Sep 8, 2020 It came out when I was 14 and I had just gotten into Eminem. I remember downloading SSLP, MMLP and TES on pirate bay via bit torrent shortly before I listened to Relapse. At this point I had no clue he was on a hiatus or that he fell off and nearly f---ing died. I was out the loop completely with rap music in general. Anyway I remember thinking it was absolute s--- apart from the McNulty skit at the beginning (goat skit), My Mom and Beautiful. I basically went from TES to Relapse skipping everything else (apart from When I'm Gone which I loved) it's safe to say I was like what the f--- is this.. Even as a kid who barely knew anything about rap music I could tell that he was nowhere near the rapper of his first 3 albums. I think I listened to the whole album for like a month trying to love it but just couldn't get over the accents or content. Fast forward a year - Forever, Airplanes and Not Afraid drop and I start stanning again. When he dropped Recovery I thought he was definitely "back" and loved it. Then from 2011-2018 it was disappointment after disappointment. My Stan days ended in 2013 when he released MMLP2, at that point I was like nah he's washed. I have no clue how he managed to pull off decent efforts with Kami and MTBMB after all these years.
Sep 9, 2020 Relapse was my first Eminem album, and I fell in love at first sight. It's only in hindsight that I can understand how Stans predating that era could be turned off at best and haters at worst. It marks a large stylistic change for Em and was his return when people thought he would never come back. I understand how you not vibe with this project, but it'll always hold a special place for me. Plus I was jazzed over the website and phone number you could call at the time.