Uh oh. Look what you made Eminem do. The guy is pissed—PISSED—about all the mean things you said about his very bad album Revival. He's fuming. It's been eight months since Revival was mostly blasted by fans and critics, and he hasn't stopped thinking about it. In fact, all that criticism has literally consumed him in the new video for "Fall," off his new revenge album Kamikaze.
The video begins with Eminem sitting in a car looking at all the negative reviews of his last album. After throwing a tantrum, he tosses his phone and the criticism becomes a smoke monster thing that starts chasing him through an office building for some reason. Eventually he's caught by the smoke monster and consumed by the negative press, which—I guess we can assume because he jumps out a window and lands unharmed—only makes him stronger.
So, there you have it. Those reviews, which Eminem has spent nine months thinking about, writing about, and making a video and album about, didn't hurt Eminem at all.
It's like a very sad Eminem version of "I'm Rubber and You're Glue."
Unfortunately, instead of coming back with fire, Eminem came back with Kamikaze, which consists of the tired garbage he's regurgitated for most of his later career (the homophobia included).
It's a song, video, and album that illustrate a middle-aged dad lost in the modern world of hip-hop. It's like the music equivalent of arguing with a parent at Thanksgiving about why we don't use those phrases that might have been common back in their day.
Coincidentally, maybe if Eminem actually listened to these critics he's mad at, he'd learn something. Maybe if he'd actually paid attention to the world around him, he'd know this revenge narrative had already been done by Taylor Swift and Donald Trump—and both of them were better at it.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
