Eminem hasn’t really released anything worth listening to for at least 5 years, but there was some hope heading into Recovery. His verses on songs after 2009’s Relapse (which was an album I hated) have shown a lot of promise — for example, there’s B.o.B’s Airplanes 2 and Drake’s Forever. His Airplanes 2 verse is good, but on Forever he completely embarrassed the other three rappers on that song. Then Not Afraid (his first single from Recovery) was released and it seemed like Eminem had the right mindset, admitting on that song that Relapse wasn’t a great album and that he overused that horrible accent. You rarely ever hear a rapper admit that some of his stuff wasn’t up to par.

Still, I was skeptical. The second song Eminem released from Recovery was Won’t Back Down, featuring Pink — I didn’t think it was completely awful, but I thought that if the rest of the album was like that the album would be really mediocre. Not Afraid was pretty good, but if that’s one of the best songs on this album then there’s gonna be a huge problem.

So was this another disappointment by Eminem or did he manage to actually release something good? Well…

Track-by-track:

1. Cold Wind Blows - This song is basically here to tell you, “Look. This is how Recovery’s going to be. It’s going to be the angry, no-accent Eminem.” This is a good start; it makes the rest of the album seem promising. 9/10
2. Talkin’ 2 Myself (featuring Kobe) – This is a pretty personal song where Eminem admits a lot of things; he contemplated dissing Lil’ Wayne and Kanye, but then concedes that he was probably just jealous of the attention they were getting. This is also the first of a few admissions that Relapse sucked — “This time around it’s different, them last two albums didn’t count; Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushing ‘em out”. This works really well as a song too; Eminem’s flow is really good, the beat is good, and the hook is good. 10/10
   Eminem – Talkin’ 2 Myself
3. On Fire – This starts a string of a few songs where the album begins to take a dive. While this is better than most of Relapse, there’s still something here that’s missing.  7/10
4. Won’t Back Down (featuring Pink) – Like I said above, this isn’t awful but it’s not that good either. The hook is only okay, I’m not a fan of the beat, and some of the lyrics are pretty stupid. 5/10
5. WTP – This feels like a leftover from Relapse. I’m not a fan. It doesn’t fit with the rest of this album. 2/10
6. Going Through Changes – This is where the album starts to recover, no pun intended. From this song on, there’s not another bad one on the album. 9/10
   
7. Not Afraid – Good as the lead single, but it feels a little different from the rest of Recovery. 8/10
   
8. Seduction – This isn’t bad by any means, but it gets overshadowed by what’s about to come. 8/10
9. No Love (featuring Lil’ Wayne) – Lil’ Wayne is (somewhat surprisingly) the only rapper to have a guest verse on this album — all of the other features are doing hooks. I was a little disappointed to see this since there have been rumors of Royce da 5′9″ being on this album for the past year. Anyway, about this song — this is ridiculously good, even Lil’ Wayne’s part. The beat is probably the best one on the album (that sample is amazing). So yeah, easy 10/10.
   Eminem – No Love
10. Space Bound – This album has been getting some flak on the internet for not having very good choruses, but if you ask me just about all of them own that don’t have Eminem singing (see song #16 for the worst example). This is one of those hooks that own. Like the most of the album, the rest of the song is good too.  10/10
11. Cinderella Man – More hate for Relapse on this track, with Em saying it’s in the trash. This has a bit of a different beat (produced by Eminem himself), and I really like it. Eminem still hasn’t really changed his song structure throughout the whole album (every song has basically been verse-chorus-verse-chorus-etc), but it’s been good enough for me. This album doesn’t feel like a chore to get through. 10/10
12. 25 to Life - This is a very similar song to Common’s I Used to Love H.E.R. — Common’s song is better, but it’s unfair to compare almost anything to that song. This is still very, very good. 10/10
13. So Bad – This unfortunately was sandwiched between so much awesome that I just think of this as “the song that’s right before the best two songs on the album”. Still good, but some other tracks on here blow this away…which is a little strange since you’d be expecting a Dr Dre-produced song like this to be one of the best on the album. 8/10
14. Almost Famous – This is definitely my favorite song on the album, and it’s one of the five best Eminem has ever done. The beat owns, Eminem’s rapping is better than any other song on the album, and the chorus is awesome. 10/10
    Eminem – Almost Famous
15. Love the Way You Lie (featuring Rihanna) – WIN. This reminds me a lot of B.o.B’s Airplanes. Anything that reminds me of Airplanes is good. This should be the next single. 10/10
    Eminem – Love The Way You Lie
16. You’re Never Over – Eminem’s singing is almost laughably bad, but his verses here aren’t. He probably should have had someone else sing the chorus. 6/10

*This is a preliminary review. There are rumors that the final CD will come with a code to download 12 more tracks essentially making this a double album. Some of the rumored tracks include a collaboration with Slaughterhouse and a collaboration with Hayley Williams of Paramore (which isn’t Airplanes 2). If there’s a god, at least those two songs exist somehow. The rumor has now been proven fake, and I have an excuse to use my “Proof that god doesnt exist” tag again.

This album is a complete 180 from the awful Relapse (except for Beautiful and Underground). Once you get through some rough patches in the beginning, the second half of this album is great song after great song. This is my third favorite Eminem album after The Eminem Show and The Mashall Mathers LP, both of which are classics. Eminem fans have been waiting 8 years for an album this good. 132/160 ~ 82.5%. I’ll bump that up a little bit because of how pleasantly surprised I was at this. I still have to finish my review for Reflection Eternal’s new album (and I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to give it) so I don’t know if this is my favorite album this year…but it’s definitely in my top 2. 8.5/10