Music To Be Murdered By - Side B: Review

We gather here today, to celebrate the release of a new Eminem album. Eminem is my favorite hip-hop artist of all time. You may judge me for that if you must but someday I will list out all the reasons for it on this very website and you will all understand why I believe this. For now, just understand that while this album release made me very happy, I am doing my best to remain unbiased about how good or bad this album is. Spoiler alert: the album is quite good. 

It has been a very satisfying two weeks in hip-hop. First we got Kid Cudi and Man on the Moon III: The Chosen, and now we get Eminem releasing Music To Be Murdered By - Side B. What this album does is take the original album, and make it a double album. This version also has all sixteen new tracks listed as the first album. The new B-side album is technically the A-side since it’s the first set of tracks you listen to when you listen to the new album, which is weird. This new album is sixteen tracks and roughly fifty-four minutes. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, although both albums combined are now thirty-six tracks and just under two hours which is longer than Relapse: Refill and even as fun as that album is, can be a tiny bit of a slog to get through towards the end. Luckily these are two neatly divided albums and it is not hard to listen to just one side or the other. 

This album kicks off with “Alfred - Intro.” It's an intro to the album with Alfred Hitchcock talking. Cool. Then we get “Black Magic” featuring Skylar Grey. If you haven’t heard the album yet, the idea you have in your head of this song is exactly what the song is. It is a violently worded, pop-hop song about a relationship. Skylar Grey’s hook will get stuck in your head a little and be satisfying to those of us hip-hop fans that enjoy pop music as well. Eminem keeps his voice a little more calm than expected but can sometimes raise his voice a tad, almost as though he is competing with the excessive use of sound effects throughout the track. The track is fine but not an ideal way to start the album off. 

Holy tone shift Bat-man! “Alfred’s Theme” doesn’t sound like what I was expecting after “Black Magic.” Everything you thought you were going to get after that first song, put it out of your mind because that was a one song thing. We get this wacky sounding, old school Eminem track with this cut. Actually, “Tone Deaf” kind of fits the same mold. The production on the latter track is little faster then most of his older stuff but is very much in the same vein. They are both extremely irreverent songs that focus solely on being as precise with his rhymes as possible and making as many silly one-liner jokes as possible. You could in theory categorize “Alfred’s Theme” as brag rap but that feels weird to type, let alone try to actually argue for. ”Tone Deaf” is a wild track to try and review because he is being purposefully offensive for the sake of explaining why he is tone deaf and how he is not going to change. The hook on this track is pretty awful and I am someone that doesn’t mind most of Eminem’s hooks. At the same time, “Tone Deaf provides one of the most genuinely funny moments on the album during the intro of the track. He is talking about how he can’t hear anything in a very Eminem way, and towards the end in the background you hear Eminem howl “I need autotune!” It’s extremely stupid and I love it. Then the song plays and I still don’t know how I feel about it. I think it’s bad. It just misses the mark. 

Then Eminem provides us with an incredible three track stretch that probably trumps any three track run on the original album. We start off with “Book of Rhymes” featuring DJ Premier. Unfortunately Premier is not the producer, that honor goes to IllaDaProducer, but the beat has these fantastic Premier record scratches laced throughout and an incredible record scratch based outro that perfectly ends the track. The track is a classic “Eminem is angry at his critics” track and it feels like it would have fit perfectly on Kamikaze. It works a treat though as there is a bit of a beat switch on the latter half of the track accompanied by a drastic flow switch that keeps the track from getting old. 

Ty Dolla $ign pops up on the next track and it is quite a lovely appearance from an artist with a wonderful voice. The track has a bass heavy beat with a bit of a trap influence. The track is just a really good song where Em addresses everything from the reactions to his more out there lyrics, the not so hot rap game, and a baby bit of past relationships but these are mostly used for metaphors. This track leads directly into “Guns Blazing” featuring Dr. Dre and Sly Pyper. The transition between the tracks is handled with various gun shots and is so smooth I didn’t notice we were on a new track the first time I listened. Dr. Dre comes through and sounds practically perfect. Eminem pens a slower, very Dre sounding verse. It’s almost as if Em has been writing for Dre for over twenty years now and knows what makes him sound the best. This is another bad relationship track but this one feels different. There is a line in Eminem’s verse that he drops about how he could have said the woman’s name but didn’t to protect the woman’s daughter and the whole track feels vastly more real on the rest of the listen and subsequent re-listens. As for the hook, Sly Pyper handles this track as he will later on in the album as well. Pyper is really only known by me for doing the hook on “Fast Lane” but this hook is sublime. It’s short, to the point and has zero issues getting lodged in your brain almost immediately. 

Then comes the hardest part of the album for me. Gnat is a song that a lot of people really love, and I have no idea how I feel. It's Eminem dropping some pretty damn good bars over a supremely smooth trap beat. Ems voice is even pretty calm and the flow matches perfectly. Something about it doesn’t quite click with me though. That is until the beat switch at the two minute mark. The beat becomes the heavy, bombastic beat with this aggressive distorted bass and multiple lead changes throughout. The best part is when the horns come in. Ems flow gets much faster and it's almost a completely different song. 

The next track slides in with a similar tone to the beat as the last third of “Gnat.” The beat is good but nothing special, it’s reminiscent of the types of beats we had on Recovery. Its lyrical content is about Eminem being in a place where he shouldn’t have anything left to prove but he continues to reach new heights. It’s a fine track but nothing too special. Luckily this is followed up by a highlight on the album. We get another trap inspired beat with a crazy bass. The track “These Demons” features the Dallas hip-hop artist MAJ and he absolutely kills his feature. The song mostly questions the critiques of Eminem and his career. The track has a lot to it though, he is not just going at critics blindly. He also laces in plenty of references to celebrities, and egging on the critics he is calling out. 

If you like silly Eminem skits from The Marshall Mathers LP era you will like “Key (skit).” If you don’t like his random silly skits then you will not like it. I enjoyed the moment of levity and the goofy voice he uses in the skit. 

We get another relationship cut but these songs just don’t get old, particularly when they have new twists and fantastic hooks. The chorus on “She Loves Me” has been stuck in my head for more than twenty-four hours now. It’s simple and has a good bit of wordplay in it. The beat is very pop-rappy with a routine drum pattern and a lovely horn riff throughout. The bass is hard hitting but not overwhelming or even a focal point. This track quickly goes into the next track that is another highlight on the album for reasons I don’t understand. This is a brag rap track over a club-hop sounding beat. The beat consists of a very bouncy drum kit, a couple vocal samples, and a near melodic sounding bass that’s not at all overwhelming. “Killer” brings back memories and feelings of Eminem’s verse on “Smack That” which is absolutely wild and kind of a delight. The hook is as simple as it gets and that works to the benefit of this cut as it is absolutely nothing special and relies too heavily on Em singing its couple of lines. 

Now we come to the song everyone will be talking about. First let's quickly go over the beat and my overall impressions of “Zeus” because there’s a lot to talk about here. The beat is this slightly more traditional hip-hop sounding beat with a simple, strong base and this combination of strings and synth leads that switch off between the verses and chorus respectively. The vibe I get from this song is that it is a much more calm and well thought out version of “Fall” from Kamikaze. That being said, the lyrical content on this song is thick! Less than two bars in and he has dropped a Tekashi 6ix9ine diss. I enjoyed this. Shortly thereafter Em kind of does some abstract stuff about his mentality and being controversial before apologizing to Rhianna for the track that leaked where he mentions and makes light of the Chris Brown scenario. I assume they talked about that privately but it was good to hear on record.

White Gold handles the hook on the song and he kills it like he does with everything. The second verse is a relatively nothing verse. Just some bars about where Em is at and how you can’t tear him down because he’s above it all. It feels like a transitional verse, and that’s because it is. Then we get the third verse. Early on in the verse he starts handing out advice to some of today’s biggest artists. He talks directly to Drake, saying that no matter what he does people will turn on him the bigger and more successful he gets and those people won’t ever come back. He calls out and says that people will do the same to Future or Migos. My one issue is that he says people already did it to Chance the Rapper. I covered it in my article about the Chance lawsuit but Chance may have very well brought that on himself if his managers claims about the album making process are to be believed. Chance made it worse by attacking and making fun of fans that were trying to either be constructive or just express opinions about the album in a fair way. I understand the point Em is trying to make with Chance but I tend to think Chance brought his misfortune upon himself. Luckily, we weren’t finished with this monumental verse. 

Eminem throws some bars out about how he never gives up and his sobriety. He gives a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement and some of the tragic deaths we have seen by specifically mentioning names. Then, when you think it’s all over,  Em drops the bars that will be aggregated to death. Eminem disses Snoop Dogg. I’m not going to type out the words line for line because I sometimes think that can come off as a bit clunky during a review, but my god it is not just a love tap that's for sure. Eminem drops these couple of bars at Snoop in a reference to Snoop Dogg saying during an interview that when it came to the history of hip-hop he didn't personally need or listen to Eminem. I remember seeing the headlines for the interview at the time it happened and thinking it was off because Snoop has always given Em the highest of praise, I mean they are the two most successful disciples of Dr. Dre. I doubt this goes anywhere. Snoop said a pretty harsh thing about Eminem’s discography and Em replied to it in a song. Unless Em keeps poking at him in the way he does, I doubt this goes anywhere further then this song. 

We get a little Alfred Hitchcock vocal interlude and then it's on to the final track “Discombobulated.” This is one of my three favorite tracks. It is just an absolute blast from the 2009 past. Eminem brings back his Relapse accent over top of an acoustic piano led beat with some heavy drums and thumpy bass. The beat is produced by Dr. Dre and it feels like home. The whole song talks about a bender he goes on that’s fueled by various drugs. The song would fit perfectly onto the Relapse CD. As a big fan of that tape I just adored hearing this track. The hook is right out of the Relapse mentality as well, as it feels very sing-songy and almost like a limerick with dark as hell undertones. Then, if that wasn’t enough, the beat switch two thirds of the way through opens up the song to a whole new style. The beat drops out and is replaced with a beat that reminds me of a lot of what was on Compton. The whimsical nature is gone and now we have this beat that feels straight out of a drug trip it just got off of with these distorted synths pulsing in and out of life throughout the entire track. It is a perfect ending to this album. 

So now I have to try and pinpoint a grade for this album. The album does nothing truly unique or daring with its sound or with its message or themes. The album is just an album of songs that Eminem made that didn’t quite fit onto the previous iteration of the album, or that he made after release of the first album but would have fit nicely. The biggest thing with this album is that Eminem had fun with it. Eminem clearly enjoyed the hell out of making these fourteen songs (two of the tracks are just Alfred Hitchcock recordings). The album has a wide variety of sounds that should appeal to almost every era and genre of Eminem fan. 

We reach an impasse. What matters more, the fact that Eminem had fun making an album of songs that is genuinely enjoyable to listen to, or the lack of an overall theme or daring attempt to reinvent himself in his mid forties? For me, the former is far more important. I doubt either of these albums will be on many people’s year end list, but the B-side version is so much fun and so easy to just put on repeat. The album has a ceiling and won’t ever be considered a classic, nor does it really elevate the status of the album it is attached to, but I am still so happy we got this album when we did, because frankly it might be the most purely fun hip-hop album of 2020. 

The Grade: B+