Is This Love?

9.8.22

Eminem, 50 Cent Is This Love (09)

Eminem released Curtain Call 2 on August 5, 2022. This is his second compilation album, that mainly focuses on hit records from previous albums, singles or collaborations. This project also included recent new track from the Elvis Movie Soundtrack, as well as his new single with Snoop Dogg. When the album dropped, there was one new song that was completely unreleased, that had been stashed in the vault.

Is This Love, the unreleased single on Curtain Call 2, is a single with Eminem and 50 Cent which was recorded in 2009. The song has been previously unreleased, and has now made an appearance on the Curtain Call 2 album. Earlier this week, Eminem released an animated music video to go along with the single.

This animated video comes days after the VMAs, where Eminem and Snoop Dogg created an incredibly animated visual for their performance at the VMAs. Visuals were inspired by their NFT projects, as Eminem and Snoop Dogg were able to perform as themselves, and as their Bored Ape characters. Em definitely likes to stay on top of the trends, and be good at them, so it seems like he is taking the AR world very seriously.

The music video has a bunch of Eminem inspired characters running around the streets of a town with Jason Masks and chainsaws (iykyk), causing complete destruction and chaos. 50’s verse includes his character in a ski mask, robbing a bank for all it’s worth.

Usually I do not find interest in animated videos, but the quality is honestly so good, it could be a mini film. They have a whole storyline here as well, that mostly goes with 50 Cent’s verse which is completely off topic of Eminem’s content, but they tend to just go in and have fun.

When it does come down to the song, my instant reaction was that I thought Eminem has re-recorded his verses more recently than 2009. The flow and the lyrics are definitely 2009 Eminem. This was when Eminem released Relapse and had tons of quirky flows, goofy bars and accents. 50 Cent’s voice sounded off to me as well, but I figured it may have not been completely polished at that time, as they did not select it to release on the album. However, the Reddit blogs are strictly talking about 50 re-recording his verse, and he very well could have. The most recent single he has, his voice does sound a bit more similar to.

Due to the fact that Em did drop this unreleased single, fans were thinking that there would be a Relapse 2 on the way, of other unreleased songs from this time period. On Part I of Eminem’s interview with Paul Rosenberg on the Paul Pod, Eminem and Paul cleared up that there will not be a Relapse 2. Em suggested there is likely enough material, but not good material. He shared that he realized he was over the accents and the content on this project rather soon after it released. Initially wanting to do a double album, he opted for Relapse: Refill instead, and then moved on, putting this Relapse 2 to rest.

Old song, new animated style video - thoughts?