The Real Slim Shoddy

adies and gentlemen, welcome to The Eminem Show. Please refrain from throwing rotten fruit and other projectiles until the angry white man has exited the stage.

Marshall Mathers or Slim Shady or Eminem or whatever the hell we're calling him these days is back with another album just in case we forgot how hardcore and controversial he is.

"I hit women! I almost shot someone once because I was reeeaallly angry! I hate my parents! I am a good father despite being a raging nut bag!" That's an abridged version of what you can expect on The Eminem Show or any other Shady album for that matter. Apparently, even though he doesn't have anything new to say, he can regurgitate the same old "my life's hard" garbage on top of a new beat, and no one will notice.

I'm onto you, Mr. Mathers, and your act is stale.

On "Sayin' Goodbye to Hollywood," he complains, "I'm trapped/ If I could go back/ I never woulda rapped/ I sold my soul to the devil/ I'll never get it back/ I just wanna leave this game with level head intact."

Well, I certainly wouldn't be grief stricken to see him stand by his words, especially if he keeps dropping duds like "Drips," a little ditty dedicated to STDs and "Hailie's Song," a stomach turning ode to his daughter.

On "Hailie's Song," Slim opens with a gentle warning: "Yo, I can't sing/ but I feel like singing." Then, perhaps as a cruel joke, he does sing--excruciatingly--interspersing carefully rhymed curse words and references to his genitalia with how much he loves his daughter. My mother used to sing me to sleep the same way. Maybe his kid can use the money she gets from the album to pay for extensive therapy.

And, of course, you know Eminem wouldn't step up to the mic without his bodyguard in the hip-hop industry, Dr. Dre, who, this time around, proves to be the real brains of the outfit. In truth, Dre's hands are so busy working his little pet project's strings that this album should be called The Eminem Puppet Show.