placed himself in exile shortly after wound down, a seclusion initially designed as creative down-time but which soon descended into darkness fueled by another failed marriage to his wife and the death of his best friend , culminating in years of drug addiction. none too subtly refers to that addiction with the title of , his first album in five years, but that relapse also refers to reviving and returning to rap. is designed to grab attention, to stand as evidence that remains a musical force and, of course, a provocateur spinning out violent fantasies and baiting celebrities, occasionally merging the two as when he needles one-time girlfriend and her new husband . Strive as he might to make an impact in the world at large -- and succeeding in many respects -- is the sound of severe isolation, the product of too many years of playing king in his castle in a dilapidated Detroit, subsisting on pills, nachos, torture porn, and E! Daily News. As he sifted through junk culture, he also tweaked his rhyming, crafting an elongated elastic flow that contrasts startlingly with 's intensified beats, ominous magnifications of his thud-and-stutter signature. Musically, this is white-hot, dense, and dramatic not just in the production but in 's delivery; he stammers and slides, slipping into an accent that resembles 's Rastafarian leprechaun from I Love You Man and then back again. His flow is so good, his wordplay so sharp, it seems churlish to wish that he addressed something other than his long-standing obsessions and demons. True, he spends a fair amount of the album exorcising his addiction -- smartly tying it to his never-abating mother issues on -- but most of finds rhyming twitchily about his old standbys: homosexuals, starlets, and violent fantasies, weaving all of them together on where he abducts and murders , suggesting more than a passing familiarity with I Know Who Killed Me. The many, many references to 's big ass and minutely detailed sadism can get a wee bit tiring, isn't really about what says, it's about how he says it. He's emerged from his exile musically re-energized and the best way to illustrate that is to go through the same old song and dance again, the familiarity of the words drawing focus on his insane, inspired flow and 's production. That might not quite make culturally relevant -- recycled jokes aren't exactly fresh -- but it is musically vital, which is all really needs to be at this point. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine