, a fairly consistent showcase of lyrical acrobatics and Rick Rubin’s classic rock-sampling production. They lapped up the gratuitous, accent-riddled horrorcore of 2009’s Relapse and the ham-fisted, aspirational power ballads of 2010’s Recovery. If Eminem’s post-hiatus output has proven anything, it’s that he can commit no musical sin too grievous for his fans to forgive. Lucky for Eminem (and much to the chagrin of his critics), he can rehash these tirades ad infinitum as long as he maintains a palpable level of vitriol, because his fans crave them, and they will ensure he remains a chart-topping phenomenon without ever having to release another good album.
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