搬運自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎上添加了英語原文與排版調整）?

翻譯：June Hess

審譯：Lynn Liu

排版：Lynn Liu

Eminem?has been one of music’s hugest stars for more than two decades, yet over the years he’s increasingly taken on the tendencies of the cult artist — the deepening sense of embattled insularity, the hapless angst, the lack of interest in the genre he once transformed. On his 11th album, all the old enemies are present: the women who do him wrong, the family members who messed him up, the rappers you may or may not remember he has beefs with, the annoying fans, the haters, and, most important, the self-immolating man in the mirror. He savages them all with a virtuosity that now feels more like a cudgel than a gift, as if he’s leaning into the shredding-for-shredding’s-sake, Yngwie-Malmsteen-of-hip-hop?accusations that have dogged his recent albums, particularly 2018’s confrontationally dreary?Kamikaze.?“Similes and idioms/Giddy up!” he demands on “Little Engine.” And they definitely do, at times to stunning effect, though the dervish humor and gremlin bounce that made his original Silly Putty-psycho shtick an American classic remain in relatively short supply.

二十多年來，Eminem一直是音樂界超級巨星之一，但這些年來，他漸漸接受了這個受人崇拜的藝術家的人設，四面楚歌的孤立感與不幸的焦慮日益加深，這使他對他曾經(jīng)改變的音樂流派缺乏興趣。在他第11張專輯中,以前所有的敵人都出現(xiàn)了:冤枉他的女人，把他搞得一團糟的家人,那些你可能記得或者不記得的和他有過沖突的說唱歌手,惱人的歌迷，那些他討厭的人，還有最重要的，那個鏡子里自焚的男人。他用他的精湛才藝對所有人進行了猛烈的抨擊，在這張專輯中，他的才華比起天賦來，更像是一件武器，仿佛這是為粉碎這些東西而生的。人們曾評價他就像是嘻哈界的Yngwie-Malmstee，這一直影響著他最近的幾張專輯，尤其是2018年那張對抗式沉悶的《Kamikaze》。“比喻和習語早就準備好了/馬上讓你眼花繚亂”他在“Little Engine”中唱到。這些歌詞確實達到了目的，而且有時效果驚人，不過他反諷的幽默和無可比擬的說唱技巧讓他從默默無聞的說唱歌手成為了美國經(jīng)典，并且現(xiàn)在依舊很少有人能實現(xiàn)這種效果。

He does seem to have thrown a little more intellectual, thematic, and emotional elbow grease into this record. The title of?Music to Be Murdered By?alludes to a 1958 collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and film composer Jeffrey Alexander, and?Hitchcock’s voice appears in segues throughout. Eminem piles on movie references, calling on everything from?Reservoir Dogs?to?Rocky?to?8 Mile.?But no real concept, cinematic or otherwise, develops — unless “fuck me and fuck you too” is a concept, in which case this is a veritable?Tommy.?“Such a wide range of emotions/Migraines, but why the fuck am I takin’ these Motrins?/Ibuprofens, like a drop of rain in the ocean/And you’re my fix on the days when I’m broken/But the shit’s about to go sideways, I just know it,” he raps on the dispirited “Never Lose Again,” one of many examples of his still-unimpeachable genius for dazzlingly ornamented lyrical decadence — the emotional pain cave as Sistine Chapel.

他似乎確實在這張唱片上投入了更多的內容和情感。《Music to Be Murdered By》這個名字暗指1958年Alfred Hitchcock與電影作曲家Jeffrey Alexander的合作，Hitchcock的聲音貫穿始終。Eminem參考了大量的電影資料，從《Reservoir Dogs（落水狗）》到《 Rocky（洛奇）》再到《8 Mile（八英里）》，應有盡有。但沒有什么電影或其他東西得到實質性發(fā)展，除非說“fxxk me and fxxk you too”是一個概念，在這種情況下，這才有了真正的《沖破黑暗谷》。“各種各樣的的情感/偏頭痛，但他媽的我為什么要吃這些藥/布洛芬，就像大海里的一滴水/你定格在我破碎的日子里/但我知道，只會越來越糟”。他在傷感的“Never Love Again”里唱到，這首作品是體現(xiàn)他才華的眾多例子之一，他的才華鑲嵌在歌詞的頹廢之中，大放光彩，這種情感上的痛苦就好比西斯廷教堂。

Eminem has plenty of dragons to slay on this 20-song, 64-minute set. First up: us. The Dr. Dre-produced album-opening “Premonition” lashes out at the critics who haven’t liked his last two albums: “Rolling Stone?stars, I get?two and a half outta five, and I’ll laugh out loud/’Cause that’s what they gave?B.A.D.?back in the day.” The 2.5-star review of LL Cool J’s 1987 album,?Bigger And Deffer,?that he’s evidently referencing comes from the 2004 print edition of?The Rolling Stone Album Guide,?which isn’t online. But when it comes to airing out his grudges, no amount of having to drive around Michigan looking for a Barnes & Noble will hold Eminem back. It’s the kind of monkish attention to detail that bespeaks a true craftsman.

Eminem的新專輯這包含20首歌曲，長達64分鐘，其中有很多讓人印象深刻的地方。首先，由Dr. Dre制作的專輯首單“Premonition”，這首歌對那些不喜歡他上兩張專輯的評論家們進行了猛烈的抨擊。“滾石的明星們，我拿了兩顆半星我會笑出聲來/因為過去他們說很糟糕?！盠L Cool J 1987年的專輯《Bigger And Deffer》得到了2.5星的評價，顯然他指的是滾石2004年的印刷版專輯指南，該指南沒有在網(wǎng)上發(fā)布。但說到發(fā)泄他的怨氣，在密歇根開著車到處找Barnes & Noble也消不了Eminem的氣。這首歌是一種對細節(jié)的關注，同時顯示出他真正的才華。

Musically, he gestures toward the current hip-hop world a little more intentionally than his hermetic-sounding albums have tended to in the recent past. The buoyant “Godzilla” features leftover verses from the recently departed emo-rap icon Juice WRLD, serviceably sutured into Eminem rhyme clusters delivered in a rapid-fire blur that’s almost microtonal. Anderson .Paak lends his light Cali-soul growl over Dr. Dre’s springy beat on “Lock It Up”; the brutally mean-spirited breakup song “Farewell” has a lithe, reggae-tinged beat from Southern rap producer Ricky Racks. The best production moment is “Yah Yah,” a frenetically grinding, Busta Rhymes-sampling posse cut with Black Thought of the Roots, Em’s Detroit buddies Royce da 5’9″ and Denaun of D12, and Q-Tip soulfully singing the hook.

在音樂方面，比起之前那些聽起來很神秘的專輯，《Music to Be Murdered By》更刻意地朝著現(xiàn)今流行的嘻哈音樂靠攏。輕快的“Godzilla”融入了最近去世的emo-rap偶像Juice WRLD的遺作，Eminem用近乎微分音的調子快速說唱著，這與Juice WRLD的元素配合得近乎完美。Anderson .Paak在“Lock It Up”在Dr.Dre創(chuàng)作的有力節(jié)奏中融入了其加州靈魂式咆哮；殘酷刻薄的分手歌曲“Farewell”加入了南方說唱制作人Ricky Racks輕快、雷鬼風格的節(jié)奏?！癥ah Yah”可謂是全專最佳，這首歌非常瘋狂，它采樣了Busta Rhymes的歌曲，然后the Roots的Black Thought、 姆爺?shù)滋芈傻幕锇镽oyce da 5’9″和D12樂隊的Denaun在這首歌中同姆爺合作，當然，還有Q-Tip在歌曲中深情地唱著副歌。

In a new lyrical wrinkle, Em steps into the role of political commentator and protest voice, with mixed results. On the grueling, six-minute “Darkness,” the album’s most ambitious performance, he attempts to inhabit the mind of the gunman responsible for the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that took 58 lives. His impulses are in the right place (the song’s intense video ends by imploring “When will it end?” and then asks people to register to vote). But the song itself doesn’t stretch much outside Eminem’s lyrical comfort zone: “If I bet you I’ll be in tomorrow’s paper, who would the odds favor?” he raps, placing the person responsible for the worst mass murder in U.S. history within the same needy-lonely-white-guy emotional valence as “Stan.”

在一個新的情境中，姆爺扮演了政治評論員和抗議者的角色，結果說不上好壞。在專輯中最具野心的歌曲“Darkness”中，他試圖讓人想起2017年拉斯維加斯音樂節(jié)大規(guī)模槍殺事件的兇手，他殺死了58個人。他的沖動是正確的(這首歌的視頻帶來緊張感，以懇求“什么時候結束?”，然后要求人們登記投票)，但這首歌本身對于Eminem自身而言沒有什么突破。他在歌曲“Stan”里唱到“我敢打賭，我準會出現(xiàn)在明天的報紙上，你覺得誰的勝算更大?”，同時他把美國歷史上最嚴重的大規(guī)模槍殺案的罪犯和魔鬼放在同樣孤寂的白人情感之中。

Such a moment of moral urgency, however muddled, also has the knock-on effect of rendering other bits of expected shock-rap offensiveness more glaringly uncomfortable. In the requisite evil-ex screed “Farewell,” he plays loftily with the love-as-murder theme, comparing toxic romance to being “tethered together like felons,” but makes sure not to leave out the stomach-churning venom, calling his errant paramour a “l(fā)ittle cunt.” And what’s with the lazily assholic endorsement of strip club sexual harassment in “Those Kinda Nights,” an icky-horny collaboration with Ed Sheeran? Psychotic mass killers: You get a voice. Women working in strip clubs: Not so much.

The most egregious self-owning oversight on?Music to Be Murdered By, especially in the context of “Darkness,” is “Unaccommodating,” featuring fire-breathing Brooklyn rapper Young M.A. Eminem undercuts an impressively manic spree of rhymes by tossing in a half-assed allusion to another concert tragedy: “I’m contemplating yelling ‘bombs away’ on the game/Like I’m outside of an Ariana Grande concert waiting.” Within hours of its release, the song prompted a statement of condemnation from the mayor of Manchester. For Eminem, acknowledgements of our shared humanity may occasionally happen in the abstract, but specific instances in his music are still hard to come by.

像是這種道義迫切性的時刻，無論多么混亂，也會產(chǎn)生連鎖反應，使得其他意料之中的令人震驚且冒犯人的說唱變得更加讓人不適。在“Farewell”中，他把愛情比作謀殺，把有毒的浪漫比作“像重罪犯一樣被拴在一起”，但他沒有忘記令人反胃的毒液，稱他的出軌情人是“小婊子”。在與Ed Sheeran合作的“Those kind Nights”中，脫衣舞俱樂部對性騷擾的那些懶散贊同是怎么回事?精神病性殺人狂:你發(fā)出聲音了。脫衣舞女:并非如此。

《Music to Be Murdered By》專輯中最自私過分的疏忽，尤其是在“Darkness”的背景之下，就是和布魯克林說唱歌手Young M.A合作的“Unaccommodating”這首歌。Eminem通過暗諷另一場演唱會的悲劇，來削弱令人印象深刻的狂歡:“我考慮在演唱中大喊‘有炸彈’/就像我在Ariana Grande的演出場會外等待一樣?！边@首歌發(fā)布幾小時后，就受到了曼徹斯特市長的譴責。對Eminem而言，他或許偶爾會有共情的時候，但這在他的音樂中仍然很難找到。