Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 04/12/06
Label: Shady

Say what you like about Slim Shady, but his lacerating honesty definitely makes him more compelling. In an interview in the December 2006 edition of Vibe magazine, Marshall Mathers lays out a bleak prognosis for his and his label's future. "The internet is killing us," he told interviewer Jon Caramanica. "At this point in my career, I'd be scared to drop an album for the smell of failure."

Beginning life as a mix tape, this LP is designed to introduce and establish the Shady roster. Luring fans courtesy of a couple of new Em and 50 Cent tracks (Mathers has two solo songs, "Public Enemy #1" and the by-rote defiance of "No Apologies"; he jousts with 50 on "Jimmy Crack Corn", and both drop verses on multi-rapper cuts), it's the crew's chance to set out their stall as they prepare to face the troublesome future their CEO has so bluntly mapped out. If it doesn't sell, they can argue, it doesn't matter - it's just a mix tape. But this in-built insurance policy can't help hide the fact that Shady's problems extend way beyond internet piracy.

The indecision trickles from the top down. Em has chosen to adopt a gravel-throated, knotted-brow growl somewhere between Canibus and Onyx, which lacks his usual range and subtlety. His lyrics hint at fascinating potential, only to back away: his verse on "We're Back" has him angrily protesting his perennial exclusion from Best Rappers Of All Time lists, before Obie Trice takes the track off somewhere completely different and the moment is lost.

Worse, there is little to suggest that Shady Records is home to innumerable stars-in-waiting. Stat Quo, his Southern accent and argot providing some differentiation, is the most singular of the newcomers: but his debut album, "Statlanta", has been a work-in-progress for three years and still has no sign of a release date, suggesting, at best, a lack of corporate confidence either in his work, or its saleability. Cashis and Bobby Creekwater fail to shine, while the D-12 guys - overshadowed by a posthumous Proof - do what they do.

The challenge the music industry faces is to rethink the concept of the products it offers; to find a way to give fans something more than just a collection of songs on a CD. But "The Re-Up" is not only just a collection of songs, it's a collection of songs that, you sense, its makers feel can be thrown in to the presently dire marketplace without too much being lost. If they've kept the good stuff back in the hope of better times, the decision was misguided; but if this is the best they can manage, the portents are, in the original sense of the word, ill.

    by Angus Batey