Eminem Unleashes Surprise Album, Kamikaze

Last night at midnight, Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal began streaming a new album from Eminem, titled Kamikaze, with no advanced publicity or announcement. On a metaphoric level, It’s really the best title for such an aggressive album that nobody saw coming.

Kamikaze features guest appearances from Joyner Lucas, Royce Da 5’9, and Jessie Reyez. It includes a song written and recorded for the upcoming film, Venom, as the final track. The cover art is an homage to License To Ill, an album by Beastie Boys. The album is 13 tracks long with Dr. Dre and Slim Shady serving as executive producers.

The Detroit native rapper shared links to the album on streaming services and online music vendors on Twitter as soon as it was released, saying, “Tried not 2 overthink this 1… enjoy.”

Eminem has taken this opportunity to express his aggravated opinion on the poor performance of Revival, the album he released last year, and to denounce many young voices in hip-hop today including Tyler, The Creator, Lil Yachty, Lil Xan, Lil Pump, and especially Machine Gun Kelly. There may also be subtle disrespect directed at Drake regarding ghostwriting.

He mocks the choppy flow that pervades the music of the most popular rappers right now. You’ve heard about the Migos flow. Eminem makes a point to show off his musical and lyrical prowess, changing his style of delivery several times within a single song, never sticking to one flow.

Shady also has plenty of shade to throw on Joe Budden, DJ Akademiks, and Charlamagne Tha God for criticizing his music harshly in the recent past. Aside from this, He gives shout-outs to the likes of Kendrick and J. Cole.