【搬运】【译】NME杂志评Eminem 2018年专辑《Kamikaze》
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：Lynn Liu/ Yana.Z
校正：Ryan-Chopin
Eminem is not happy. We know because he tells us, in the opening seconds of ‘Kamikaze’, like he’s psyching himself up: “I feel like I want to punch the world in the fucking face right now“.
我们知道，Eminem并不开心。他在《Kamikaze》的开头几秒钟突然兴奋起来唱着：“我觉得我现在TMD想要给全世界一拳！”
He’s upset, mostly, about the fact that people didn’t like his last album, the not-particularly-great ‘Revival’, released on December 15, 2017. That LP continued down a course he’d been set on since 2010’s ‘Recovery’, an Eminem that had lost sight of the cartoon devil fans first fell for in the late ’90s. Latter-day Eminem was earnest, goddy, flawed, lacking confidence even, and on ‘Revival’, pointedly political too.
很多时候，Eminem都很丧，因为人们并不喜欢他上一张不够特别的专辑——发行于2017年11月15日的《Revival》。这张专辑延续了2010年《Recovery》的风格，《Recovery》道出了Eminem的自我挣扎，因为他曾深陷90年代后期的第一次低谷期中。当时他试图更加努力，可性格却出现了缺陷，甚至缺乏自信，而且我们能看到《Recovery》的矛头直指政治。
‘Revival’ featured a grab bag of gimme-a-hit-please guests: Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and the ubiquitous Ed Sheeran, who co-wrote the sappy ‘River’. It wasn’t a total stinker, but it was just another ‘meh’ release from a once iconoclastic artist who’d slipped into middle age as a Slim Shadow of his former self.
《Revival》由 Beyoncé, Alicia Keys 以及大火的Ed Sheeran（共同创作了“River”）共同助力发行。这不是一张制作失败的专辑，而是一位反传统的音乐人创作了又一张“无聊之作”罢了，这时候的Eminem如他的原身“Slim Shadow ”一样，已经迈入中年。
The criticisms of it clearly stung: “They been pannin’ my album to death/So I been givin’ the media fingers,” he spits on opener ‘The Ringer’, a track which delivers, in jaw-dropping, super-quick flow, more honesty and ire than we’ve seen from Eminem in years, calling out journalists, fellow rappers and fans who’ve turned their back on him.
这次我们在新专中能看到他对其批评言论的反驳：“他们已经把我的专辑批判成一文不值/我被媒体针对了，”所以他借“The Ringer”嘲讽那些带动舆论的人，用令人吃惊的语速表达他的愤怒。我们看到了比原来更加真实和愤慨Eminem，他用音乐唤醒曾经背弃他的那些媒体，同行和粉丝。
It should be noted that ‘Revival’ went to Number One on both sides of the Atlantic, and that a significant portion of his missing fans – if indeed there are any – are likely to have jumped ship due to Em’s vehement anti-Trump stance (he refers to the President as “this evil serpent” on title track ‘Kamikaze’, and later dubs him “Agent Orange”).
值得注意的是，《Revival》曾位居众多欧美国家的专辑榜的榜首，而且之前有很大一部分粉丝很可能因Eminem强烈反对特朗普而脱粉（他在同名曲“Kamikaze”中将总统称为“一条邪恶的蛇”，后来又称他为“Agent Orange”）。
And you suspect, partly, it’s the embarrassment of hyping up your own grand return, only to find it wasn’t your ‘68 Comeback Special. Contrast the titles of the two releases – ‘Kamikaze’ is Eminem launching a torpedo at his own career.
大肆宣传自己回归后发现，你根本不能像猫王那般《‘68 Comeback Special（华丽归来）》（猫王于1968年宣布回归时发行的专辑），这可能会让你很尴尬。 但对比前后两次发专回归，《Kamikaze》更像是Eminem在自己的职业生涯中发射的一颗不可小觑的鱼雷。
So Eminem’s metric for success is unclear, but perhaps it stings just not being talked about as much. “Revival didn’t go viral”, he says on ‘Greatest’. In a fit of hubris, the nature of this album’s release – dropped with no warning, with a cover art concept pilfered from Beastie Boys’ ‘Licensed To Ill’, is Eminem trying to go viral – something that anyone who’s ever tried to create ‘viral content’ will tell you involves a certain amount of alchemy and has nothing to do with how much you want it to happen.
由此看来，我们不得知晓Eminem是如何定义成功的，但他在无形中告知了大众：成功是经得起议论的。他在“Greatest”中唱到：“Revival didn’t go viral（上专并未大火）”。他在一阵狂妄中，这张专辑终于问世——并且是无预警发专（专辑封面的灵感源于Beastie Boys的“Licensed To Ill”），这一次，他就是奔着大火的目的来的。而任何想要大火的人都能明白这一点，想火得靠真金火炼、经验积累，而不是空想就能成的。
There’s a sense Eminem struggles with the modern world, hitting out at hip hop’s biggest current stars and commentators (Tyler, Drake, Lil Yachty, Lil Xan, Lil Pump, Joe Budden), declaring that “the boom bap is coming back with an axe to mumble rap” and failing to understand what constitutes a hit album nowadays. This year alone, Kanye’s multiple releases and Drake’s streaming-friendly 90-minute ‘Scorpion’ have changed the nature of the form, for better or worse, but despite its delivery, ‘Kamikaze’ is very resolutely an old-fashioned album: 45 minutes and 13 tracks long, including two skits in which Eminem’s manager Paul expresses his concerns over the concept in a phone call (“Are you really just going to reply to everybody who you don’t like what they have to say about you or the stuff you’re working on? I don’t know if that’s really a great idea”) and Eminem’s furious return message (in which he says he’s going to hunt down an online commenter). Really though, who leaves voicemail these days?
（这张专辑）给人感觉Eminem在与现代世界作斗争，他抨击嘻哈界的当红明星和评论员（Tyler, Drake, Lil Yachty, Lil Xan, Lil Pump, Joe Budden），还宣称“流行的bap正气势汹汹地回归到声嘶力竭的说唱音乐中”，也不清楚什么样的专辑才能成为当今热门。单是今年，侃爷的多张唱片和公鸭长达90分钟的《Scorpion》就已经改变了说唱形式的本质。但无论好坏，《Kamikaze》仍然坚定地秉承了一个老式的专辑的特点：45分钟里13首歌，其中有两个片段透露了Eminem的经纪人保罗的担忧（“你真的打算要回怼那些人的批评看法吗？我觉得这不是一个好点子。”）和Eminem的愤怒回怼(他说他会抓住一个网上说风凉话的人)。真的如此的话，谁不想能在网上碰上他呢？
The message, again and again, is that Eminem is butt-hurt. We forgot about Em, and moved on to rappers he considers inferior. “Do you have any idea how much I hate this choppy flow / I can see why people like Lil Yachty but not me though,” he says, in one of his more measured barbs.
这类似的信息一次又一次地出现，都表明了Eminem真的受到了伤害。我们忘记了他，转而去推崇那些他认为不如他的说唱歌手。“你知道我有多讨厌这种起伏的状况/我能理解为什么人们喜欢Lil Yachty而不是我，”他用一种更谨慎的讽刺口吻说道。
For artists like Eminem, born into an industry that little resembles the music scene of today, the ground has shifted underfoot. Celebrated in his early career for his battle-rap hardened flow and for being nasty and dangerous, he now operates in a world where opiate-speed rap dominates and in a genre that is, in some ways, pushing for nuance and tolerance of difference. So when he attacks Tyler, The Creator with the line “Tyler create nothing/I see why you call yourself a [faggot], bitch,” it’s shocking in all the wrong ways, and he knows it – the word is muted out, so why say it at all?
对于Eminem这样的艺术家们来说，他们出生在一个相悖于当今音乐界的时代，他们脚下的土地正在发生变化。在他早期的职业生涯中，他以他的说唱比赛打响了名头，并因其思想肮脏且危险而闻名。如今，他用鸦片侵占人体般的速度在说唱音乐世界夺得了主位，在某种程度上，这推动了对差异的容忍性。所以他这样攻击Tyler时（“人人称道的创造者Tyler什么都没做/我明白你为什么称自己为同性恋、小婊砸，”），用了这种令人震惊的错误方式，他明明知道有些词被抵制了，但他为什么又要这么说呢？
But there are plenty of moments on ‘Kamikaze’ that remind us of Em’s greatness: the shift in flow on ‘Normal’, the haunted beats and clipped chorus of ‘Greatest’, the Bon Iver-sampling ‘Fall’. Eminem’s always been at his best when he’s pissed off, and for all its ‘poor me’ posturing, ‘Kamikaze’ at least feels honest, something that Taylor Swift’s boo-hoo-Kanye-is-mean album ‘Reputation’ misfired on. The guests here are wiser choices than on ‘Revival’, in that they don’t steal the limelight from Eminem – among them rappers Joyner Lucas and Royce Da 5’9 and singer Jessie Reyez.
听《Kamikaze》时，我们能回想起Eminem的伟大之处。这张专辑里有节奏变化无穷的“Normal”，旋律抓耳的“Greatest”，还有取样Bon iver歌曲的“Fall”。Eminem气愤的时候总是他的最佳状态，尽管他的“poor me（可怜的我）”只是故作姿态，但《Kamikaze》至少让人感觉很诚实，这恰好是霉霉暗喻diss侃爷的《Reputation》缺乏的一点。相比于前段时间发行《Revival》时，有些人做出了更明智的选择，因为他们（包括说唱歌手Joyner Lucas和Royce Da 5’9以及歌手Jessie Reyez）没有抢尽Eminem的风头。
“Revenge is the best medicine,” Em raps on the title track. His revenge relies on how the rap world will respond to his throwing down of the gauntlet. At this stage, the worst that can happen for him is for nobody to respond at all. Old man shouts at cloud. Will the cloud shout back?
“Revenge is the best medicine。（复仇是最好的救药）”Eminem在专辑同名曲中唱道。他的报复实际上取决于说唱界会如何回应他的挑战。但在这个阶段，对他来说最糟糕的是根本没有人回应。试设想：如果一个饱经风霜的老人对着浮云大喊大骂，悠哉悠哉的浮云又会不会反击呢?
