“Bitch, I wrote ‘Stan’.” By the second track of Eminem’s ninth LP, released just before Christmas 2017, he’s already invoking what many consider his crowning achievement: the 2000 Dido-sampling single that spun a harrowing yet strangely moving tale of obsession and a young man’s spiral into ruin.
Does this mean Revival will be a feeble trot through former glories from an artist well past his prime? Not exactly—in Eminem’s universe, things are rarely so simple.
The album could clearly benefit from trimming; at 19 tracks, it feels four or five songs too long. Yet its peaks more than earn their place. From the start, female guest vocalists bring remarkable melodic and vocal quality. Beyoncé’s standout turn on the striking opener ‘Walk on Water’ pairs elegiac piano with gospel vocals, a raw confession of vulnerability (“If I walked on water, I would drown”) as our hero audibly struggles for inspiration, cursing and sweating over his lines while her voice soars. The pattern continues with an uncredited vocalist on ‘Revival (Interlude)’, Skylar Grey’s contribution to ‘Tragic Endings’—regret wrapped in country rock—Kehlani’s gentle sorrow on ‘Nowhere Fast’, and Pink (an excellent match for Eminem) delivering power-ballad grandeur on ‘Need Me’.
But no artist can rely solely on collaborations. Smart as Eminem has been to surround himself with such talents (and, ahem, Ed Sheeran on ‘River’), how does the former ‘Stan’ maestro’s own performance hold up?
Surprisingly well, actually. Look past the tired rehashes of his well-documented relationship with Kim (‘Bad Husband’) and the cartoonish misogyny of tracks like ‘Remind Me’ (leering over “big old tits” and “an ass that won’t quit”—yawn), and you’ll find golden moments. The Alicia Keys collaboration ‘Like Home’ alone justifies the album’s price: a surprisingly emotional, passionate, and proud defense of America against Trump’s presidency, rightly praised elsewhere for its elegiac, heartfelt, angry, and lucid tone.
A rock vein runs through the album—most notably on ‘Remind Me’, which uses Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock and Roll’ as its foundation—from the heavy sampling of The Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ on ‘In Your Head’ (making it one of the more grating moments) to the riffing guitars on ‘Untouchable’ and the rather dull ‘Heat’. Despite the childish petulance of a track like ‘Offended’, the whiny poor-misunderstood-me complaints (“I feel like I’m a piece of shit”), and the slightly clumsy racial politics of ‘Untouchable’, Eminem still—somehow—retains a certain charm.
He’s clearly having a blast on ‘Remind Me’, the outrageous ‘Framed’ (our hero gets framed—or does he?—for a series of gruesome murders), and the series of letters to daughter Hayley at various points in his and her life on ‘Castle’—endearing, even cute. The closing track ‘Arose’ is a Sliding Doors-style scenario where we see his life either ending by overdose or him choosing to flush the pills and start over. Like much of this album, it’s surprisingly effective; his apologies to his children and deathbed reflections are gripping rather than self-pitying. It seems that after decades of oversharing, self-analysis, bombast, outrage, and drama, Eminem still has something to say—and the means to say it.
