Consumer Guide Album

Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) [Aftermath/Interscope, 2024]
Is some new crime against humanity that's failed to penetrate my politically oversaturated attention supposed to justify the absurd 46 the Metacritic solons granted this album, which doesn't expand the 52-year-old grandpa-to-be's skill set only because there are so few places left for his clarity and momentum and rhyming to go? True, he obsesses on while hopefully circumnavigating the trans perplex clumsily but not anything like cruelly, though that he should feel the need does make one wonder whether Mr. "I suck my dick better than you do" has ever gotten his sex life together. Also true, his clean-edged boyish-to-adolescent flow has roughened and deepened with age. But the musicality of his sprechgesang remains unduplicated and undiminished, so that by now it's safe to assume it's inimitable, and if you were offended before, how about a little "Fuck blind people and deaf people suck/So do cripples dumb quadriplegic fucks"? But on the other hand, he establishes himself here as the only rapper ever to brag about his daughter's GPA—a 3.9 at Michigan State. You go girl. A