Relapse
Relapse is the sixth studio album by rapper Eminem, released on May 15, 2009 by Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records. This album follows a four-year hiatus from recording due to his writer's block and an addiction to prescription sleeping medication. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2007 to 2009 at several recording studios. Conceptually, Relapse concerns the ending of his drug rehabilitation, rapping after a non-fictional relapse, and the return of his Slim Shady alter-ego.
The album cover illustrates a head shot of the rapper composed by a mosaic of thousands of pills. A sticker on the cover resembles a prescription drug label, on which the patient is Eminem and the prescribing doctor is Dr. Dre. On the backside of the booklet is a dedication to Proof, Eminem's closest friend who was killed in a nightclub shooting, where Eminem explains that he's sober and that he tried to write a song for him, but that he didn't find one of them good enough therefore he dedicates the whole album to him. The CD itself is meant to represent the lid on a bottle of prescription pills.
This album is considered by many, including Eminem to be one of his, if not his weakest, body of work.
Tracks
1.Dr. West (skit):
In this skit, Eminem meets with his rehab doctor (Dr. West) right before he is discharged from rehab. But things take an unexpected turn and the doctor turns into Slim Shade tempting him with pills, just before Eminem wakes up from this dream.
2.3 a.m.:
This song picks up right where the skit left off with Eminem waking up from his dream. It follows Slim Shady as a serial killer who’s escaping from a rehabilitation clinic and killing everyone who might try to stop him. Em envisioned a rock remix of the track so he let Travis Barker take a “stab at it and the rest was history”. The line from the bridge of the song “she puts the lotion in the bucket” is a nod to the 1991 horror film The Silence of the Lambs. The actual line is “It places the lotion in the basket.”
3.My Mom:
Eminem blames his mother, Debbie Mathers for his drug use, he says “I’m on what I’m on, cause I’m my mom” he claims his mother used to give him drugs as a child, and that why he became addicted to them.
4.Insane:
On this track Eminem alleges that his stepfather molested him. Em claims this never really happened, and that he simply made the song to gross people out. The song contains interpolations from “Jock Box”, performed by The Skinny Boys. The beat resembles the beat of Stat Quo’s “Get Low”. The line “he hung himself in the bedroom, he’s dead” is a reference to a line from “My Name Is” off of The Slim Shady LP: “Well, since age 12, I’ve felt like I’m someone else / Cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt”. After that he comes back as Slim Shady.
5.Bagpipes from Baghdad:
This song is a slight dis on Nick Cannon, although isn’t aimed completely at him, but more so at Mariah Carey. This song is sang in a middle-eastern accent during the hook and at times in the chorus. Em mentions Mariah’s break up with Luis Miguel. There are many sources that say she had an episode of depression after he dumped her. In the last line of the song he says “Hamdulillah” (with auto-tune), a phrase Arabs use when they are relieved, when they get something off their chest.
6.Hello:
In this song Slim Shady is reintroducing himself, like he did in the song, “My Name Is”. He is also apologizing for being away for so long. Eminem references his drug use in this songs and others like “Deja Vu” and “Going through Changes”.
7.Tonya (skit):
Slim Shady stops to help a woman who is having car troubles, but it doesn’t go well. The skit fits with the story told on the next track.
8.Same Song & Dance:
The song features Eminem telling stories about raping two women. The track was produced by Dr. Dre. It samples “One” by Metallica. Tonya, mentioned in the song, is the same girl from the skit before it. Tonya is also the name of the girl that Eminem introduced to 50 Cent in the song “Spend Some Time” off of the album Encore. Tonya then gets kidnapped by Slim and does the “same song and dance” as other girls do, meaning kicking and screaming to get away.
9.We Made You:
In this song Eminem compares himself to the rock star Elvis. He is depicted as Elvis in the music video. He also parodies Brett Michaels from the TV show Rock of Love and the band Poison. He calls out women like Jennifer Aniston, Brittney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan and tell them to leave who they’re with and be with him. The line “can he come back as nasty as he can” references when Relapse came out, no one knew what Eminem’s flow would be, especially since he went to rehab twice over a drug addiction. They weren’t sure if he was going to have the same style as he did before he responds by saying “yes he can”.
10.Medicine Ball:
Eminem (as Slim Shady) raps about gay serial killers, his addiction to sleeping pills, sitting on Madonna, and pushing Christopher Reeve into quicksand. He also explains that he makes many references to Christopher Reeve in a lot of his songs, because his name is so easy to rhyme with. The song also ends with a robotic impersonation of Reeve, who was dead at the time the album came out, being mad at Eminem and challenging him to a breakdancing competition.
11.Paul (skit):
The traditional phone call Em gets from Paul Rosenberg on every album. He is upset about the Christopher Reeve reference in the previous song and also the song insane. Paul mentioning Christopher Reeve in the call could also be referencing the fact that the Encore album was supposed to have a song which Em removed last minute, titled Christopher Reeves. It made fun of, but also threw down the line of respect to the man who was at one point the Superman. The song was listed on the site few days before the release, but when Christopher Reeves passed away, Eminem destroyed the only copy of the track he made, and thus the song was never released or even been heard in public. He then reworked his song Rain Man to reference some of this.
12.Stay Wide Awake:
Eminem describes a series of rape fantasies, the dark side, and mutilation of women. He specifically mentions a girl named Brenda which could be a reference to the 2Pac classic “Brenda’s Got a Baby”. The “vinn- vinn” in the background is for the sound that a chainsaw makes. Slim has used the same ad-lib on some of his previous songs, since the chainsaw is his preferred instrument of torture. He goes on to compare himself to Ted Bundy (a serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist, who assaulted young women) Jason (from Friday the 13th) and Damien (the little boy from The Omen), but not like the Son of Sam, because he doesn’t use a gun. He is warning women to stay awake because monsters and bad thing usually come out at night.
13.Old Time’s Sake: featuring Dr.Dre
Eminem (as Slim Shady) and Dr. Dre rap about their favorite pastime (smoking weed). He starts off impersonating a captain speaking to passengers on a plane which is an allegory for smoking weed, as they both get “high”. He also calls himself “Rain Man” which is a reference to his song with the same name. The chorus has the line “now just blow a little bit of the smoke my way” because Eminem, after getting out of rehab is not doing any drugs.
14.Must Be The Ganja:
Even though Eminem was sober during the recording of this album he still makes a “drug song” for it. In this sing he says that he can name every serial killer who ever existed in chronological order. He ends the song by saying “this isn’t even a weed thing/ I aint even smoking anything, I aint even drinking” meaning he is still the same person through his music without the alcohol or drugs.
15.Mr. Mathers (skit):
This is the night of Eminem’s overdose. What happened is still cloudy. Some reports say Hailie found him in the bathroom, others say that paramedics found him, but Eminem himself claims the last thing he remembered was the bathroom, but he somehow made it to the bedroom. Wherever he was, the paramedics are trying to wake him.
16.Déjà Vu:
This song documents his overdose and what lead up to it. It is basically a trip into the mind of an addict. It starts off with the paramedics explaining his condition in the ambulance. The DMC referred to in the song is Detroit Medical Center. He explains that he started with a sip NyQuil and then moved onto Valium. In one line he says “wouldn’t even be takin this shit is DeShaun didn’t die” One of Eminem’s best friends was DeShaun Holton aka the late rapper “Proof”. Proof’s death is one reason Em believes he became addicted to pills. Em talks about waking up in the hospital: “the doctors told me I’d done the equivalent of four bags of heroin. They said I was about two hours from dying.”
17.Beautiful:
This is the only song Eminem actually recorded during the hiatus between albums Encore and Relapse when he was not clean. His emotions here are clear: The addiction to drugs is sinking him into depression, and he feels trapped, as if there is no escape. Rehab isn’t proving particularly helpful at pulling him out of this mood, either. By the end of the track, however, Eminem expresses more optimism and hope for the future. It samples “Reaching Out”, originally written by the rock band Rock Therapy. The song was nominated at the 52nd Grammy Awards in the Best Rap Solo Performance category, but lost to Jay Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”.
18.Crack a Bottle: featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent
This song went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Duo or Group in 2010. Before its official release on iTunes, a reference track leaked. It featured Eminem performing Dre’s verse first, then his, both of them being very similar to the final cut. He then performs a 3rd verse, rumored to be ghostwritten for 50 Cent, who appears on the final track albeit with a completely different verse. The beat is sampled from Mike Brant’s “Mais Dans La Lumière.
19.Steve Berman (skit):
In this skit, Em is visiting Steve Berman, the Interscope Records CEO he shot in the skit on The Eminem Show.
20.Underground:
This is Eminem explaining where he and Slim Shady have been for the past 5 years. The song fades into an outro sketch featuring the return of Ken Kaniff at a rehab group headed by the same Dr. West from the album’s intro. This section basically copies and parodies the video intro for “When I’m Gone” where Eminem decides to share his story with the rest of the group at an AA style meeting. Also Ken Kaniff parodies tracks “We Made You” and “My Mom” from earlier in the album.
1.Dr. West (skit):
In this skit, Eminem meets with his rehab doctor (Dr. West) right before he is discharged from rehab. But things take an unexpected turn and the doctor turns into Slim Shade tempting him with pills, just before Eminem wakes up from this dream.
2.3 a.m.:
This song picks up right where the skit left off with Eminem waking up from his dream. It follows Slim Shady as a serial killer who’s escaping from a rehabilitation clinic and killing everyone who might try to stop him. Em envisioned a rock remix of the track so he let Travis Barker take a “stab at it and the rest was history”. The line from the bridge of the song “she puts the lotion in the bucket” is a nod to the 1991 horror film The Silence of the Lambs. The actual line is “It places the lotion in the basket.”
3.My Mom:
Eminem blames his mother, Debbie Mathers for his drug use, he says “I’m on what I’m on, cause I’m my mom” he claims his mother used to give him drugs as a child, and that why he became addicted to them.
4.Insane:
On this track Eminem alleges that his stepfather molested him. Em claims this never really happened, and that he simply made the song to gross people out. The song contains interpolations from “Jock Box”, performed by The Skinny Boys. The beat resembles the beat of Stat Quo’s “Get Low”. The line “he hung himself in the bedroom, he’s dead” is a reference to a line from “My Name Is” off of The Slim Shady LP: “Well, since age 12, I’ve felt like I’m someone else / Cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt”. After that he comes back as Slim Shady.
5.Bagpipes from Baghdad:
This song is a slight dis on Nick Cannon, although isn’t aimed completely at him, but more so at Mariah Carey. This song is sang in a middle-eastern accent during the hook and at times in the chorus. Em mentions Mariah’s break up with Luis Miguel. There are many sources that say she had an episode of depression after he dumped her. In the last line of the song he says “Hamdulillah” (with auto-tune), a phrase Arabs use when they are relieved, when they get something off their chest.
6.Hello:
In this song Slim Shady is reintroducing himself, like he did in the song, “My Name Is”. He is also apologizing for being away for so long. Eminem references his drug use in this songs and others like “Deja Vu” and “Going through Changes”.
7.Tonya (skit):
Slim Shady stops to help a woman who is having car troubles, but it doesn’t go well. The skit fits with the story told on the next track.
8.Same Song & Dance:
The song features Eminem telling stories about raping two women. The track was produced by Dr. Dre. It samples “One” by Metallica. Tonya, mentioned in the song, is the same girl from the skit before it. Tonya is also the name of the girl that Eminem introduced to 50 Cent in the song “Spend Some Time” off of the album Encore. Tonya then gets kidnapped by Slim and does the “same song and dance” as other girls do, meaning kicking and screaming to get away.
9.We Made You:
In this song Eminem compares himself to the rock star Elvis. He is depicted as Elvis in the music video. He also parodies Brett Michaels from the TV show Rock of Love and the band Poison. He calls out women like Jennifer Aniston, Brittney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan and tell them to leave who they’re with and be with him. The line “can he come back as nasty as he can” references when Relapse came out, no one knew what Eminem’s flow would be, especially since he went to rehab twice over a drug addiction. They weren’t sure if he was going to have the same style as he did before he responds by saying “yes he can”.
10.Medicine Ball:
Eminem (as Slim Shady) raps about gay serial killers, his addiction to sleeping pills, sitting on Madonna, and pushing Christopher Reeve into quicksand. He also explains that he makes many references to Christopher Reeve in a lot of his songs, because his name is so easy to rhyme with. The song also ends with a robotic impersonation of Reeve, who was dead at the time the album came out, being mad at Eminem and challenging him to a breakdancing competition.
11.Paul (skit):
The traditional phone call Em gets from Paul Rosenberg on every album. He is upset about the Christopher Reeve reference in the previous song and also the song insane. Paul mentioning Christopher Reeve in the call could also be referencing the fact that the Encore album was supposed to have a song which Em removed last minute, titled Christopher Reeves. It made fun of, but also threw down the line of respect to the man who was at one point the Superman. The song was listed on the site few days before the release, but when Christopher Reeves passed away, Eminem destroyed the only copy of the track he made, and thus the song was never released or even been heard in public. He then reworked his song Rain Man to reference some of this.
12.Stay Wide Awake:
Eminem describes a series of rape fantasies, the dark side, and mutilation of women. He specifically mentions a girl named Brenda which could be a reference to the 2Pac classic “Brenda’s Got a Baby”. The “vinn- vinn” in the background is for the sound that a chainsaw makes. Slim has used the same ad-lib on some of his previous songs, since the chainsaw is his preferred instrument of torture. He goes on to compare himself to Ted Bundy (a serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist, who assaulted young women) Jason (from Friday the 13th) and Damien (the little boy from The Omen), but not like the Son of Sam, because he doesn’t use a gun. He is warning women to stay awake because monsters and bad thing usually come out at night.
13.Old Time’s Sake: featuring Dr.Dre
Eminem (as Slim Shady) and Dr. Dre rap about their favorite pastime (smoking weed). He starts off impersonating a captain speaking to passengers on a plane which is an allegory for smoking weed, as they both get “high”. He also calls himself “Rain Man” which is a reference to his song with the same name. The chorus has the line “now just blow a little bit of the smoke my way” because Eminem, after getting out of rehab is not doing any drugs.
14.Must Be The Ganja:
Even though Eminem was sober during the recording of this album he still makes a “drug song” for it. In this sing he says that he can name every serial killer who ever existed in chronological order. He ends the song by saying “this isn’t even a weed thing/ I aint even smoking anything, I aint even drinking” meaning he is still the same person through his music without the alcohol or drugs.
15.Mr. Mathers (skit):
This is the night of Eminem’s overdose. What happened is still cloudy. Some reports say Hailie found him in the bathroom, others say that paramedics found him, but Eminem himself claims the last thing he remembered was the bathroom, but he somehow made it to the bedroom. Wherever he was, the paramedics are trying to wake him.
16.Déjà Vu:
This song documents his overdose and what lead up to it. It is basically a trip into the mind of an addict. It starts off with the paramedics explaining his condition in the ambulance. The DMC referred to in the song is Detroit Medical Center. He explains that he started with a sip NyQuil and then moved onto Valium. In one line he says “wouldn’t even be takin this shit is DeShaun didn’t die” One of Eminem’s best friends was DeShaun Holton aka the late rapper “Proof”. Proof’s death is one reason Em believes he became addicted to pills. Em talks about waking up in the hospital: “the doctors told me I’d done the equivalent of four bags of heroin. They said I was about two hours from dying.”
17.Beautiful:
This is the only song Eminem actually recorded during the hiatus between albums Encore and Relapse when he was not clean. His emotions here are clear: The addiction to drugs is sinking him into depression, and he feels trapped, as if there is no escape. Rehab isn’t proving particularly helpful at pulling him out of this mood, either. By the end of the track, however, Eminem expresses more optimism and hope for the future. It samples “Reaching Out”, originally written by the rock band Rock Therapy. The song was nominated at the 52nd Grammy Awards in the Best Rap Solo Performance category, but lost to Jay Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”.
18.Crack a Bottle: featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent
This song went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Duo or Group in 2010. Before its official release on iTunes, a reference track leaked. It featured Eminem performing Dre’s verse first, then his, both of them being very similar to the final cut. He then performs a 3rd verse, rumored to be ghostwritten for 50 Cent, who appears on the final track albeit with a completely different verse. The beat is sampled from Mike Brant’s “Mais Dans La Lumière.
19.Steve Berman (skit):
In this skit, Em is visiting Steve Berman, the Interscope Records CEO he shot in the skit on The Eminem Show.
20.Underground:
This is Eminem explaining where he and Slim Shady have been for the past 5 years. The song fades into an outro sketch featuring the return of Ken Kaniff at a rehab group headed by the same Dr. West from the album’s intro. This section basically copies and parodies the video intro for “When I’m Gone” where Eminem decides to share his story with the rest of the group at an AA style meeting. Also Ken Kaniff parodies tracks “We Made You” and “My Mom” from earlier in the album.