My review: Modern Eminem is the subject of much scrutiny, with a lot of people seemingly talking about his newer work more in terms of where it stands on the Eminem timeline than where it stands as music in general. So I'm going to try to avoid doing that.
Alright, Recovery. Eminem's rapping angrily through the vast majority of it, no matter how fitting doing so is for the subject matter, and it gets tiresome after awhile. The more aggressive tone does work well in some places, but more variety would have been nice. As far as the lyrics go, Eminem uses a lot of wordplay, which is often either basic (I guess that's why they call it window-pain) or forced (I'm ready for combat man, get it? Calm Batman?), though there's some little nuggets. His battle rhymes are pretty lacking, and he's in battle rap mode for a lot of the album. Won't Back Down seems like an odd choice for a single despite Pink on the chorus, it seems to be where Em is most in "killing it" mode, like he's trying to beat the drums in a who can get louder contest. His humor is mostly just present in his battle lyrics. The one truly funny moment on the album is when he uses Jay-Z's trademark AUGH out of nowhere on Seduction. Lil' Wayne provides the single rapped feature on the album. His verse is noticeably more focused than a lot of his recent ones, but nothing special.
Eminem sings quite a lot on this album, and the results aren't pretty. Cold Wind Blows and You're Never Over are particularly grating, which is unfortunate seeing as these songs are in the two most important spots, the opener and the closer respectively. His singing is tolerable on Seduction and So Bad, but I think the only time on the album his singing adds anything is on Talkin' to Myself, where he shares the chorus with Kobe. Coincidentally (or not), that's my favorite song on the album. There's a lot of sung hooks on here in general, whether they're sung by Em, some female celebrity or an uncredited singer. There's only two rapped chorus, On Fire, which just sounds lazy, and WTP, which is a little annoying.
The production's pretty average. There's a high spot or two (neither of which are that high), but it mostly ranges from lackluster to decent. Eminem does overpower the beat on most occasions, but the mediocre production is definitely noticeable.
I think this may be more of an album to listen to by just throwing a song or two in a playlist or something. Looking at the tracklist, there's a lot of songs I like, but when I'm actually listening to the album, I just don't find myself enjoying it much. Even on a highlight track like 25 to Life, Em using the same delivery as he is on the rest of the album makes it just blend in and not stand out as much. That said, there doesn't seem to be any major highlights here. There's not that many of them either. I've mentioned 25 to Life and Talkin' to Myself, my two favorites. Love the Way You Lie's also great. After that there's Going Through Changes, which is an all-around solid track but not much more. Other than those four, there's not much I'm all that fond of.