By Camille Vitale
Eminem’s newest album dropped this week to rave reviews. From awesome beats and rhymes to diss tracks that range from petty to downright nasty, it is no wonder that Kamikaze is trending in the top 10 on iTunes and Spotify charts. Kamikaze is a criticism of the new generation of rappers, and a reflection of where the evolution of hip-hop has identified huge ghostwriters and mumble rap as problems. In the song “Not Alike” feat. Royce da 5’9” Eminem uses random words like“ Brain dead, eye drops Pain meds, cyclops,” in between verses to emphasize the lack of commonality between generations. In “The Ringer,” under a trap beat Eminem uses similar rhythmic phrasing while making fun of trap at the same time. At one point, Eminem adopts the same rap flow as Lil Pumps’ “Gucci Gang” while systematically taking down Lil Pump, Lil Xan, and Lil Wayne all within the same phrase. Within the same song, Eminem takes down radio host Charlemagne the God for calling his last album Revival trash. The takedown consisted quoting him verbatim and using his own words against him within the rap.
The inspiration behind this album was Eminem’s last album Revival and it received very mixed reviews and had a ton of criticism across the board. This criticism was justified because in all fairness the level of lyricism and musicality was just not on the same level of previous albums.
Listen to Kamikaze by Eminem below
