The Marshall Mathers LP took that foundation and evolved it, matured it, upped the production value and celebrated the record's sharp writing and near-flawless vocal performance. Then came The Eminem Show, which eschewed the teen-friendly media-bashing for an Eminem vastly more interested in discussing the economic, cultural and political landscape of a post-9/11, George Bush America.
He'd reached his most relevant. He'd attained the very pinnacle of his success. And then the other rappers emerged – rappers like 50 Cent, Kanye, Common, Nas. Hell, even Jay-Z came out of his short-lived retirement and managed to put out a succession of albums that quickly reaffirmed his status as a rap legend and seized the relevancy that Eminem had abdicated. And despite a fourth, rather sophomoric album, Em faded slowly into the hip-hop background.
Jump ahead five years to the release of "We Made You," the opening salvo from the first of two new records in the Relapse series. And instead of forging ahead with a single that stabs directly at the heart of the post-Bush, Obama-led, downsized America, Em's taken a giant leap back to the days of Slim Shady or Marshall Mathers with a celeb-hating, teen-angsty, radio-friendly, pop-rap tune that either throws up its hands and says "F*** it!" or grovels at the feet of former fans to drop their $9.99 on iTunes.
Without knowing what the rest of these two albums will sound like – and, frankly, how could we not see the aggressive, angry, more serious Em we came to love in The Eminem Show – "We Made You" is still a bad first-foot-forward, mostly because it's such a large step backward.
The music is decidedly non-rap, borrowing the style of verse-chorus-verse embraced by Em in his later records. The tempo is upbeat and while the drum-and-piano mash-up throughout the verses is familiar territory for Em, the chorus (sung by Dina Rae) sounds a bit like the post-modern, 1950's-nostalgia pop that made the last Amy Winehouse album such a refreshing listen.
Em's flow is quick and witty, as always, but his delivery doesn't necessarily gel with the music beneath it. The lyrics are all sex-and-celebrity with jabs directed toward the usual suspects of media whores: Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Kim Kardashian, etc. The video, however, is simply too obvious, too silly, and it does the song -– which, at its worst, is still mildly enjoyable -– a huge disservice. In fact, we here at IGN found that our impression of the single improved dramatically when not watching it alongside the video. It doesn't play like social satire or even work on any real comedic level. It's as if somebody gave the biggest douchebags from high-school enough money to make a fully produced music video and simply laid the track down over it. But if you find the idea of a Transformer with breasts, a penis-shaped Enterprise, or Em parading around dressed like Bret Michaels at all amusing, then please, give it a watch.
We'd love to say that Em has come back with a bang with this single –- the first official cut from the album, despite the release of the significantly better "Crack a Bottle" –- but sadly, tragically, we can't. We still have full faith that the new material, spread out over two new albums this year, will offer the kind of listening experience we expect from Dre's production and Em's flawless cadence, but unfortunately, for the moment, "We Made You" simply doesn't make us... well... anything.
