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 By
John Brodeur
Album sales have been flirting with record lows on a weekly
basis this year. Justin Bieber topped the Billboard
Top 200 on May 19 with just 60,000 sold, in the industry’s
worst week since 1991. For contrast: 10 years ago, ’N Sync
took that spot with sales of 2.4 million—more than five times
the total for the entire Top 10 on May 19. So, one can imagine,
the big labels must be straight-up wetting themselves over
a recent glut of monster albums. The massive success of recent
releases from Eminem and Drake won’t save the RIAA from damnation—good
luck getting that $1 billion from LimeWire—but to see a top
seller break a quarter-million is a rarity these days. Two
weeks in a row? That’s practically an X-File.
Recovery,
Marshall Mathers’ seventh album as Eminem, debuted
at the top of this week’s Billboard album chart with
sales near 750,000. With a healthy head start on whatever
competitors remain in 2010 (Kanye, Coldplay, possibly Radiohead),
Recovery probably will top the year-end chart, adding
another mark to the rapper’s mind-boggling chart history (two
of his titles among the five best- selling records of the
2000s). It’s an uptick in first-week sales from last May’s
Relapse, Eminem’s attempt at a return-to-form record
that suffered from the just-rehabbed superstar not knowing
which form he was trying to return to.
It’s pleasing to report that Recovery is definitely
not Relapse II, as was the originally announced plan.
Mathers ended up working with at least a half dozen producers
and, reportedly, selecting the album’s beats from a pool of
hundreds. This is a good thing: Recovery is easily
the freshest Eminem album, in terms of pending expiration
date, since The Marshall Mathers LP. Just Blaze, Dr.
Dre, and Alex da Kid are among the producers bringing the
freshness, and the 16 tracks (plus one unlisted) are sequenced
thoughtfully: DJ Khalil’s four tracks (some of the best) are
dropped in two near the front and two near the back; the two
Boi-1da productions are paired near the middle (a minor lull).
Bonus points for keeping it skit-free. The album has enough
sonic variety to keep it listenable well into its last quarter,
something that couldn’t be said for Encore.
The more things change, right? Sure: Eminem leads off the
album with an entire verse of “S my D” before calling himself
a “mean cocksucker” moments later. “The last thing you wanna
do/Is have me spit out a rhyme and say I was writing this
and I thought of you,” he raps on “Cold Winds Blow.” It sounds
like a late cut from Relapse, in that it’s a misleading
bit of extroversion for an album primarily about change. Worse,
though, is that it’s not all that funny—nobody does comical
aggression better than Eminem, but this just comes off as
boxing the air. Thankfully these lashings-out at seemingly
random targets—Mariah Carey and Austin Powers are among the
handful of awkwardly stale pop-culture references that dot
the lyrics—are fewer than usual, and merely a distraction.
(“W.T.P.”—or “White Trash Party” is another ho-hum attempt
at a comic piece.)
Thankfully, Eminem is just as interesting without the dick
jokes, and the parts of this album that stick to the game
plan are very good. Among the best bits: The DJ Khalil-produced,
Pink-assisted “Won’t Back Down” features one of the best verse
performances and some great production tricks; Khalil’s “25
to Life” closes with a bold challenge (“Fuck you hip-hop,
I’m leaving/My life sentence is served”); “No Love” (whose
Just Blaze beat samples that Haddaway song, of all things)
sports a primo first-verse spot from Lil Wayne, one of record’s
very few guest appearances—another bonus point. On that last
point, the guest appearances, all four of them, actually benefit
the tracks. (Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” hook should
be cash money by the end of summer.) This almost makes up
for that first verse.
Mathers manages to string a loose, recovery-themed narrative
across the record’s 77 minutes, most directly via spoken intros
on several songs. “Thank everybody for being so patient .
. . while I figure this shit out,” he says on “Talkin’ 2 Myself”;
on “Cinderella Man” he says he’s “not even supposed to be
here right now,” making one of the few explicit references
to the severity of his addiction. As to the personal stuff,
the Emile- produced “Going Through Changes” (with a vintage
Sabbath sample!) could be this album’s “Toy Soldiers,” while
lead single “Not Afraid” echoes “Lose Yourself” in its inspirational
theme (“some of you might still be in that place . . . follow
me”) and its huge chart success (a No. 1 debut, adding another
note to his Wikipedia entry). Confessionals like these have
proved to be the real through-line for Eminem’s recording
career: serious subjects tackled with a wicked sense of irony,
from one of the best wordsmiths in rap history. His flow is
still there, but the message tends to drift. Mathers engaging
in a not-really-kinder, not-quite-gentler way. It will be
interesting to hear what kind of records he makes in his 40s,
something that couldn’t be said for almost any other rapper.
 The
third-biggest debut of 2010—now 4th, thanks to the record
just discussed—came from overnight sensation Drake,
whose Thank Me Later has rung up more than half a million
copies since dropping a few weeks ago. The anticipation for
the album seemed to build at a fever pitch, with the Canadian
rapper hitting the apex of his stardom (thus far) the week
of the release. (A free Drake performance in downtown New
York City the day of the release was canceled due to unmanageably
high turnout.) According to an e-mail posted on the widely-read
Lefsetz Letter blog, producer Bob Ezrin—of Pink Floyd fame,
a natural authority on hip-hop—called Drake “hip-hop’s Barack
Obama.” (Which, I guess, makes Eminem hip-hop’s Glenn Beck.
Or something.)
Ezrin goes on: He complements Drake’s “compelling voice, articulate
and inventive, a product of two worlds with a uniquely broad
worldview, honest to a fault, self-critical but egotistical,
overthinking everything, seeing all the sides all at the same
time.” The lunatic is on the grass, dude. The modern-pop-art-style
cover art does little to dissuade the Obama comparison, while
Prefixmag.com noted similarities between it and the cover
of Sonic Youth’s NYC Ghosts and Flowers. But while
he does seem to be promoting a something-for-everyone platform—guests
include Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne, so we know Drake’s
a populist; “The Resistance” makes him the first major artist
to directly scarf a beat from 808s and Heartbreak—his
own personality is lost in the sea of generic party tracks,
guest spots and star producers that crowd the middle of the
disc. It doesn’t help his case that he’s trying to be both
a rapper and a crooner—he’s very good at both (the first five
or six tunes are outstanding), but needs more of a unified
direction to make that personality come through for a full
60 minutes.
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