Avoiding Eminem while growing up in the New Jersey suburbs during the early 2000s would be like going to Wesleyan for four years and never discussing class relations. Eminem was more than just an artist for us suburb kids; he was central to our identity. I still remember riding the bus home from camp soon after “Without Me” was released, and how cool we all felt as we chanted the chorus in our squeaky voices. Eminem wasn’t cool; cool was Eminem. The better you could emulate Eminem, the more popular you were.

And then I grew up. I realized that Eminem wasn’t all that smart, that he was homophobic and misogynistic. I put Eminem to the side as a relic of my past, one that reminded me of a time when I was naïve and immature. So when I listened to The Marshall Mathers LP 2, my first Eminem album in who knows how long, the experience was surreal.

“Bad Guy” starts out with a bang. Stan may have driven off a cliff, but Stan’s brother Matthew is back to avenge his death. As he kidnaps Eminem and drives him off the cliff, he makes fun of Eminem for his chauvinism. As the car screeches over the bridge, Matt proclaims, “Slim, this is for [Stan] and Frank Ocean.”

Mathers’ paranoia still revolves around an insatiable desire to please his fans. However, he now has insight into another way that he has let them down: through his closed-mindedness. In the third verse he abandons the story, and he brings the conflict within his mind that it represents to life. He derides himself for the hate that he has spewed toward wome

n, toward gays, and toward his mom.

In fact, apologizing to his mom for treating her poorly is one of the prominent themes of this album. In “Headlights,” he apologizes to his mother for the way he acted toward her as a kid and the times he insulted her through his music. He realizes that their problems were a result of the situation they were placed in, and explains, “Dad, he fucked us both, we’re in the same fucking boat.” He understands that although his mom could have done better, she was the lesser of two evils.

Although it is heartwarming to see Eminem mature and come to terms with his harrowing past, the best moments on this album come when Eminem is his crazy self from albums past. The most entertaining song on the album is “Love Game,” in which Eminem and Kendrick Lamar detail their struggles with hip hop through describing it as a woman, using the metaphor to illustrate hip hop’s ever-changing infatuations.

Ironically enough, despite being outwardly misogynistic, the lyrics are very enlightening. They show how the desire for sexual control is parallel to the desire for recognition, insofar as human beings desire most strongly that which is hardest to obtain. This song elucidates that the source of much misogyny is jealousy. Not only is it lyrically interesting, but both Kendrick’s and Eminem’s flows are at their best.

As a whole, I am unsure of how to evaluate this album. As a lifelong Eminem fan, I really enjoyed it, but at times it felt dated. The choruses are cookie-cutter, the content of most of the songs isn’t particularly insightful, and he doesn’t expand much thematically. In an age when the world is becoming more knowledgeable than ever about the injustices carried out against minority groups, it’s hard to see a place for Eminem in the modern day.

Still, even as a cadaver, Eminem is way more engaging than most living rappers. For me, listening to this album made me feel like I had outgrown Eminem a bit, and even though it wasn’t as impressive as past albums have been for me, it was still a damn good time. I suggest you give it a listen, especially if you grew up on Em like I did.