Finally speaking out about the title of his latest album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Eminem has confirmed it’s not going to be a sequel. So what will it be?
“A revisitation,” he says to Rolling Stone. “To me, it’s more about the vibe, and it’s more about the nostalgia.”
After hearing that Eminem’s eighth studio album would be called The Marshall Mathers LP 2, fans were wondering what they could expect from the rapper. Would all of the material relate to the original?
Apparently not. “There’s not gonna be, like, continuations of every old song on there or anything like that,” he says.
That does sound like some of the songs could be continuations of previous ones, and even though we have the tracklist for the album, we might not know which ones will fall under that umbrella until MMLP2 is released on November 5.
So far, however, of the songs that have been released, we hear an old-school sound from Eminem, but not necessarily anything that feels like a sequel to a previous record. “Berzerk” harkens back to the Beastie Boys era, while the Call of Duty: Ghosts theme, titled “Survival,” talks more about his current position as a rapper. “Rap God” was also recently released, with the title being fairly self-explanatory.
The Marshall Mathers LP is, to many fans, Eminem’s best record. Many have wondered — us included — if he was taking a risk by doing a followup album. “Calling it The Marshall Mathers LP 2, obviously I knew that there might be certain expectations,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to call it that just for the sake of calling it that. I had to make sure that I had the right songs.”
And, according to the interview, Eminem is working around the clock to make sure everything is exactly right, to the point that he’s down to the wire to get everything finished on time.