Eminem stunned his fans on Friday (January 17, 2020) by dropping his new album Music To Be Murdered By.
The 47-year-old rapper, who had been rumored to be working on new music in recent months, released the record at midnight on Friday, with his followers quick to tune in to give it a listen.
The record, the follow-up to Eminem’s 2018 album Kamikaze, features collaborators Ed Sheeran, Skylar Grey, Anderson .Paak and the late Juice WRLD.
It appears the star, real name Marshall Mathers, was influenced by film director Alfred Hitchcock for the album – as the filmmaker released his own record of the same name back in 1958.
In addition, several of the album’s interlude tracks sample Hitchcock’s spoken word pieces from his 1958 album. And Eminem also recreated Hitchcock’s album cover with his own cover art, showing him with an axe held to one side of his head and a gun to the other.
The record also seems to be more political than Eminem’s previous offerings, with audio footage from the Las Vegas shootings in 2017 included in the video for the track Darkness. However, Eminem ends the video with a call for gun reform, with text appearing on screen reading “Make your voice heard and help change gun laws in America,” and a link to companies trying to ban assault weapons in the U.S.
He also references the bombing at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert in 2017 in his tune Unaccommodating.
The sudden release of Music to Be Murdered By mimics the impromptu drop of Kamikaze back in 2018 – which also left fans flustered at the time.
