Eminem Recovery Album Cover Location
Gunilla
I originally considered asking my neighbour to use his fourteenth century Hall as a backdrop for the album cover photoshoot. He owns a Hummer and has a collection of sports cars including a yellow Lamborghini and I contemplated asking him if he would allow me to use the Hummer within the scene for the album cover. My model was very keen to be photographed at the steering wheel. However, I decided against this; it could have worked as Eminem is famous for owning a Hummer H2.
I decided Blackstone Edge Moor in Littleborough would be a perfect location to the backdrop to my album cover. I visit Blackstone Edge regularly with my dogs as the area is close to my home. The location at present is ideal for my album cover photoshoot as the moor looks black and desolate as swailing has been under way. Swailing is controlled burning or prescribed burning and is a technique sometimes used in forest management and farming and grassland ecology. Hazard reduction or controlled burning is conducted during the cooler months to reduce fuel buildup and decrease the likelihood of serious hotter fires. Swailing is usually overseen by fire control authorities and the fire service ensures the fire does not burn out of control.
Eminem's career over the last several years is a textbook case of the perils of early sucess. He one of the all time canonical rap albums (the Marshall Mathers LP, easily in the top 20 of the genre), starred in this generation's answer to Saturday Night Fever, and been voted 'best rapper alive' by Vibe (essentially the rap Pulitzer). As a career highlights reel, this is not half bad, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that for most people, a list ofaccomplishments like this would provide a free pass to retire to San Tropez, play golf all day, eat tons of foie gras and lapse into a comfortable state of perpetual self-satisfaction.
Our old friend Marshall, however, is not most people. Both artistically and personally, Eminem has been unable to escape his past for the last decade. Encore and Relapse, his two most recent albums, were particularly grating for fans of his early work. Rather than building on his previous triumphs, these albums descended into shoddy self-parody, with Eminem flogging his familiar template of shock value and sophmoric humour to increasingly diminishing returns.
Not only that, it was clear that the overly familiar personal issues at the centre of his early work (his fucked up mom, his fucked up wife, his fucked up daughter and how fucked up it had made him) were becoming intractable; despite airing them out in dozens of songs, he didn't appear to be moving past them. Booze, pills, domestic assault, the death of his best friend in disturbing circumstances, creative failure, self-parody, pastiche and despair; this is not a career arc you'd wish on anyone.
Recovery, then, is Eminem's attempt to halt this slide. This is the sound of the man getting off the pills, trying to handle his personal shit, atoning for past misdeeds, and attempting to recapture his crown. For a fan, it's heartening to hear him drawing attention to his past failures and attempting to correct these wrongs. And in this sense it's a remarkable work. While a lot of once-great artists put out horrible albums, very few of them dedicate their next album toapologising (literally) for their past misdeeds and trying to correct for them. In an occupation as egotistical as the music business, it's not surprising that the apology album is a rare occurrence.
Nonetheless, that's exactly what we have here. This a deeply personal work by a man acknowledging his career has gone in the wrong direction and attempting to get it all back and bring the heat again.
So does it work? Well no; on the surface it's a complete train wreck. First of all, this is a remarkably self-indulgent record; 17 tracks, each of which is crammed with an almost indecipherable amount of content. Recovery is bursting with hyper-complicated, bafflingly technical, difficult-to-digest lyricism. From a technical standpoint the rhymes are incredible; the 17 year old rap nerd in me is slack-jawed in awe. Nonetheless, technical skill is not the only ingredient to good rap music, and in a decade of increasingly simplelyricism it may actually come across as rather anachronistic. The beats are plodding 4/4 numbers with very little character or bounce; as a result, very few songs stand alone as engaging pieces of music, particularly distressing for a man who used to have a deft way with a single. The album is splattered with embarrassing hooks, an OzzyOsborne guest appearance, rap-rock beats, and 'What is Love' samples.
So, essentially we're dealing with a total piece of crap here. Well, yeah; except for the fact that, for just a few tracks ("Talkin to Myself", "Going Through Changes", "Not Afraid", "25 to life") it appears that Eminem may actually be making music up there with the best moments of his career. These songs are remarkable for their lack of pretense; rather than resorting to hyperbole to obscure the true extent of his issues or falling back on simple shock tactics, he simply discusses the stuff he's been going through for the last few years. Touching on his frustration at his creative slump ('Talking toMyself'), sharing insight into his battles with depression on ('Going Through Changes'), begging atonement and vowing to recapture his crown ('Not Afraid'), these tracks actually do present a new direction in Eminem's work.
This sort of Updike-esque honesty and lack of adornment, for a guy thisdeeply fucked-up, is actually pretty engaging. It's these moments, where Emimen drops the shock tactics and lets down his guard, that the album works the best, and where you get the sense that despite the dramatic lows his career has hit, he may actually be developing creatively.
So, then, Recovery is not the album you hoped for if you're looking for an Eminem return to form. The songs where he attempts to reiterate his past glories are arguably the biggest failures of all. The album is a sprawling, confusing, self-indulgent mess. Nonetheless, there are real glimmers of brilliance here, and a sense that if Marshall Mathers is able to sort out some of his personal shit and be a little more honest he may still have some great music in him. As a recovery it's a shaky first step, but it's progress nonetheless.
Eminem's album "Recovery" depicts him walking alone on a faded blue sky background, representing his journey of recovery from past drug addiction and other problems. The red cross replacing the O in "Recovery" and the medical sign symbolism references Eminem recovering from an illness or addiction. The blurred background focuses attention on Eminem moving forward on the road to recovery on his own through a difficult process as indicated by the title and cover art imagery.Read less
The cover is alright,but I could care less about the cover they could have a big piece of poop on the cover and I would still buy it if the songs were dope!! All about the music so pumped for this album
HIP HOP IS DEAD: are you ok? soulja boy and eminem. its like taking candy from a baby. u say hip hop is dead but support the girl who ruined it in soulja boy. eat a dick. u got no taste in music. LOLOLOLOLOL
breaking billboard history with his first single is pretty big marketing my brah. not to mention em can and does go at least gold his first week on his name alone. him and maybe jigga now are the only rappers who could do that at this point
yea man thanks for that info about jonathan ross.! i just looked it up and yea eminem is going to be on Friday night with jonathan ross June 4th. Alongside with Andy Roddick, LL Cool J, and Christina Aguilera. Eminem gonna be happy cause he loves LL.! haha anyone seen that prank call.? jason from miami.! haha
Maybe the cover on the right is poking fun at the lazy ass marketing niggas who sit around wtatching tv instead of making sure the promotion for this album is on point! One single? No video for said single? No tracklist? Confirmed Guest?
That said, Not Afraid is alot better then being insulted with another We Made You or Just Lose it, those were really getting old by Without Me, every time he put one out after that it annoyed me more and more
would u rather the whole album leaked?? fuck that.. this is just like the olden days, restlessly waiting on the release date. i dont want to know every song inside out by the time it drops.. I just cant wait though!!!!
The thing is niggas are so used to rappers just sticking photos of themselves posing with a maybach that when a cover with actual meaning comes along they stumped. The right ones dope.
Better resolution pics here btw:
I actually liked the original one with him on the bed the most, but with that said, I prefer the left one. But I am copping both, also downloading officially on itunes, and the actually Record through Bestbuy.com like they did with Relapse. I will never open the the record. Not like I have a player to spin it on anyways.
Best rapper dead or alive. Ever! Gotta support my dude to the fulliest.