411 Eminem Roundtable: Encore

Posted by Joshua George on 04.30.2009

Let's see how the 411 Music staff weighs in on this -- Em's last effort before his LONG hiatus!

Since 1995 Eminem has brought us envelope-pushing, line-crossing, and mainstreamingly-offensive lyrics as well as some edgy beats. On May 19th, we're going to be welcomed into another Era of Em. Not since 2004 has Marshall Mathers given us the chance to hear his stylings on the mic. We've been waiting patiently while he's worked on other projects, and now after 5 years of patience, we're about to be rewarded with his 6th album Relapse. We've been told that we're also going to be graced with Relapse 2 later this year... now if only we could actually see the release of Detox. Anyway, look no further and seek no more. We're about to go back a few years and investigate Em's Freshman and Sophomore efforts, Infinite and The Slim Shady LP.

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Part Four: Encore

Do your thing wiki. Encore is the fifth studio album by American rapper Eminem. It was set for release on November 16, 2004, but was moved up to November 12, after the album was leaked to the Internet. Encore sold 710,000 copies in its shortened three day opening week and claimed the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 200 chart for that month. The following week, Encore sold an estimated 978,590 copies, staying on top of the chart another month. On December 17, 2004, the RIAA certified the album 4x platinum, and the album has sold 5.1 million copies in the United States up to October 2008.


Is Eminem shaping up to be the best rapper of all time for the members of the 411 Music staff? Find out NOW! This week, we're going to give a break to Weng Yu as he has quite a bit of stuff to deal with right now. We wish you the best Weng!





Do you own this album?


Patrick Robinson: Funny story with this CD, well not really funny, but it was the first CD I ever bought without having listened to the album first from having downloaded it. I was leaving for a 7 week holiday and needed some new listening material, so I ran into my CD shop on the way home and grabbed Encore, uploaded it onto my iPod and got onto the plane a few hours later.


Jon Kinsey: I don't own this album and, truth be told, I had almost forgotten it existed. By the time it was released, the whole Eminem thing had, to an extent, passed me by.

Matt Shoemaker: Yes.

Ben Czajkowski: No. Nothing on this album really struck my fancy enough to purchase legally. Yeah, I said it. I have a bootleg copy. Suck it.

Daniel Wilcox: I'm pretty sure I picked up Encore more or less as soon as it came out, so yes, I do own this album.

Joshua George: I do own this album, but I can't say it's something I'm really proud of.



What are your blast tracks?


Patrick Robinson: Given it was either listen to this or some unbelievably random stuff I'd downloaded to listen to during the flight, I chose this, as I was an Eminem fan by that point well and truly. In that sense, most of the tracks have kind of been overplayed for me, but through listening it fully again for this Roundtable, I do remember "Never Enough", "Like Toy Soldiers", "My 1st Single", "Rain Man", "Mockingbird", "One Shot, 2 Shot" and "Encore / Curtains Down" getting a lot of repeat play. "Never Enough" boasts one of Eminem's better verses on the album, a tolerable verse from 50 Cent, and a good hook from Nate Dogg. "Like Toy Soldiers" always brings me in through the sample Em used on the production, plus the video is quite eerie these days, given Proof was shot and killed in 2008. "My 1st Single" I always enjoyed the concept, but the strange noises were, well, strange which has always stopped it from being one of my favorite Eminem tracks. "Rain Man" is another head scratcher as the song seems to jump from topic to topic, but there's some funny moments (in my opinion anyway, a lot of people hate this song) to save it from being too scattered. "Mockingbird" had excellent production again, likewise "One Shot 2 Shot" did as well, and I've always enjoyed the D12 cuts on Em's albums. "Encore / Curtains Down" is probably one of the best songs on the album with Em and Dre swapping bars in a such a comfortable manner, I'd really like to see them do a whole album together as rappers, as they have an excellent chemistry together.


Jon Kinsey: The honest truth be told, this album has less going for it then its predecessors. "Like Toy Soldiers" is definitely worth a listen. The sampling is truly top notch and, bucking convention, the song actually preaches for rappers to stop perpetrating violence against each other. In a culture that glamorizes murder and death, it is a rare treat to find a rapper who is willing to subvert that message. Other than that, I can't really pinpoint any other standout picks.

Matt Shoemaker: "Rain Man" is hysterical, and the beat just screams Dr. Dre (and his very small cameo on the song is hilarious in fitting with the song). "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like That" are also awesome for comedic value. "Spend Some Time" and "Puke" hit along the lines of "Superman", in the sense of the bitter, hateful anti-love song.

Ben Czajkowski: One of my favorite tracks, "Never Enough" is that in your face, edgy Eminem with potent lyrics that we've grown to love. "Like Toy Soldiers" and "Crazy In Love" are more good examples of sampling in Eminem's work. "Mosh" is solid, comparatively to "The Way I Am" and such.

Daniel Wilcox: This album features some really strong tracks, arguably some of Em's best. The first half a dozen tracks are really strong in my opinion, and while it's hard to name the pick of the bunch, I would say that "Mosh" and "Like Toy Soldiers" are clear highlights of the album. Other than that, I really love "Mockingbird" and consider it one of Eminem's most underrated tracks, so I'd always "blast" that one out whenever I listen to Encore. A few less-great but still really fun tracks include "Puke" and "Ass Like That."

Joshua George: I really liked "Puke" and "My 1st Single". I know they were childish and somewhat annoying, but I feel like it was Em's chance to just have fun and throw down some decent shit. It wasn't as good as any of the rest of his stuff -- but it was decent. I also liked "Rain Man" and "Ass Like That". I feel like while this album was a little bit of a step down lyrically -- I took it for what it was worth.



What are your skip tracks?

Patrick Robinson: "Puke" has a very catchy hook, but is offset for me by the puking noises. "Big Weenie" is just so very un-Eminem, I mean, here's the guy that pissed off half of the music industry throughout his first three albums, calling people ‘big weenie's '? "Just Lose It" got very overplayed, although if I have to listen to it, I won't complain. "Ass Like That" on the other hand annoys me like no other Eminem song before it. It's funny the first time round, then it just gets more and more irritating with each listen. "Spend Some Time" is dragged down by 50 Cent and Stat Quo, and the beat is somewhat dull when compared to the rest of the album. It just doesn't have anything to make it standout really.

Jon Kinsey: This list potentially is much longer. "Puke" is a barrage of nonsense, "My First Single" falls desperately close to unintentional self-parody and "Never Enough" suffers under the weight of its featured artists. "Big Weenie" is nothing more than senseless juvenilia. I'm going to stop now before I'm once again accused of being a Negative Nelly.

Matt Shoemaker: Just about everything else. Em's comedy attempts on this album aside from the aforementioned tracks just seem to fall a little flat, and his emotional songs sound a bit too cliched and plain. "Like Toy Soldiers" seems like Eminem is mixing his thug and emotional sides at times, and it doesn't blend well.

Ben Czajkowski: "Puke" makes me nauseous just listening to the opening, and the lyrics are pretty sloppy. Next, all the Christopher Reeves hate needs to stop. It's old. "Rain Man" is such a retarded song. It's one thing to make fun of someone, but it's pointless and cruel. As Em sings "Just Lose It", he sounds bored with it, like "yawn. I've done it before." Fart jokes? Is he really out of intelligent things to say (not that much that he says is intelligent).

Daniel Wilcox: Interestingly, many of my least-favourite tracks on this record are those produced be Dr. Dre. I might occasionally skip past a couple of the tracks in the middle such as "Big Weenie" and "Rain Man", and of course the skits if I'm so impatient as to not be able to put up with a 30 second Michael Jackson diss. But other than the aforementioned, there's nothing here that is actively bad or offensive, so nine times out of ten I'll play the album all the way through.

Joshua George: I really skip over a lot of these songs. The skits are ok, and most of the songs are meh at best. It's worth a listen through, but I don't pay too much attention to this CD.



What would you rate this album from 1 - 10?:

Patrick Robinson: I'm going with a 7.0 for this one. To be honest though, I did drastically overplay this, so some of the sentiment I have towards Encore is due to excessive familiarity I suppose. If he had gotten rid of some of the songs like "Big Weenie", or just tightened up his lyrics on a couple of tracks, I'd probably be giving this a bit higher, it does have replay value, just leave a good time in between listens.


Jon Kinsey: 5.0

Matt Shoemaker: 4.0

Ben Czajkowski: 6.0. This album spends too much time lingering in the mediocrity. It wasn't even a solid send off for such a talented rapper. Songs like "Spend Some Time", "Ass Like That", "My First Single" as such boring fucking pieces of work. B-Sides at worst. This album lacks HATE.

Daniel Wilcox: 7.0. Although nowhere near the lofty heights of The Eminem Show or Marshall Mathers LP, Encore is still a damn good set and one that is definitely still worth a listen from time to time.

Joshua George: 4.0



Final Thoughts:

Patrick Robinson: There's plenty here that will entertain you, but there's also enough here that will annoy you. The skit, "Em Calls Paul", where it sounds like he's on the toilet (I honestly hope those were synthesized sounds and not him actually on the toilet), is a perfect example of it. The skit itself is actually quite brilliant (using names of Michael Jackson's songs and albums…check it out again), but marred by the crap noises. This will probably go down as his worst album, but to be honest, I don't think it's actually that bad in the grand scheme of things. He's still riding beats like none other, still switching his flow at the drop of a hat, still able to rap circles around other artists, but whether he was reaching a point of complacency in his life or he was just beginning to run out of things to say, Encore was a sign of an artist losing his edge.

Jon Kinsey: There is something so half arsed about this album that it is terminally frustrating. We all know, from The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show just how talented this guy is. When he is on form and writing with a purpose, his lyrics are some of the best in music. They sizzle and fly of the page. Eminem's songs can be genuinely paradigm shifting, awareness altering minutiae of genius. None of that is evident from this album. It seems at times as if he wrote words to these songs on the back of a beer mat on a wet Wednesday afternoon, just to get it over and done with. The scope and depth are missing and it is as if we have regressed back to 1999 again. I'm also not keen on the production. The razor sharp, cutting edge beats of previous releases have been replaced by a stodgy mélange that steps desperately close to the sort of bland homogenized shuffling that made mainstream rap so intolerable throughout the nineties. If I had to describe this album in two words, it would be "wasted talent".

Matt Shoemaker: I'm really not a fan of this album. I try to avoid it as much as possible, aside from the three blast tracks, which are always good for a laugh. It really seems like Eminem was slipping around this time, and it shows through this album. I really just don't have alot to say about it because I avoid it at all costs. Luckily, the good songs on here are really good, which redeems it from utter failure.

Ben Czajkowski: Encore represents uninspired lyricism, mixing, and production from an artist that we've grown to expect so much more from. It's hard to even look at this album and find anything worth listening to. From start to finish, there are rarely any good tracks, with the exception of "Like Toy Soldiers" and "Mosh", there is nothing on this album that offers any kind of replay-ability.

Daniel Wilcox: While easily the worst of Eminem's mainstream albums, Encore is still worthy of Eminem's strong discography and has some real gems in the likes of "Like Toy Soldiers, "Mockingbird" and "Yellow Brick Road." Encore showcases a least-preferred side of Em, but one which is as accomplished and polished as anything else in hip-hop at the time. That said, I'm pleased that Relapse is supposedly a return to the darker tones of the albums that made Eminem huge.

Joshua George: This was definitely the worst of the CDs we've reviewed thus far. The fact that he has all the other good albums to back this one up definitely helped. This particular CD was something for him to just throw out there and I think he threw it out too soon. He was so big at the time, that he felt pressured to put out ANOTHER CD. If he had waited (like he has for Relapse) I feel like he would've been in better shape!

Stay tuned next week. As we start to wind up the Eminem Roundtable we've got a couple more tricks up our sleeve.