Has there ever been as steep a dropoff in hip-hop history worse than Eminem on Encore? While Slim Shady had always been a polarising figure in the rap game since he started, it was hard to argue that he had the skills to back it up until he somehow got the hip-hop version of Kryptonite on his fourth record. As much as people like to clown Eminem for royally screwing things up after The Eminem Show, he thought that Encore looked like a masterpiece compared to what Relapse sounded like.

Then again, there are a lot more high points on Relapse than even he gives it credit for. Since this was supposed to be about him coming back after overdosing on pills, there’s a little bit of heart halfway through the record, like the songs where he seems to be talking to himself from beyond and allowing himself to come back to Earth to raise his daughter.

In fact, there are pieces of the record that foreshadow where he would be going on Recovery a few years later. ‘Beautiful’ is certainly a decent radio jam showing that he has a heart, but it’s almost like this song walked on the charts so that ‘Not Afraid’ could dominate the conversation in 2010.

For all the highlights, though, there are more than a few questionable moments on the record that never sat well. The idea of Eminem doing an entire project from the point of view of a serial killer is certainly an interesting idea. Still, the amount of fake accents that he puts on during the recording toes the line between sounding genuinely disturbed and the kind of villain that would pop up in a particularly messed-up cartoon show.

Despite having far greater lows on Encore, Em still thought that listening to Relapse over again was far more painful, saying, “I would argue that Encore is a better album than Relapse. Relapse is something that I looked back on in a few years and cringed at. I was like, ‘Jesus Christ’. I didn’t know I was doing that many accents. I started on this weird serial killer vibe and wanting to talk crazy.”

As much as he doesn’t like hearing himself trying to sound like some cold-blooded killer, it’s arguable that that accent at least makes the songs memorable. ‘My Mom’ is probably one of the worst examples of him using his accent to get the point across, but ‘Same Song and Dance’ is one of the more disturbing songs that he wrote since ‘Kim’, as he sings about going about his business as a killer as if it’s a regular nine-to-five job.

That’s before getting into the Relapse: Refill edition of the record, with tracks that probably should have never been cut from the original record. As much as people knock the accents, all could have been forgiven if he had included his feature on ‘Forever’ by Drake into the mix, which brought together the equivalent of the hip-hop Avengers onto a single track.

Relapse is still a decent outing for Eminem at that point in his career, but if Music to Be Murdered By is any indication, he probably wanted his fans to forget about that record. Sure, it’s not the best Eminem record in the world, but do fans deserve a song like ‘Insane’ less than they do ‘Big Weenie’?