What's crucial to refer is the record's context. Considering Em's own words - "Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushing 'em out" from "Talkin' 2 Myself" - Recovery was the first disc he made with a percipient idea in at least 8 years; maybe ever.
"But it's music," you think. "Who needs a light head for that? The Beatles made the bulk of their later triumphs on acid." This isn't the same.
The Beatles were experimenting with new stuff, and they had reached a flush so stratospheric that whatsoever they released would be worshiped by critics and fans alike. Em's situation wasn't like that. His was life-threatening. (And yes, I just compared Eminem to The Beatles. Deal with it.)
It was the album Em shouldn't have been capable to make. The album which candidly chronicles the rock-bottom-and-subsequent-rise-from-the-ashes of one of the biggest (if not the biggest) stars in music. The album that many other drug-influenced musicians were never able to make. Recovery, to put it plainly, is his "I should be dead" album.
The Road...
I've followed Em very closely since he emerged on the mainstream - remember this? - in 1999. Sure, the guy could rap like crazy, make great beats and construct true songs, a severely underrated piece of rap. (Example: Game is a great rapper. His part is the perfect mix of rough and powerful, yet he hasn't proved to be a good crafter of song since he and 50 Cent broke up. Have you really, genuinely liked any of his albums/mixtapes since borderline-classic The Documentary? Didn't think so.)
Yet it was quite clear, from the real beginning, that Em had demons. And where there are demons, there's hostility. And where there's hostility, there are episodes. Em had episodes. But these episodes were chronicled in classic songs - "Cleanin' Out My Closet" perhaps the superlative of all - that became huge hits and made millions of dollars for himself, his label, his handlers and clones, so everyone was cool. The quiet before the storm, you might say. That was 2003.
Then things got a bit silly, to Em's own admission. As he told Rolling Stone in a riveting interview with contributing editor Josh Eeels (Nov. 25, 2010, Issue 1118), he would insert the studio with a "pocketful of pills, and I would only go into the studio and goof off." He referenced the 2004 sessions of Encore as his goofy peak. " 'Rain Man,' 'Big Weenie,' 'Ass Like That' - that's when the wheels were coming off," he admitted.
Drugs had permeated the music. The mightiest star in rap - a style which cannot, in price of book sales, critical acclaim, pop culture impact, et al. be debated - had fallen victim to what so many before him had. He would go the new Brad Nowell, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, a sensation whose creative peak was foggy and washed out by addiction. Tupac and Biggie were killed - these men were killed by their demons.
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