Eminem's Curtain Call era December 6

[josequervo]

britrocks16 said:

Big Weenie? LMFAO!

Girl, that was actually a song on the Encore album. He's fell off big time.

[vivian]

josequervo said:

britrocks16 said:

LOL! When Im Gone isn't doing as good as expected. Its slowed down at #19. The downloads aren't exactly blowing up either.

I thought airplay would cool down, but airplay and downloads might shoot up w/ the release of the video. For the fans, I just heard Fack and Shake That. Fack is easily the worst and most embarassing song that Em has ever made. IT pretty much rivals Big Weenie

Yeah, FACK is like...I`m afraid there isn`t such a word invented yet. They should list this one.

[Purple Dreams]

Shake That and FACK are garbage and ruin an otherwise great hits collection but he obviously still has a substantial amount of fans that love such songs.

[vivian]

solitude said:

Shake That and FACK are garbage and ruin an otherwise great hits collection but he obviously still has a substantial amount of fans that love such songs.

Shake That isn`t that bad. I mean it`s at least better than A** Like That *shivers*.

[Rob64]

"Big Weenie" is genius when compared to "fack". Ugh. GARBAGE. It's as bad as "My Ballz" with D12. I can imagine Eminem in the studio saying "Yo dre, i just made a new song called FACK, listen to this"... then I can picture Dr Dre rolling his eyes as he's listening to the song. My god, it's bad.

[vivian]

Review of Curtain Call by S.F Chronicle

Folks younger than 35 know whether they want Eminem's greatest hits. So this review is for the old people: Yes. Get it. The 33-year-old rapper is the most lyrically inventive, self-revealing, scorchingly intelligent artist in pop music today, the closest thing to John Lennon since John Lennon. He has a similar capacity to be misunderstood, to press buttons and to be enormously funny to those in the know. Also, like Lennon, the more one becomes acquainted with his work, the more there's revealed an unmistakable moral streak and a depth of feeling. His new song, "When I'm Gone" (one of three new entries), is among his best: Addressed to his daughter, it's about his guilt at leaving her for long periods while on tour. Yet it's also a kind of suicide note, in which he contemplates killing either his career, himself or his anarchic "Slim Shady" persona. The song selection is designed to please fans old and new: I could have done without juvenilia from his first album ("Guilty Conscience," "My Name Is") and can't believe they left off "Mosh" (his 2004 anti-Bush song). But it's hard to argue with a lineup that includes fun tracks like "Without Me," thoughtful material like "Sing for the Moment" and "Like Toy Soldiers," and flat-out brilliant songs like "Lose Yourself," "Stan" and "Cleanin' Out My Closet." The album traces the blossoming of a promising talent into a genuinely great artist and is a worthy introduction. -- Mick LaSalle

Eminem

Shady/Aftermath/Interscope Records

[vivian]

Now that was real fun to read:

In a recent interview for foreign television, Rakim was asked what he thought about Eminem, his former label mate. The man who is often referred to as the God Emcee and regularly called the greatest of all-time, made some very flattering remarks about Slim.

”Eminem is nasty man, I don’t care what color he is. I don’t care about none of that nahmean? Real artists respect real artist’s man. Especially like a conscious artist that sits down and writes and hears another artist that sits down and does his writing…and he know…a brother nasty. Regardless, you can’t take nothing away from his thoughts and his pen, nahmean? Em is nasty man, I tell people to this day…if Em was black…he’d be the next Muhammad Ali man.”

[Love Plastic Love]

I dont even understand whats being said in that

[Rob64]

Bought it today. The bonus CD is incredible. I miss the old Eminem. :(
"I never grew up.. I was born grown and grew down"
He used to be a genius!

[Purple Dreams]

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10357427/from/RSS/

Eminem back together with his ex-wife

‘We have reconciled and are probably going to remarry,’ says the rapper

DETROIT - Rap superstar Eminem told a radio show Tuesday that he is back together with his ex-wife and may remarry.

Eminem went through an ugly divorce and custody battle over his young daughter with Kimberly Mathers. They married in 1999, and their divorce was finalized in 2001.

“We have reconciled and are probably going to remarry,” Eminem told Detroit radio station WKQI-FM’s “Mojo in the Morning” show.


During the interview, he referred to Kimberly Mathers, 30, as “my wife Kim.”

Eminem’s label Interscope Records said the interview was the only one that Eminem had planned for now. The rapper’s greatest-hits album titled “Curtain Call” was released Tuesday.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, also discussed his stay earlier this year at a hospital to undergo treatment for sleep medication dependency. Word of the hospitalization came in August after he canceled his European tour.

“When I went into rehab, I kind of went into it ... with the notion of ’I’m gonna get clean, I’m gonna get off this stuff before it gets too out of hand,”’ he said.

In July, Eminem denied an impending retirement but hinted at taking a breather. On Tuesday, the 33-year-old, who lives in suburban Detroit, spoke more about his uncertain future.

“I’m at a point in my life right now where I feel like I don’t know where my career is going,” he said. “This is the reason that we called it ‘Curtain Call,’ because this could be the final thing. We don’t know.”

[vivian]

www.entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,17500413-7484,00.html?from=rss

Daily Telegraph

HANDS up if you wrote off Eminem way back as a white honky one-hit-wonder rap-wannabe destined for the bargain bins.

Or if the misogynistic, bigoted, homophobic lyrics were just too politically incorrect for you to get lost in the beats. Or you just didn't believe the hype.
That's the thing about artists as prodigiously talented and controversial as Eminem; they get under people's skins whether you want to like them or not.

This collection of hits and three exceptionally brilliant new tracks bears testament to his artistry and whets the appetite for where Marshall Mathers is heading next.

The breakthrough tracks My Name Is and Stan still sound fresh, relevant and pack the punch which sideswiped so many detractors when they were released.

His ability to make his own personal pain and drama universal through Cleanin' Out My Closet, to make us laugh ourselves silly with tracks like Without Me and turn perceptions on their head with his Elton John duet on Stan makes you shake your head at how much Eminem is the real deal.

The first new song on the album, Fack, is so wrong, it's hilarious; Shake That is a club anthem much in the same vein as 50 Cent's In Da Club and When I'm Gone is Em's latest ode to fatherhood and asserts his desire to be the world's best dad.
While it's doubtful this collection is the end for Eminem as an artist and he will return reinvented and just as relevant, if he does bid the spotlight adieu, Curtain Call is a fine obituary for a remarkable career.


Curtain Call, Eminem, Rating: 4.5 out of 5

[vivian]

NME Rating: 8

It's here, Mr Mathers' definitive collection, but is this curtain call really his grand finale?
It's only six years since Eminem launched himself on the world's consciousness, but it seems like so much longer. Back in the mists of 1999, his producer and mentor Dr Dre was in the middle of ensuring that hip-hop was still the most adventurous music in the world. American music was polarised by the pre-teen brigade led by Britney and Backstreet Boys and angry men in shorts like Korn and Limp Bizkit. (Indiewise, let's just say that this was the heyday of Travis).

Eminem's genius was to distill this millennial pop culture into something as powerful as a force of nature. Eminem's best work is angrier than Fred Durst, articulated with rhyming skills that could make Jay-Z sound tongue-tied (check 'Renegade' for aural proof), with music by Dre, the Brian Wilson of beats. His videos were as glossy as 'N Sync's, his choruses hookier than anything created for Christina Aguilera and his brattish whine and blond crop made him as instantly recognisable as his white trash forefather Elvis.

This greatest hits is arranged out of chronological order, with three new tracks, including the disappointing current single 'When I'm Gone' and a dubious bonus track - his 2001 version of 'Stan' performed at the Grammies with Elton John, who sounds like Vic Reeves' club singer. The highlights are nearly all from Eminem's first two albums. 'My Name Is''s cultural references may have dated ("I can't figure out which Spice Girl I wanna impregnate") but its mix of fizzing humour and menace still sound startling. There's the clanging 'The Way I Am' ("I am whatever you say I am", being the killer line), and the single version of 'Stan', a narrative of amazing perceptiveness and power, even if it did inflict Dido on the world. Best of all is 2003's 'Lose Yourself', from his surprisingly good film 8 Mile. Packed with intricate rhymes and delivered as if Eminem's got a pack of dogs at his Timberlands, it can stand alongside any classic you care to name.

Elsewhere, things are patchier. Eminem's last two albums saw him digging into stadium rock and revealed an Achille's heel in his fondness for (by his standards) sentimental ballads like 'Mockingbird', 'Like Toy Soldiers' and, despite the eviscerating language, 'Cleanin' Out My Closet'. His involvement with the useless D12, represented here by the puerile 'Shit On You', almost seemed like self-sabotage, a desire to prove that he was mortal after all. By the time he'd been both described by George Bush as, "the greatest threat to our children since polio" and acclaimed for his rhymes by the poet Seamus Heaney, Eminem was left with nowhere else to go. Rappers also use up far more words in a song than your average rock star does - by the time he appeared ready for retirement this year, it looked as though he'd simply said all he had to say.

If indeed he has retired (and that's by no means a certainty), remember him this way - the thrilling self-reflexivity of 'Guilty Conscience', the apocalyptic 'Criminal', the knife-edge emotional switchbacks of 'Kill You' and lines like "I get a clean shave, bathe, go to a rave/Die from an overdose and dig myself up out of my grave/My middle finger won't go down, how do I wave?/And this is how I'm supposed to teach kids to behave?" Eminem's best songs still have the power to disconcert and set a standard that all rock stars will struggle to match.

Alex Needham

[vivian]

The last word...

Eminem, the most significant artist of the last decade, looks set to quit after the release of his greatest hits collection Curtain Call in December. We give you the man himself, in his own words. First we sum up what his passing means.

"And when I'm gone, just carry on, don't mourn rejoice everytime you hear the sound of my voice" (When I'm Gone)

If it's true, as a number of insiders have confided to BRAT, that Marshall Mathers is turning his back on Eminem for good, then the music world is about to suffer a loss as great as any since Elvis left rock'n'roll for the army in 1958. Eminem the performer; lyricist and rapper, will leave a John Lennon sized hole in music fans' lives, and with him will go all of the spirit, humour, intelligence, depth and sheer brass balls that he has brought to mainstream pop since he hit us with My Name Is in 1999. As he said himself in 2002 "It feels so empty without me."

Most Successful Ever

Eminem is the most successful hip hop artist on the planet (in a genre that's not short of multi-millionaires), having sold over 65 million albums worldwide. He brought hip hop into the mainstream, right into the faces of those who had long considered it a 'specialist' (ie black) genre. But in the end, that isn't why his absence will create such a vacuum. In the last few years he has become much more than just a great artist. He's become one of the most amazing real-life stories of our times. Everybody loves a dream come true but the truth behind Eminem's rise is so unbelievable that when Hollywood made a film based vaguely on his life 8 Mile writer Scott Silver watered it down to keep it credible. Even within an entire community on the wrong side of the tracks, Marshall Mathers was an outcast.

A white kid in a slummy black Detroit neighbourhood, he claims that his mother took pills and cannabis while raising him, regularly kicked him out, made him go out to work at 15 and took most of his wages when he got home. He never met or spoke to his dad. When he was 23, his younger brother Nathan was taken into foster care aged eight, and Eminem described how he "cried just goin' to see him." Imagine meeting that spotty, awkward kid in 1995, pregnant girlfriend Kim by his side - imagine him telling you he was going to rap his way out of poverty and despair and become a megastar. You would've laughed in his face. Who wouldn't - that kind of fairytale never actually happens, right?

Rags to Riches

Four albums and more than $1 billion worth of sales later, and rags to riches is just one aspect of Eminem's incredible transformation. It's also the tale of a geeky bullied teenager to a worldwide superstar; a frosty outsider to an internationally loved icon; a self-heating drugtaker to a self-assured businessman; a bitter, anger people-hater to a doting dad. There are so many fantistic chapters to Eminem's story, everyone has their favourite - his unending love/hate story with Kim, his mad relationship with his mum (who famously tried to sue him), his public conflicts with Moby, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Ja Rule, the American Government...And while he's undoubtedly the rapper who's been the most truthful about his life, who's revealed both the ugliest, most violent fantasies and his vulnerable insecurities, he ramines a thrilling puzzle - does he love fame or hate it? IS he a nasty homophobe or a tender father? Is he Slim Shady, Eminem or Marshall Mathers?
Whoever he is, he's always had difficult relationship with his success. When he wrote in 2002, "I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never woulda rapped", it wasn't the first sign he'd given that he was thinking of packing it in. According to his final single, he's retiring for Hailie, his daughter, to finally give her the time he's never had for her. Lucky Hailie. Unluckly us.

Goodnight...

So, a toast. Here's to the man who in just six short years gave us some of the best and funniest videos ever (Remember Osama's vogue-ing in Without Me?), the most creative MTV performances, the most memorable live shows (every tabloid in Britian freaked out oever his 'mask&chainsaw' set in 2001), and without doubt, some of the greatest lyrics of all time. Your dad'll sniff and tell you about Bob Dylanor John Lennon but Eminem's own brilliant words should shut him up: "I scrutinize every word, memorize every line/ I spit it once, refuel and re-energize and rewind/ I give insight through the mind/ I exercise my right to express when I feel it's time."

So here's to Eminem - we won't see his like again.

Brat Magazine - Dec 05

[josh1414]

Wtf, they missed out "Superman" and "Encore." They should've put those 2 songs on the album instead of the horrible "Fack" and the stupid Live version of Stan.

[HolidayGuy]

I picked up the album (with the bonus CD). Haven't listened to it yet, but I look forward to doing so. :)

I didn't notice any thank-you's or anything in the album. Not that it's unexpected. ;)

[vivian]

holidayguy said:

I didn't notice any thank-you's or anything in the album. Not that it's unexpected. ;)

The only time he`s ever put "Thank Us" was in the SSLP booklet.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

josh1414 said:

Wtf, they missed out "Superman" and "Encore." They should've put those 2 songs on the album instead of the horrible "Fack" and the stupid Live version of Stan.

Those are two of my favourite Eminem songs! His only two #1s on my chart. I'm mad they left those out. Either way, I got this CD last night, with the bonus CD. 'Fack' is stupid. What was he thinking?

[Walking Contradiction]

"Fack" is so bad it's good. Of course, if I had to listen to it too many times, it would become just plain bad.

"Shake That" isn't bad, but it sounds more like a Nate Dogg song featuring Eminem.

[reception]

#1 at Tower Records Honolulu (12/16/2005)

[Filthy Pop]

I wish they'd put Superman on here, but I do like it.

The remix side isn't as bad as I expected.

[reception]

Curtain Call
Reviewed by Raymond Fiore
Entertainment Weekly

Only four albums into his illustrious, often brilliant career and already Eminem coyly hints at retirement.

"Curtain Call: The Hits" captures the half-decade moment when the tortured Detroit MC ruled the zeitgeist with whip-smart gross-out humor and joining family confessions. His bubblegum tracks ("Just Lose It," "My Name Is") haven't aged well, but classics "Lose Yourself" and "Cleanin' Out My Closet" still exhilarate as only the greatest pop music can.

EW Grade: A-

[reception]

#4 at Tower Records Honolulu (12/23/2005)

[Filthy Pop]

Star magazine reports Detroit rapper supreme Eminem and his ex-wife Kim Mathers have set a date to remarry -- somewhere in Michigan on Jan. 14.

"This day I will marry my best friend, the one I laugh with, live for, love," reads the invitation. The invite shows two children sitting side by side.

The 33-year-old rapper met Mathers when she was 12 and he was 15. They married in 1999 and divorced in 2001. They have a daughter, Hailie, 10, and Kim has a daughter, Whitney, 2, from another relationship.

www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051231/NEWS07/512310335/1035/ENT

[Damage]

So is he going to like reform his personality and get back to rapping like he has some sense?

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

fanofallmusic said:

Kim has a daughter, Whitney, 2, from another relationship.

A ho-back meeting, perhaps?

[Damage]

So I was thinking. Is Eminem one of the greatest lyricists ever who subsequently made really crappy pop raps? Or was he overrated and just had a few good moments? I've always thought the former, but I've seen a lot of people say the latter.

I'd hate to see him end his career like this.

I think the ultimate shocker thing to do, the one way he has left to shock people (even though he's abandoned his slim shady persona, he could still do this in the context of what I'm about to say) is to come out with a full cd with no cursing. Just flat out ridiculous rhymes. Clean cut image, family man and no more of the hailey/benzino battle/crap flow that he's been using for a while now.

[Purple Dreams]

[Damage]

omg she looks psycho. I don't remember kim looking like that at all. is that really her? She looks like she's 6'3 and seconds away from donning an american flag bustier and tiara.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

I can't believe they let Eminem in a church!

[Luckie Starchild]

It looks like Eminem is wearing even more makeup at his wedding than Christina Aguilera did at hers! :o