So, it starts out like this:
Dr. West: Good morning Marshall
Marshall: Good morning Doc
Dr. West: So we are discharging you today. How are you feeling?
Marshall: Anxious, Anxiety. Well, anxious to get home. Anxious to gt back into the world. Nervous
Dr. West: Nervous? Come on Marshall, you are a big boy now. You are sounding like a bit of a baby. You can do this. Have you found a sponsor yet?
Marshall:: Not yet but I mean ....
Dr. West: Well you find one, you find one. If you don’t, you don’t.
Marshall: Yeah, well I’ve got to start going to meetings first ...
Dr. West: Well you don’t absolutely have to go to meetings. It is not like a requirement. It’s got to fit into your schedule, I know you are a busy person.
Marshall: But I thought sobriety was ...
Dr. West: What else are you thinking?
Marshall: Well I know I’ve got to start practicing the steps, I mean learning and apply them...
Dr. West: The Steps? There are a lot of them, aren’t there!
Marshall: Yeah 12
Dr. West: Christ, I don’t even know them all.
Marshall: Really
Dr. West: Anything else?
Marshall: Um, Well, the only other question I have is what do I do if I find myself in a situation where somebody is drinking around me or something like that and I’m tempted to ...
Dr. West: Take a drink
Marshall: What?
Dr. West: Take a drink and take the edge off.
Marshall: Take the edge off? If I have a drink I don’t know where that is going to led me too
Dr. West: What the fuck.
Marshall’s Sub Conscious: Marshall, what’s the matter darling? Having some doubts, are we. Marshall you can’t leave me, you’ll never leave me, Marshall. We’ll always be together Marshall. Marshall?
Marshall: Fuck
Eminem is back folks, and I will go as far as saying with his best album ever.
There is a recurring theme here. Eminem spent a lot of the last 5 years in rehab fighting pill and alcohol addiction. He faces his demons on many of the songs from ‘Relapse’ starting with ‘3am’. “There is no escaping, there is no place to hide” he sings at the start of the album. If ‘Mr Mathers’ and ‘Deja Vu’ is in anyway accurate, then Eminem is lucky to be alive today. In the latter, he talks about his development from the bottle to the drugs.
Sourcing his subjects from his darkest moments has given him the creativity that drives most of the album. But while Eminem can expose his dark side and turn it into a revenue model, he is also capable of laughing at himself as well.
In the Steve Berman skit, he addresses the demise of the music industry in his absence.
It goes like this:
Eminem: Steve, good to see you man.
Steve: Well look who has decided to show his face. I hope you had fun in the last 4 years.
Eminem: Look man, I apologize again for ...
Steve: ... for shooting me? Do you know I lost the use of my right arm?
Eminem: Again, it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. Are you wearing a bullet proof vest?
Steve: And then you go and do what? Hide-out? Stay in Detroit for almost 5 years while the music industry melts the fuck down? Do you know how many people lost their jobs because of your fucking vacation?
Eminem: Well, thats actually why I am here. I was going to put out some new music and I wanted to play it for you and get your opinion.
Steve: Do I really need to hear it? Let me guess ... another album about “poor me, I’m so famous it has ruined my rich, little life. I’m such a tortured artist. Let me make music about it and my tragic love life”. Am I onto something here?
Eminem: C’mon man, its not like that.
Steve: You know what? Just hand the fucking thing over. I’m done talking to you. Do you think you can just come and go as you please? Big selfish superstar.
Eminem: Steve, I had a drug problem.
Steve: Oh poor me. I had a drug problem. Who hasn’t had a drug problem in this town? Do you know what, just lay this shit down on my desk and get the fuck out.
Eminem: Woo, woo, Jesus Christ man, fine.
Steve: What’s this shit? Two CDs?
Eminem: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you man, it is two albums.
Steve: Just get out. Get the fuck out.
Eminem: Alright man, see you later.
Well, that also answers the rumours of a second album later in the year. Its a definite. That in itself will be interested considering how strong ‘Relapse’ is. I hope he hasn’t shot his load of this record.
No-one is scared. Mariah Carey cops it in ‘Bagpipes of Baghdad’. Everyone else copped it in the earlier released single ‘We Made You’. Heath Ledger gets name-checked in ‘My Mom’. "All right, Ma, you win / I don't feel like arguin' / I'll do it, pop it, gobble it, and start bobblin' / Stumble, hobble, tumble, slipped, fell in bed / with a bottle of meds / and a Heath Ledger bobblehead."
So, finally, this weekend you can own it. Eminem ‘Relapse’ will be released on Friday May 15.
