Slim Shady is Back!

Actually, is he even going by the name Slim Shady anymore? Or is he doing a Lil Bow Wow and dropping the Lil, but in his case just calling himself Eminem. Either way, he’s back and on the cover of XXL magazine. In the issue Marshall Mathers gives hip-hop artists, Lil Wayne and T.I, their props for making rap music more creative and powerful. The article reads:

Rap star Eminem has paid tribute to peers TI and Lil Wayne for restoring “substance” to hip-hop. The Without Me star’s new album Relapse is released in May and in an upcoming confessional interview with genre magazine XXL, the rapper reveals the extent of his addiction to anti-depressants and his grief over the death of friend and D12 member Proof.

And after the release of his new single We Made You, Eminem has revealed that despite taking a break from music he remained connected with hip-hop and felt the genre was “going downhill” during his absence. “It seemed like kinda fast,” he explained. “You know, in them three years, it was like everybody just cares about the hook and the beat; nobody really cares about substance.

“But with this new TI album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now.” He added: “You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know.

“Or TI, where you hear s**t and you’re like Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that! You know what I mean? “Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more.”

I’m excited to see what Eminem has up his sleeves for this next album. He can’t have 12 tracks about D-List celebrities…or can he?