Recovery: Eminem's Apotheosis
Or
An Actual Recovery Appreciation Thread
I've heard it said, mostly by idiots, that if Eminem had stopped making music after The Eminem Show/8 mile, he would be regarded as unarguably the greatest rapper to ever live.
The idea has its merit; Eminem had released 3 critically acclaimed, multi-platinum albums in a row, was untouchable on the mic, had 8 Mile, and some of the greatest feature verses ever spit, and a streak of W's unparalled in Hip-Hop history.
The idea is also stupid, since he did stop making music after Encore and, while he was generally regarded as a legend, he was in nobody's top 5. Nobody that I knew anyway.
I've seen Recovery get a lot of flack, both on here and on some internet forums, but mostly on here because, apparently, people seem to feel the need to distance themselves from Recovery and all it brought; the influx of teenaged (female?) fans, the re-introduction of Eminem as the centre-piece of pop culture, and the attendant proliferation of casual fans.
The term "Recovery-stan" is even used derogatorily to refer to people who know less about Eminem than you, which is idiotic.
Personally, I think most of the disdain for Recovery comes from the influx of new fans it brought Em, and a sort of rose-tinted, nostalgic view of Em's past work which, apparently, nothing on Earth will ever come close to.
But I digress.
Recovery, as a work of art, is pretty divisive, I've seen people who claim it's the greatest album ever made and I've seen people who claim it's one of the worst. That point of this thread isn't to convince anybody of the artistic brilliance of Recovery- most of the people who think Recovery's terrible are idiots anyway and not worth the energy, word to them niccas in the otherRecovery appreciation thread, and motherfuck the internet for convincing y'all that your opinion matters- but to look, objectively, at what is surely the second most important album Eminem has ever made and the record that'll catapault him into the ranks of the Micheal Jackons, The Beatles and the Elvis Presleys.
Forget what you feel, forget your irrelevant opinions, forget that the window-pane line shattered your immersion in LTWYL and left you emotionally scarred, forget that the bad screaming hurt your tender ears, and appreciate the record that put Em back on top, and one of the landmark albums of this decade