Even more edge than the feller from U2…
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[3.36]
Ian Mathers: If this was a new artist, do you really think we’d have it on the Jukebox? That unpleasantly pinched voice, the rhymes devoid of wit or complexity, a goofily over-dramatic production – nothing about this song is appealing. Two points for a chorus that manages to muster up some sort of mild melodic appeal.
[2]
Hillary Brown: Not exactly stellar work here, and several shades of creepy, even though that’s exactly what Em is trying to achieve, but quite an improvement, really, considering the last single he put out. At least this one, if it doesn’t have a very varied vocal line, is a little more rhythmically nimble, and the production may be somewhat annoying but has some nice touches. Fingers crossed for a song that doesn’t mention Kim Kardashian, good as her last name is for rhymes.
[4]
Rodney J. Greene: The problems are three: his once slippery flow of syllables, altogether awe-inspiring when delivering twisting rhyme schemes such as in this song, has devolved into a regimented cadence; horrorcore stylings like these only worked for Eminem in the era before he lost his sense of humor; he still has a tendency to rap in silly voices. In light of the awful shit Eminem has released in the past half a decade, these problems are altogether relative.
[6]
Jordan Sargent: I don’t buy the thinking that the subject matter is rote by Eminem’s standards. Rapping about murdering, dismembering and nearly eating family members in the grips of drugs is still engrossing subject matter, especially when the details are as vivid as they are on “3am”, wherein he kills McDonalds workers, jerks off to Hannah Montana in the middle of the afternoon and wraps his cousin in Christmas lights before slicing him up and almost drinking his blood. What holds “3am” back from being a straight-up return to form is Em’s toddler rapping voice and Dre’s by-the-numbers haunted house beat. Almost there, though.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: An inert Dr. Dre beat should dissuade those few fans still looking forward to the release of Detox; the man couldn’t produce an erection in a strip club these days. His beat is a good fit for Eminem’s forced nightmare-rhymes, however. Where Em once sliced through the limits of good-taste with surgical precision, obliterating the line between winking seriousness and poker-faced trickery, he now bludgeons us with tired set-pieces. Not to mention that the hook is irritating as fuck.
[2]
Al Shipley: I wasn’t really that into it even back when he was actually good at these kinds of songs. The fact that they actually bothered to change the melody for a few bars just to build a bridge around Buffalo Bill quotes is kind of hysterical, though.
[3]
Tom Ewing: It’s so drastically monotonous you feel it must be intentional, like the deliberate ugliness of the third Daft Punk album – but WHY? To add pity to shame, imagine how delicious a goofy horrorcore Eminem rap would have been ten years ago.
[3]
Dave Moore: This is really bad even by “free movie made exclusively for the Comcast OnDemand FEAR channel” standards. For those of you not familiar with Comcast’s OnDemand FEAR channel, those standards are low, even by low-standards standards. And he even hits a minor pet peeve in the shitspray — “3 a.m. in the morning”? Really?
[1]
Iain Mew: Not funny enough to work as humour, not horrific enough to shock and not even schlocky enough to work at an exaggerated midpoint, it’s difficult to know what the idea is here. It does work as sort of sad, not least when resorting to Kim Kardashian again, but I doubt that was intentional.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: I like the dramatic Dre production, fitting the slasher-flick lyric in what might be a too-blatant way, but Eminem gets worse and worse. He can still turn a good internal rhyme, though he sustains this less well, but the mischief and fuck-you tone has gone from his voice, displaced by a whiney nasal quality. We’re not going to get anything good from him again, are we?
[3]
Frank Kogan: The rhymes come so quick and tight as to feel like a mechanism, and Eminem is trapped. He sounds like the walking dead, which may be the point, but that doesn’t make this good. I’d have given “We Made You” a 6, since I found its weariness and rigidity strange and compelling and touching, whereas this is just pitiful. But I can’t tell you what the difference is.
[3]