Science Fiction | Ethical Hacking | Ideas | frictionfree.blogspot.com

Eminem Grows Older, but Not Up We have watched Eminem age, all of us, difficult as it has been. We’ve seen him lash out at his mother, his then-wife, and his fans. We’ve seen him soften ever so slightly under the weight of fatherhood. We’ve seen him court protest, then express befuddlement over the hubbub. We’ve seen him retreat into drugs, and then climb out of the morass. Despite all this, we have barely seen Eminem grow up. His preoccupations are largely fixed, his toolbox constant. He has almost certainly been the greatest technician working in hip-hop over the last decade and a half, but those skills — an outrageous command of language, a gift for harrowing storytelling — are often put in service of the familiar. Eminem is 41 now and still staring down the same barrels of old on “The Marshall Mathers LP 2” (Aftermath/Shady/Interscope), his relentless, demanding and often convincing seventh major-label album. Notionally it’s a sequel to his second major...