Eminem doesn’t respect our scheduling. In return…

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[3.71]

Edward Okulicz: Em’s promo campaign is a nightmare to behold, a song, then a different song and a video, then another song and a video for the first song — anyone expecting a Bieber collab next Monday? The actual music isn’t working so well either; “Berzerk” is no more than a sore-throated attempt to evoke his glory days, with the same wit as the worst of his own failure responses in between, backed by somewhat choppy and slightly harsh guitars and beats that suggest a parade of trashcan percussionists were involved.
[3]

Crystal Leww: Does anyone remember when Jay Z did that collaboration with Linkin Park? This is like that except ten years later, with a “go berzerk” message that is basically just YOLO-ing, and much less interesting. Em raps about bringing it back to old school hip hop, but is this really “vintage Slim”? Vintage Slim had better punchlines and actually rapped instead of filling time with forgettable hooks and terrible scatting.
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Will Adams: With a heap of samples and Rick Rubin’s crunchy guitars, the stage is set for Marshall Mathers to storm back into our collective consciousness. Shame that he’s buried in the beat.
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Brad Shoup: This opinion comes with “Rap God” built in, but here’s what I got: Em is ancient in chart-performer terms, he came up during what’s considered a bleak period in hip-hop, and he’s worried that his what-doesn’t-kill-me phase won’t age well. Thus the explicit focus on his flow and his MC lineage. There’s the problem of those Ren & K-Fed references, but how often do people pull off not being old? It doesn’t help that Rick Rubin is more Mark Isham than Mark the 45 King now. If Marshall was looking for pure pleasure — not a good bet when you remember his track records — Rubin can’t provide it, settling for a gloss of someone else’s career.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: This is a great beat, Rick Rubin doing his thing where he turns electric guitars into a punishing rap backdrop. Eminem, meanwhile, is as divisive as ever. He is a very good rapper, one capable of jumping from voice to voice (that Kendrick Lamar shout-out is appropriate) with ease. But man, his words are so hit or miss. Part of it is how out of place some of these one liners are – a “Ren And Stimpy” joke? A “bow chicka bow wow” bit? Trying to start beef with Lamar Odom? Worse of all, the core of this song is conventional YOLO tripe, the sort of sentiment that was running on fumes last year and feels especially boring now. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: He’s old enough to succumb to lapidary nostalgia moves but as sentimental and pedantic as he’s often been since 2002 he created the impression that killing your idols, ex-wife, mom — hell, everyone except Haillie — was what God put him on earth for. When Rick Rubin records an American Master, he dips him (always a him) in sepia and forces him to strum guitar at gunpoint; when Eminem walks into his office he puts him in front of a decidedly un-berzerk “99 Problems” blitzkrieg, Billy Squier and the Beasties called into service again.
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Rebecca A. Gowns: He’s going back, all right! He’s regressing straight towards infancy! Just when you thought that Eminem’s rhymes were overrated; his sense of humor pedestrian; his constant reassertion of white masculinity pathetic; he’s come back and he’s more awful than ever! Instead of making a jab at Christina Aguilera in the year 2000, he’s making jokes about Kevin Federline in the year 2013! His backing tracks have gone from obnoxious earworms with hooks to messy soups made from scraps off the Beastie Boys’ floor! Lines like “my pen needs a pad cuz my rhyme’s on the rag” and “this is your jam, unless you got toe jam” pop out in a sad attempt at wordplay, channeling the spirit of Jean-Ralphio. Can we start removing him from all those “best rappers of all time” lists ex post facto?
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