Eminem - Recovery

Recovery is the seventh studio album by American rapper Eminem, released in June 2010 via Aftermath Records.

The best-selling artist of the 2000s in the US, Eminem has had ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200. He has sold more than 172 million albums, making him one of the world's best-selling artists. Eminem achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP, which earned him his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. His next two releases, 2000's The Marshall Mathers LP and 2002's The Eminem Show, were worldwide successes, with each being certified diamond in U.S. sales and both winning Best Rap Album Grammy Awards (making Eminem the first artist to win the award for three consecutive LPs).

With Recovery it becomes obvious that Eminem's richest albums aren't necessarily his most structurally sound, which isn't much of a surprise when considering the rapper's full-on embrace of flaws and contradictions. With Recovery Eminem admits he's been in a slump.

What has he figured out? Among other things, how to relax a little. Em will always be tightly wound but Recovery is his most casual-sounding album in years, with odes to a "white-trash party" ("W.T.P.") and songs that hearken back to his freewheeling early records — rhymes as goofy and imaginative as they are violent and profane.

In "On Fire", Eminem spins a murder-and-dismemberment fantasy into a stream of hilariously macabre interior rhymes. He hasn't entirely abandoned his old tics. He still wallows in his doomed love for his ex-wife and muse, Kim; he's still bent on settling scores with rival celebs. ("Cold Wind Blows").

There are some surprises, though. Eminem's records have generally been estrogen-free zones, but on Recovery, he joins forces with Pink ("Won't Back Down") and Rihanna ("Love The Way You Lie"). Though he remains a neurotic - a guy lost in the labyrinths of his own psyche - on the album, he goes a little deeper, laying bare not just childhood traumas but professional jealousies ("Talkin' 2 Myself").

These days, Em is finding ways to make therapy fun, including mocking his own penchant for navel-gazing melodrama. In the hit "Not Afraid", he raps, "This fuckin' black cloud still follows me around/But it's time to exorcise these demons/These motherfuckers are doing jumpin' jacks now."

Just a few years shy of 40, if he's seeming more and more like a grumpy middle-aged man, at least he's owning it - he sounds content to be rap's wittiest head case.

Check out the tracks: “Not Afraid”; “Love The Way You Lie”; “No Love” and “Space Bound”.

This double album 2LP record set housed in a gatefold sleeve is pressed in Europe on 180 Gram Heavyweight Vinyl.