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Relapse is the sixth studio album by American rapper Eminem. It is scheduled to be released by record label Interscope Records, along with subsidiaries Aftermath Entertainment and Shady Records, first on May 15, 2009, followed by May 19 in the United States. Relapse will be Eminem's first studio album since Encore in 2004, thus ending the rapper's musical hiatus.

Background
Since 2005, Eminem had intended to take a break from recording his own music in order to become a hip hop producer for other rap acts, especially for the artists signed on his own label Shady Records. Such a break came when Eminem canceled the European leg of the Anger Management Tour in the summer of 2005 due to exhaustion and an addiction to sleeping pills. In the following year, the rapper's remarriage to his former wife Kimberly Scott lasted only eleven weeks before a second divorce, while his closest friend and fellow rapper DeShaun "Proof" Holton was later shot and killed during an altercation outside a nightclub in Detroit. Devastated by this, Eminem relapsed into prescription drugs and became increasingly reclusive from the outside world, as he would rarely leave his house nor appear in public.

Speculation on an upcoming album by Eminem was reported since mid–2007 from announcements made by artists 50 Cent and Stat Quo, a current and former member of Shady Records respectively. Also, rapper Bizarre—member of the hip hop group D12—stated that the release of the group's third studio album was on hold because Interscope Records wanted to release Eminem's album first. By the end of the year, additional musicians associated with Shady Records, including The Alchemist, Bishop Lamont, Cashis and Obie Trice had confirmed on different occasions that the rapper was effectively working on a new album. On September 12, 2007, during a call at the radio station WQHT Hot 97, Eminem stated that he was in limbo and was not sure whether he would release any new material in the near future. The rapper then elaborated that at that point he was constantly working in the recording studio and was happy he had come to terms with his personal issues. In December 2007, however, Eminem was hospitalized due to an overdose to methadone. In early 2008, he began the twelve-step program to recover from his addiction and, according to himself, has been sober from April 20, 2008.

Recording history
In the initial recording stages of Relapse, record producer and long-time Detroit collaborator Jeff Bass of the Bass Brothers worked with Eminem on twenty-five tracks, for two years after the rapper had received treatment for his sleeping pill-addiction in 2005. The death of Proof caused Eminem go fall into a period of "writer's block", where he felt everything he wrote was not worth recording. To compensate for this, Bass chose to follow a production style that would allow the artist to rap "off the top of his head, as opposed to writing a story." Eminem would then freestyle or record vocals one line at a time before interrupting and then recording another line. At the same time, according to the Eminem's song rights supervisor Joel Martin, the rapper began collecting additional songs without noticing it, as he would often record or produce material initially intended for the musical projects of other artists, but end up with tracks he really liked. "Beautiful", produced by Eminem, was the only song on Relapse that was recorded in these years while he was not sober.

Eminem purchased the Effigy Studio in Ferndale, Michigan in 2007, and ended his working relationship with much of his former production team of the 54 Sound recording studio, including the Bass Brothers. He then continued recording the album with producer Dr. Dre, who in September 2007 stated his intention to dedicate two months to the production of Relapse. Working with Dr. Dre allowed Eminem to concentrate on the processes of songwriting rather than the production, which was largely taken care of by Dre. The rapper justified his choice of using Dr. Dre for the vast majority of the production due to their long collaborative history and a musical "chemistry" only he and Dr. Dre shared. This allowed the rapper to pick the beats from Dr. Dre's catalog that challenged him rhythm-wise in order to experiment with different flows. The making of the album progressed at the Effigy Studio up to a year after, as recording sessions were then moved to Orlando, Florida in September 2008. By then, Eminem had began to start writing verses again at such a pace that he often took more time to record the lyrics than write them. He credited sobriety the reason behind his new creative run, acknowledging that his mind now free of the clutter that "blocked" him during his drug abuse in the last years. The song-writing process would start by Dr. Dre giving a number of his beats on a CD to Eminem, who in a separate room in the studio would listen and selected the ones he preferred and inspired him the most. The rapper would then write lyrics to the instrumentals, while Dr. Dre and his production staff continued to create new music. Once he felt he had written lyrics for enough songs, Eminem would dedicate and entire day to record his songs to the point that he would lose his voice for the following days. At that point, the rapper would then begin to write lyrics for new songs. The process continued for the next six months, and allowed Eminem to have enough material also for a second album, Relapse 2.

During this recording period, a handful of songs intended for Relapse were leaked on the Internet, including an incomplete version of "Crack a Bottle". The song was then finished in January 2009 with additional vocals from Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. Despite the leak, in February 2009 the album was being completed in a state of near-total secrecy, according to the British newspaper The Independent. Even Polydor Records, the multinational owner of Interscope, had no information on the album at the time. On April 23, Eminem suggested he and possibly Dr. Dre were the only ones in possession of the final copy of Relapse, while his manager Paul Rosenberg added that even Eminem's record labels were not in possession of the music at less than one month from the release date in order to prevent possible bootlegging.

Music and lyrical content
In an interview for XXL, Eminem described the concept behind Relapse to be the ending his drug rehabilitation and thus rap as if he was on drugs again, as well as the return of his fictional "crazy" alter-ego Slim Shady. According to the interviewer Datwon Thomas, Eminem's influences for the album came from his own past drug issues, as well as television shows and documentaries involving crime and serial killers,as the rapper was fascinated by "serial killers and their psyche and their mind states".

Relapse opens with the skit "Dr. West", where actor Dominic West voices a drugs counselor whose lack of trustworthiness causes Eminem to fall back to drugs and the return to his Slim Shady madman character. The skit leads to "3 a.m.", where Eminem depicts himself as a psychotic serial killer during a spring of homicides at late-night. When "3 a.m." came out as a single prior to the album's release, Eminem noted that it the closely mirrors the overall dark tone of the album. On "My Mom", the rapper traces his addictive tendencies to his mother, and thus to have turned out to be a drug addict just as her. Eminem continues his family tales on "Insane", where he imagines himself as a victim of child molestation. For Eminem, the goal of "Insane" was to make song that would disgust the listeners and "make them puke", adding that he came up with this idea after thinking of the song's first line ("I was born with a dick in my head/Yeah, fucked in the bed"). His alleged former-girlfriend Mariah Carey along her current husband Nick Cannon are targeted of "Bagpipes from Bagpipes", where Eminem raps over a pungi loop. After "Hello", where Eminem re-introduces himself after years of being absent "mentally", the rapper continues his violent fantasies on "Same Song & Dance", where he abducts and murders Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. The upbeat rhythm of "Same Song & Dance" reminded Eminem of a dance track, which inspired him to write something in order to "get women to dance to it and not really know what the fuck they're dancing to" without listening to the lyrics. On the ninth track of the album, "We Made You", Eminem mocks several celebrities and plays the role of a "pop star serial killer". Eminem noted that his various "celebrity bashings" were not meant to be seen as personal attacks, but rather it was him "picking names out of a hat" that rhymed with the words he wanted to use during the writing process. On "Medicine Ball" Eminem mocks and impersonates deceased actor Christopher Reeve, in order to get his audience to "laugh at it, and then almost feel bad for laughing". Dr. Dre also has a guest appearance on "Old Time's Sake", a duet Eminem described as a "fun, yet reminiscent record old times" with him and Dre rapping back and forth each other. The song is followed by "It Must Be the Ganja" where Eminem comes to believe that working in the recording studio is like a drug and an addiction to him.

After the skit "Mr. Mathers", where Eminem is recovered to a hospital, "Déjà Vu" addresses his overdose in 2007 and drug dependency during his hiatus from music. On the song, Eminem also explains how this has affected him in the last five years, to the point where his daughter becomes scared of her father's behavior. "Beautiful", a ballad which samples "Reaching Out" by Rock Therapy, also deals with the same time period where Eminem believed he had "reached rock bottom" and lost hope for his future. Eminem felt it was important to include "Beautiful" on the album as a reminder to himself as well as "anybody who is in a dark place […] that you can get out of it". After "Crack a Bottle", a collaboration with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, Relapse ends with "Underground". On the final track of the album, Eminem sought to bring back to his music and lyrics the subject matter and punchlines reminiscent of "The Hiphop Shop times" (The Hiphop Shop was a clothing store in Detroit where local rappers – including Eminem – would compete in freestyle battles ), before he had gained notoriety and thus did not have worry about the explicit content of his lyrics.

Artwork
The album cover for Relapse was first published through Eminem's Twitter account on April 21, 2009. It illustrates a head shot of the rapper composed by a mosaic of thousands of pills. A sticker on the cover resembles a medical prescription, where the patient is Eminem himself while it lists Dr. Dre as the prescribing doctor. Gil Kaufman of MTV News described the cover as a reference to the rapper's struggle and addiction to prescription drugs, adding that it follows Eminem's habit of displaying personal issues in his art.

Release and promotion
In 2007, Shady Records rapper Cashis discussed the album, referring to it by the title King Mathers, adding that it would be released later that year. However, Eminem's publicist Dennis Dennehy would later deny this, stating that "there [was] no album scheduled for a 2007 release" and that as of August 2007 there was no confirmed title either. No other official statement was made for over a year, when on September 15, 2008, at an event held by Shade 45 to celebrate the publication of Eminem's autobiography The Way I Am, the rapper confirmed his plans to release a studio album by the title of Relapse. During the party, he also previewed to the audience a song called "I'm Having a Relapse".

In regards to the album's release date, Rolling Stone wrote on the issue of October 2008 that Virgin Megastores had planned to distribute Relapse on November 27, 2008, coincidentally on Thanksgiving in the United States. On October 27, a spokesperson for Interscope explained that there was no official date at the time, and that any release dates that had been posted on any website were unfounded. In a phone conversation during the finale of Total Request Live on November 16, 2008, Eminem asserted that Relapse would be released during the first quarter of 2009, precisely during either of the first two months of the year, explaining that he was in the process of selecting the songs for the album.

Despite the leak two months before, "Crack a Bottle" was eventually released for legal paid digital download as well as a promotional single on February 2, 2009 and also reached the number one position on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, while, according Eminem's manager Paul Rosenberg, a music video for the song was produced and directed by Syndrome, but has not been released thus far. At the time of the release, various contradicting reports disputed whether the song would be included on Relapse. Despite the initial confusion, in a press release head label Universal Music Group eventually confirmed the single's inclusion on the album. In similar press statements, since March 5, Universal made public the regional release dates for Relapse. The album will be available as early as May 15, 2009 in Italy and the Netherlands, while it will be sold in most European countries and Brazil on May 18, and the following day also in the United States and Australia. Additionally, the record label also announced a second album by Eminem, Relapse 2, which will be released by the end of the year. Eminem explained that he and Dr. Dre had recorded a considerable amount of music and thus, by releasing two albums would allow listeners to have access to all of his music.

After the release of "Crack a Bottle", the music video of the single "We Made You" was aired on April 7, and became available for purchase a week later on April 13. The video was directed by Joseph Kahn and premiered simultaneously on several MTV channels, as well as MTV's website. On April 28, the third overall single for the album, "3 a.m.", was released once again for paid music download. A music video for "3 a.m." was directed by Syndrome and filmed in Detroit. It premiered on May 2 on Cinemax, several days after a trailer for the video was posted online. Two more singles were distributed prior to the album's release, as "Old Time's Sake" and "Beautiful" went on sale on the iTunes Store on May 5 and May 12 respectively.

Previously on April 4, 2009, Eminem was featured on CBS during the network's coverage of the 2009 NCAA Final Four, in segment where he recited the spoken word "Love Letter to Detroit". Later on the same day, the rapper inducted the hip hop group Run-D.M.C. to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Adam Graham of The Detroit News described this as "all part of the calculated promotional push" for Relapse. The rapper will perform live at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards on May 31, while he appeared on the covers of hip hop magazines Vibe and XXL in their respective issues of June 2009. Eminem also announced through his website that an iPhone game to accompany the album is set to be released on May 19, 2009.