coup de grâce - /ˌko͞o də ˈɡräs/

a final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.

noun

The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) flows like a single plot following an epic battle between Eminem and Slim Shady, with Em walking up the stage one last time.

As Eminem experiences and watches the current state of society, his mixed feelings, hatred, and overall resistance to contemporary America (or ‘Murica, as he says) allows Slim Shady to be reborn inside his mind like a small voice that keeps growing and growing throughout the album.

The Death Revival of Slim Shady

In classic Slim Shady fashion, most of the lyrics in the first songs feature a lot of disses, calling out multiple rappers, celebrities, and acquaintances from his life, making many references to previous people and minorities he had spoken about, as well as a lot of references and sensations from old songs.

An interesting aspect of this revived Slim Shady is the ability to both diss himself as Slim Shady and also be dissed by Eminem as a clear show of conflict between thoughts, alter ego, self-consciousness, and satire; which is somewhat new to his game.

As the album progresses, Slim Shady becomes powerful enough, fueled by his evilness and antagonism to the world’s new world™️, that he starts to become a detached entity that Eminem acknowledges he must fight both internally and externally to kill.

Before the next section, some observations I want to address (🤓👆🏻):

• I LOVE that the “news journal” skits are back.
• Some songs clearly imitate old songs in a contemporary fashion.

Murder Suicide

Eventually, we reach a point in the album where Em finally confronts Slim Shady in “Guilty Conscience 2.” After a “My Darling” with Slim Shady, Eminem finally, artistically speaking, kills Slim Shady for the better, citing all the people with whom he had beef and also the consequences of his alter ego over the years. And with that, the symbolic part 2 of the album begins.

Family & Ken Kaniff

With Slim gone, even though some songs after “Guilty Conscience 2” still have the casual rap diss (but this time as Eminem himself), Eminem turns his attention to his family and vocalizes his feelings to people whose lives matter to him. He opens up about being afraid of not being here anymore and leaving with a sensation of failing those he loves, with a special shout out to both “Temporary”, another collaboration with Skylar Grey (making it the ninth time), and “Somebody Save Me”.

Both these songs are explicitly targeted to Eminem’s children (especially Hailie) and Alaina (whom he has always treated like one) and loved ones. They bring back some of the emotional, raw sentiment Eminem speaks through in songs like “Mockingbird” and “Hailie’s Song”, with “Somebody Save Me” ending the album with a song about an alternate reality where Eminem never got sober and his addiction killed him, making both Slim and Em dead, symbolizing the end of his career, but also beautifully expressing his feelings and goodbyes to those he cares about.

With all that this album symbolizes and the massive content filled in each line, this album becomes an instant Eminem masterpiece, with some of his most well-made lyrics and underlying meanings of all time.

I knew I wanted to listen to a breakcore and D&B album as soon as learnt about the existence of those genres from popular youtube mixtapes. The loud and intense rhythm combined with ethereal background sounds creates an experience that sets this genre apart from others in this digital era. Ultraviolet is a great album and a great introduction to the style. Bonus for the re-listenability while working on doing chores.

Funny, diverse and it rocks. Surprised with this one, which I stumbled on by accident on a weird-dreamy-shit reels on instagram.

Now, K-pop cannot be trully appreciated without the complete package - which usually includes song, visuals, dance and merchandising - so it would not be fair to only judge Le Sserafim’s comeback based on the album songs only.

With that being said, I don’t even need to talk about the rest, as this album alone is great enough to sustain itself, a feat displayed multiple times by Le Sserafim. With a diversed yet consistent underlying theme and song proximity, EASY is energetic, feminine, powerful and sticks in your brain.

With all five of them sharing the spolight across the songs, it’s EASY to differ them by their unique voices and pitch - a quality often lost in current K-pop groups.

plugg+synth+trap+shoegaze+punk+rap+muchmore genres across 28 songs, FULL TIME LOVER is a psychedelic trip between the listener and the sound. It got me in such a good mood when listening it, too. got me kinda hyped.

Ooh yeah. I loved the the melancoly embed into the vocals, I loved the guitar riffs and I love punk rock. What else to say? I vibe with the rage in this one.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I’m not used to house or deep house, but I can see myself dancing to this at a club. Although Chicago made, it felt very euro-dancy to me.

At first, I felt it sounded like Goodspeed You! Black Emperor but it quickly became more ambiental and harder to focus on, as the constant wind sounds scratched my brain but also made it more experimental than what I’m used to. Still, I found it to be an above average quality of sound, meditative and sometimes otherwordly.

Alicia Bognanno’s authentic and raw voice combined with her noisy low fidelity alternative rock creates an album that is consistent in every song with upbeat melody yet pessimist in it’s lyrics. I enjoyed every minute of it, and will be expecting more of her.