Eminem Moves Ahead — and Retreads Into Tired Habits — on ‘The Death of Slim Shady’: Album Review

variety.com:

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer “You created me to say everything you didn’t have the balls to say,” raps Eminem, or, more technically, his alter ego Slim Shady on “Guilty Conscience 2,” a cut off the emcee’s 12th album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce).” Over a brooding, stormy instrumental, Em takes the original song’s conceit — playing bad guy to Dr.

Dre’s sounder mind — to pore over the damage that Slim has inflicted on his career and artistry. In the end, though, Em has had enough, and pulls the trigger on the character that manifested the darkest corners of his id.

Or did he? “Paul,” he frantically tells his longtime manager Paul Rosenberg over the phone. “I had this dream, it was fucking crazy, it was like the old me came back and the new me and took over my brain and had me saying all this fucked up shit.” It’s a well-worn conceit to cap off an otherwise compelling concept.

And it’s tantamount to how often Eminem can get in his own way, even when he’s operating on the highest possible lyrical plane.