Careers are passing like a solar eclipse…

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Jonathan Bradley: Marshall Mathers came up with his Slim Shady persona while taking a crap, dude, and he’s been trudging through shit —  and other bodily expulsions — his whole career. He surfs on shit in the “Without Me” video; he augments his singles with fart noises; one of his most famous lines is about vomited spaghetti. The obsession extends beyond the scatological and deep into the self. Eminem — Detroit trailer trash, high school dropout, failed Nas imitator — is shit, he knows he’s shit, and while he has the talent and the demonstrated ability to transcend his fecal origins, he has again and again thrown himself into the sewer. It is the place he feels he belongs, perhaps, a domain of self-loathing ruled by ressentiment, a fetid funfair of novelty and corny jokes and low culture and — of course! — “offensive” lines, the kind that each year become more obligatory and delivered more mechanically. You could blame “Fack” or “Just Lose It” or “We Made You” on the drugs, but you could blame them even more expertly on Eminem’s self-loathing, the way he knows that someone like him doesn’t deserve to be celebrated. “Houdini” is terribly unpleasant, and perhaps more so because it’s the sunset of rappity-rap “awfully hot coffee pot” Eminem and the carnivalesque return of Pop Eminem, of Trickster Eminem, of Edgelord Eminem (who was an edgelord long before the term was invented). He flips a sample of the Steve Miller Band’s cocaine clammy “Abracadabra,” and one could fault him for rhyming that title with “I’m back, bruh,” except that it’s no worse than the original “reach out and grab ya”: each is the kind of line that you’re trying to forget you just snorted off the back of the seat of a john. I don’t think Eminem takes shots at Megan Thee Stallion or trans people in this song because he bears them any antipathy; he can’t even bring himself to actually form a coherent thought on these subjects. (You can hear YouTube personalities cueing up their “Eminem REACTS to the TRANS issue” overlays, because they, like he, know that he doesn’t have to REACT in any specific way for it to matter.) If ever this worked, it’s because Eminem could once claim his ablutions channeled the dark awfulness of America, but his country’s most reprehensible impulses have changed since 1999, and he’s now unwilling or unable to commit entirely to being an avatar for them, nor to repudiate them. I despise him for his ambivalences: he’s 50 years old and still wanting to mine transphobia and homophobia and misogyny for effect, but unlike in his younger days, when he would dare to say he wanted to hate-crime me, he today hides in feet puns and word games about Siamese cats. I might imagine it’s deliberate. He’s not an asshole; shit comes out of assholes. He’s a turd — and one who knows he’s a turd, who wants to prove again and again that he’s a turd in case anyone might dare to imagine otherwise. 
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Not worth the line-by-line thinkpiece. If we collectively ignore it, maybe it’ll follow its central conceit and disappear. 
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Hannah Jocelyn: I’ve always been fascinated by Eminem, especially as someone who went to summer camp in 2010, and I’ve recently been messaging with the writer Holly Boson about her in-progress book on all matters concerning Marshall. Her writing on that is phenomenal and meticulous, and it helps me understand why he’s Like That, for better or worse. Unfortunately, even with her context, the deliberate self-parody and self-referencing on “Houdini” are grating; there’s nothing subversive anymore. The Megan Thee Stallion joke doesn’t work as shock value or as self-deprecation, and I feel the same way about the faux-transphobic lines: I’m not offended by their presence, I’m offended that they’re lazy retreads of The One Joke. We know you have a non-binary kid! Similarly, the “Girl Scouts” and “participation trophies” lines ironically repeat buzzwords that aren’t even used ironically anymore; the culture has shifted past passive-aggression and toward outright hostility. Isn’t he supposed to be pushing boundaries or something? That all extends to the production — thankfully it’s better than the blown-out abrasiveness of Revival, but it’s basically slapping the percussion track from any older song of his over an uninspired flip of a mostly forgotten early-’80s AOR song. We’re left with Em, his stilted delivery, and his trademark off-key singing, given nowhere to hide. He’s done worse, but that had its own shock value; the “abracadabra” and “bag-bruh” rhyme makes me long for even 2018, when we had “vnmmmmmadrenalinemomentmmmmmm.”
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Dave Moore: I gave up being a card-carrying Eminemologist 20 years ago, so my sense that this is a somewhat limp but lightly amusing rehash of previous styles is a weak (and therefore malleable) take — one that probably can’t, for instance, withstand the torrent of context, analysis, and provocative tangents that Holly Boson, the only critic I really trust on modern Eminem, can bring to the picture. So: provisionally mediocre. 
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I genuinely appreciate how high concept this is — the length of history weighs upon Eminem, a quarter century of stardom encircling him and dragging him back through his own excesses. But god, what an unpleasant piece of music. “Without Me,” this track’s precursor, made the case that this guy truly was one-of-one, an auteur of crassness that could make cut-rate circus music sound like the most interesting thing in pop. “Houdini” doesn’t do any of that. Instead, we get Steve Miller karaoke and enough shtick that one must consider the possibility that this sounds this bad on purpose.
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TA Inskeep: Granted, I’ve never been a fan, but this shit is just embarrassing, a return to his bullshit pop-cult insult-comic days atop a painfully obvious sample. Give it up, man. 
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Oliver Maier: There’s something pleasingly coherent about Eminem soundtracking his fifth or sixth song about how not-washed he is with a Steve Miller Band song that my dad used to play on the car in between Dire Straits and Californication. On the other hand, the intent is clearly a sonic callback to the snotty “Without Me” beat, which makes me like it less. More tiresome to me than the chortling outrage bait about his transgender cat are the many parts of this song where Eminem farts out callbacks to his hits, as if that will help make the case that his best days are not behind him. He’s not even referencing the good stuff! Whose favourite part of “Without Me” is the bit where Eminem repeats “guess who’s back?” through a pitch shifter? 
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Katherine St. Asaph: There’s nothing inherently useless about bringing Slim Shady back, back again — the concept is integral to the undeniably best Eminem song of the 2020s, “Eminem Becomes a Second Century Warlord.” But this is the musical equivalent of celebrating your 50th birthday by spending the whole day on 4chan for old times’ sake. 50 is also about the age you’d find Steve Miller cool.
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Alfred Soto: Sure, the “Abracadabra” sample is lazy as fuck, but it’s the catchiest thing in an Eminem single since the Obama presidency. The incomprehensible stupidity of the chorus has to be a Dada-esque prank. 
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Will Adams: It’s amusing how the hook goes “and for my last trick!”, as if he ever had more than one. Ever the hot-button issue provocateur, Em makes references to Megan Thee Stallion getting shot (which was four years ago), attack-helicopter humor (also four years ago), participation trophies (seven years ago), and R. Kelly and urination (21 years), while also exhuming several of his hits that are over two decades old as if he’s truly pulling back the curtain on the State Of The World today. Even the video, wherein a 2002 Slim Shady steps through a time portal to 2024 and grimaces at his surroundings (a pink-clad influencer taking selfies; robot delivery carts; a man wearing a VR headset), brings less to mind an insightful lyricist than someone whose brain has been melted by Facebook and Fox News.
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Andrew Karpan: Yet again, the unfortunate lore of rap records making fun of Megan Thee Stallion for literally getting shot has grown, now coming in the form of self-conscious shock jock antics from one of the original progenitors of the sport itself. The arc of the pop universe is long, but it always bends backwards, toward itself. Em’s most inspired move is choosing to flip one of the most unpleasant pop songs of all time, literally “the sort of song that immediately scans as garden-variety bad and then becomes worse when you think about it more.” And here it is, all over again, somehow made even worse.
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Taylor Alatorre: Music Critic Gives Low Score To New Eminem Single, ‘But Not Because He’s Offended By It Or Anything’
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Mark Sinker: he’s still got it, he’s the pompatus of dril 
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Brad Shoup: He’s a technician, sure, but his certification lapsed in the Obama administration. There was perverse pleasure to be had in his baroque era, as he tried everything to keep himself awake: silly little voices, endless enjambment, doubletime lectures. In a sense, “Houdini” is a throwback: Eminem’s dogshit lead single that still hits #1. But outside of the Sherri Papini joke at the end, there’s literally no joke here that hasn’t long been ground into dust. (Honestly, it’s quite possible he wrote everything backwards from the Papini/Houdini rhyme.) He’s been a hack for like two decades now—Criss Angel frowning in an Army cap—but here, his big reveal is that he’s a hack with delusions: the defining archetype of the crumbling American empire. Being a mediocre tryhard is incredible work, but he’s got an amazing support network. 
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Ian Mathers: I know Eminem apparently has tons of different flows, but this feels like the same one (or same subset, I guess) that he always uses. And it’s boring. I’m sure that on a technical level the rapping here is good, but I’m bored. I know I’m supposed to be either outraged or delighted, but I’m bored. I know there’s all kinds of shit to see in the video, but I’m bored. I know I’m supposed to love or hate nabbing the chorus from a mid Steve Miller Band song (“Fly Like an Eagle” or nothing tbh), but. I’m. BORED.
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Jeffrey Brister: No level of technical ability can cover up what are just warmed over redpill talking points. I suppose this was always going to happen. But all of these grievances were tired and played out nearly a decade ago, and hearing an out-of-touch former pop star regurgitate them like he’s ringing an alarm bell would be funny if it wasn’t so enervating.
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Aaron Bergstrom: From Steve Albini to Violent J and beyond, we as a music-loving populace have demonstrated that we are endlessly willing (maybe too willing) to forgive decades of braindead edgelord nonsense at even the tiniest gesture of an apology. I mean, we have now largely rehabilitated Fred Durst. No white man has to be the hateful idiot he was at 18, or even the hateful idiot he was at 40. There’s always an off-ramp nearby. And so, as I slogged through the humiliating spectre of a 51-year-old man trying to land a RuPaul joke in 2024, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many chances Marshall Mathers has had to be… not this. Just literally anything but this. And yet here we are.
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Scott Mildenhall: Only Marshall Mathers’ changed Eminem party can give this world its future back. With the bold promise of no new ideas, it offers a timely reminder that atrophy can be disguised as stasis, providing that improvement is not an option. So why ever seek it? Now is all you have ever had, and this is what now is. A trademark brand of overengineered rhymes whose tragedy belies their intermittent imagination. Things can only continue.
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Nortey Dowuona: I understand that a lot of people feel the need to keep kicking the dead horse of “Eminem sucks,” but I have to ask: if he actually made a good song that did not sound like what his fans want (warmed-over 1998 boom-bap nostalgia) or what his pop fans want (warmed-over 1999 Dr. Dre funk nostalgia), would there be a market for it? As any of his aging offspring would bitterly tell you, there is none. Eminem was trapped by choosing to become a massive popstar, not a consistent musician who kept developing. His entire style had spiraled into defanged repetition of trying to provoke anyone he knew by the time Encore rolled around, and by The Eminem Show, it was already over. Anyone who is engaging with Eminem’s music — especially this — is either trapped in amber or stuck on a treadmill, trying their best to slay this frustrating old beast who attempts to keep going because there is no other outlet for his musical desires. He can’t quit, only retread on your nostalgia until you turn your attention to other things, which is easier than ever. So I would ask you to respond to this with complete indifference. He wants your attention — do not give it to him anymore.
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