Bad Meets Evil - Hell: The Sequel

Eminem recently dropped his newest album, a collaboration with Royce da 5’9″, known together as Bad Meets Evil, titled Hell: The Sequel. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart this week after selling 171,000 copies. If you had the chance to snag a copy, let the Spine know what you thought about it. Below are a few excerpts from reviews from around the music community:

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Rolling Stone Magazine

Jon Dolan

“How nice that Eminem is following up a rec­ord called Recovery with a record about making amends. Bad Meets Evil is his collaboration with once-estranged Detroit homey Royce da 5’9″. The duo released a handful of singles in the late Nineties and shared a track on The Slim Shady LP, but standard intra-rap squabbles tore them asunder until shared grief over the death of D12 rapper and local hero MC Proof got them talking again. Their belated coming-out party gets over on an emotion you don’t often see in hip-hop: equanimity. “Two different entities with a propensity to put these ­n-u-t-s up inside of your fuckin’ mouth,” they rap. Not exactly Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park but radiating its own fucked-up sweetness nonetheless.” READ MORE HERE

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Pop ‘stache

Alex Bahler

“Welcome to the CD,” Eminem deadpans on Bad Meets Evil’s first album. That short phrase says so much more; in a rap world at the mercy of Odd Future’s gnarled hands, Eminem feels like as much of a bygone format as the compact disc.

Marshall Bruce Mathers III recognizes this, having spent recent years spitting to convince each listener why he sold 10 million of those in the first place. For him, this includes exhuming the insanity of his pre-fame work. Bad Meets Evil is the sick kid Double Dutch with Detroit blue-collar rhymesayer Royce da 5’9″. It’s not their first release: “Nuttin’ to Do/Scary Movies,” the duo’s awesomely flippant street single, came out when Eminem was the shock rapper du jour.” READ MORE HERE

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Billboard

Jason Lipshutz

“What exactly does “Hell: The Sequel,” the debut EP from the Eminem–Royce da 5’9″ collaboration Bad Meets Evil, represent for Eminem? A victory lap following the amazing success of last year’s “Recovery”? A return to the gonzo wordplay of “The Slim Shady LP”? A listenable platform for the long-underrated Royce (and by extension, the newly revived Shady Records)? Or simply a collection of hot, murky beats that Em felt like spitting over?” READ MORE HERE

– MF & JB