Eminem's Relapse

I've been listening non-stop to Eminem for the last few days, in quiet anticipation of his album that's apparently due to hit the shelves next month. If a person could ever be physically embodied--heart and soul--with just the use of words and music, it may as well be Eminem.

I love literature. I love words; the power written verse can have. English is the one subject that is effortless for me. I can get lost in a book, searching for subtle symbolism and analogies that perhaps the author didn't even intend for. For my university English class, I pulled entries from my blog, made minor revisions, and handed them in as essays. I got As on all of them.

I remember in high school, my English teacher mentioned how some poet named Seamus Heaney had praised Marshall Mathers III, naming him to be one of the best upcoming poets of the century.

I didn't really think much about it, until I read a magazine a couple months later. It had featured an article on Seamus Heany, a Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

Then I stole my brother's CDs and really started listening to this guy. I was blown away.

I won't pretend that I can relate to some of the personal shit Eminem has included in his discography. To do that would be insulting, both to him and the people that have been in the shoes his words portray. Some of the stuff he talks about is over my head, to a point. I don't understand the context, haven't looked into the double meanings. Or never will experience.

But that's okay.

What I can do, however, is appreciate. Bask in the shadow of the portraits that many of his songs paint. I have, right now, his complete discography from 1997-2004 -- the year his best friend, his hype man, was murdered (shot three times in the head and chest). So he withdrew into himself and turned into a recluse, and he supposedly irrevocably fell out of the media spotlight.

Clearly, the music press has changed its tune in the past few months, since his statement back in October '08 that he was releasing a new album called Relapse. It's been pushed back a few times, but I can honestly say that it is one of the top things in 2009 that I'm looking forward to.

This guy is a lyrical genius. Apparently, as a kid, he read the whole dictionary in search of words he could use for rhyme in rap battles. He read the f*cking dictionary. I don't know how much you know about Detroit, coupled with the environment he was raised in as a kid. Reading the dictionary wouldn't have been one of my past times if I was in a similar situation. But regardless, it probably was the foundation that gave him the vocabulary of a modern day Greek Muse.

So, yes. Eminem. Relapse.

Hopefully, by the end of it all, we can all be wholeheartedly singing, "Guess who's back?"

/anticipation.