Critics praise his “technical skills”, complain about his “infantile wordplay” – GoldDerby

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More than four years after his last album “Music to Be Murdered By” Eminem released a follow-up on July 12, 2024. “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)” is his 12th studio album overall, but has the now 51-year-old rapper gotten better with age? A number of critics have weighed in on his latest collection.

The verdict… isn’t great. At the time of this writing, the album has a MetaCritic score of 49, based on 13 reviews counted so far. Of those, only three are considered positive. Nine are more mixed. The last is negative. That’s a far cry from the 64 points that “Music to Be Murdered By” received, although that album also received mostly mixed reviews. Before that, 2018’s “Kamikaze” scored 62 points. If his score for “Death of Slim Shady” actually stays the way it is, that will be his lowest ever.

The positive thing is that Neil McCormick (Telegraph UK) praises the hip-hop veteran’s “amazing lyricism”. Simon K. (Sputnik Music) calls it “a great concept album” and “the best record Eminem has made since ‘The Marshall Mathers LP2’.” And Sy Shackleford (Rap Reviews) says: “It’s obvious that his writing style is still sharp, but the polarization mentioned above means that Eminem is still a matter of taste today: you either like him or you don’t.”

Among the more ambivalent reviewers are Alexis Petridis (The Guardian) claims the album “feels so desperate that it ultimately commits the cardinal sin of being boring and repetitive,” even if “Eminem’s technical skills are as impressive as ever.” Steven J. Horowitz (Variety) says it is “everything you would expect from Eminem, the eternal provocateur,” but this desire to shock the listener “makes the album exactly what it shouldn’t be at this point in such a glorious career: predictable.” And Robert Sheffield (Rolling Stone) argues, “He remembers how good he was at it when he was young, and he hopes to remind you of it by repeating old tricks that he’s not necessarily so good at in 2024.”

As for the negative review, it comes from Karan Singh (Hip Hop DX), who dismisses the work as “a disjointed and incoherent pile of non sequiturs, loosely held together by infantile wordplay, forced provocations, and desperate attempts to sing a last hurrah in celebration of a past that seems suspiciously indistinguishable from the present.” So while reviews run the gamut, the consensus seems to be that Eminem is a gifted artist in need of fresher material. Perhaps getting rid of his alter ego Slim Shady is the right move after all.

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