Album Review: Has Eminem Finally Returned To Form On Kamikaze?

A few days ago Eminem surprised the world by dropping a new album out of nowhere. The album was titled Kamikaze and is Shady’s way of responding to those who criticized his last album “Revival”. The album contains 11 songs alongside 2 skits and includes features from the likes of Royce Da 5’9, Jessie Ramirez, & Joyner Lucas. The album has gained hype over the past few days now but is it really good as they say?

Standout Songs

Lucky You ft Joyner Lucas

In a collab I’m more than happy to see…pr rather hear Eminem and Joyner doan excellent job providing contrasting verses. Joyner spits from the perspective of a young, hungry, up and coming rapper whole on the other hand Em raps from the perspective of a rapper whos been the King of The Hill for a long time but is still hungry and is starting to be overlooked by the newer generation due to a crop of new talent. The contract works well and Joyner and Em compliment each other pretty well. Eminem of course takes shots at the mumble rappers on this track an even borrows the flow from DNA by Kenderick Lamar.

Not Alike ft. Royce Da 5’9″

A remix of Look Alike by Drake and Blocboy JB, Em teams up with fellow Detroit rapper Royce Da 5’9″ for arguably the best song on the album. At parts on the song Eminem parodys Bad & Boujee by Migos meanwhile on others parts he has a speedier flow. The duo throws shade at mumble and trap rappers such as Migos or even Young Thug and possibly Gunna. Em in particular disses Cleveland Rapper Machine Gun Kelly on this track directly mentioning the rapper and how he sneak dissed him on Tech N9ne’s song No Reason from his album Planet.

The Ringer 

On this track Em takes aim at mumble rappers like he’s a high power sniper rifle chastising them for having similar flows repetetive lyrics, etc. He also takes aim at critics who claimed that he had lost his touch. Something notable is that he agains mocks the flow of new generation artist, this time using the flow from Lil Pump’s single “Gucci Gang” for portions of the song.

Wrap Up

After being slammed for “Revival” with many saying that Em has fallen off, everyone’s favorite Detroit rapper looked to prove his critics wrong. To say the least he accomplished that with ease. Kamikaze is a nice bounce back from revival and is easily the best long form work Eminem has released in a good while. Songs like the ones I elaborated on earlier are a bit of a throwback to the old Em while songs like Kamikaze also do that. On the otherhand a song like Stepping stones show a more personal side with Eminem says his confessions and goodbye’s to his old group D12. The production on the song is great and the flow and verses used by Eminem amd tge featured artist remind people exactly why Eminem is considered the Rap God. Kamikaze isn’t really an album that lives up to it’s name as this may as well been Em’s revival as this is the album that’s really put him back on the radar for the people that have forgotten him.

The fact that Eminem has directly called out MGK and has sent shade towards the rest of the rap scene is pretty refreshing as there haven’t been any good disses for a good minute and this beef between Eminem and MGK should be interesting to watch unfold. All in all Kamikaze is a great album and damn near perfect, this is what you really expect from Em and with him being pissed off it’s reignited that spark. If you can’t handle trash talking, slurs, cursing, etc then don’t listen to the album and move on.

Rating: 9.3/10