Holy fuck, Eminem is good again

Wriggling through a hole formed by recent silence from Lil’ Wayne and Kanye and deflated interest in Gucci and Hova, Eminem, he most recently of the career-tanking Relapse (2009) effort, has sort of wriggled himself upright and crawled through said hole, and in a few small strides become one of the most essential rappers on the planet. Stranger things have probably happened, but the brain struggles to recall them.

Because the emcee who on his last record was wrapping syncopated rhyme schemes around verses about, like, incest and pill addiction is of-a-sudden spitting fire on the mic like an Old Testament god. He sounds to his core like a rapper’s rapper, like Freddie Gibbs blacking out on a beat, Consequence going for a nimble 32 bars, Nas on his one-great-verse-per-album. Perhaps most pressingly, and tellingly, he reminds me of circa-2007 Andre3K, revisiting an abandoned rhyme style with heavily composed verses that resound, lyrically and sonically, with notions of rebirth.

Streamable at Rap Radar for the time being, “Despicable” feels labored over in the best possible way. Ignore the “freestyle” tag. The beat from “Over” is barely recognizable as Drake’s puffy whine-a-long, here a two-minute blast of almost punitive double-time flow. He’s hitting up headlines and talking a lot of shit like on any old first-single but here his fingers at Kid Rock and logic elicit chuckles (“I’m so bad I can bitchslap a backhanded compliment”), and the switch-up mid-way through is a staggering good look. After the million-word assault of the track’s first ninety seconds he threatens to slow down—before picking back up, antsy as shit, for the final bars. It’s the definition of attention-getting, and begs for repeat play. Add this to the equally head-turning turns on Drake, Wayne and Stat Quo tracks, and he has rebuilt a resume as a scene-stealer.

But he wants more—he’s grabbing, unexpectedly, for some hottest rapper in the game shit, and to do that you need more than head-turning verses. You need great tracks, preferably a great album. This new single “Not Afraid” isn’t that, but it’s fucking promising. The beat’s some boomish melodrama—sorta like what Drake used to sound good over—and the mawkish hook works, but it’s the three verses that have me excited. Unlike most of his other recent work, he’s not driving to the rim on a constant highlight-reel rush: there’s nuance in the flow, here, most relevantly in the second verse, wherein he addresses the lackluster quality of his last record and vows with a wild-eyed intensity to never suck again. What’s most stunning is that I sorta believe it. He’s taking emceeing and hip-hop seriously for the first time since, what, The Eminem Show (2002)? And he sounds, fully, himself. Which means it still has all the old production problems and topicality issues from before (daughter, demons, drugs, all hit upon)—but it is, while wholly an Eminem track, still a good one. Get over your insistence that those are mutually exclusive qualities (it’s taking me some effort)—and then get excited.