Interscope announced yesterday (Mar. 5th) that Slim Shady is back! Rapper Eminem and his record label officially announced the street date of his eagerly anticipated new album, Relapse. The LP is set to be released on May 19th 2009 and will be the rapper’s first album in over for years.
Anticipation for Relapse has been building since the fall, when Eminem first announced the album title and debuted the freestyle, “I’m Having A Relapse,” during an interview on his Shade 45 satellite radio station. Last month, the release of “Crack A Bottle” from Eminem, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent brought that anticipation to a head. The track soared to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (Eminem’s second #1 after 2002’s “Lose Yourself”) and set a Nielsen SoundScan record for opening week download sales (418,000). The recording ranked third in the history of all weekly download sales. “Crack A Bottle” will be included as an album track on Relapse.
With the announcement of the release date for Relapse also comes confirmation of something that had been rumored in recent weeks: Eminem is already working on a follow-up album, Relapse 2, that fans can expect in the second half of 2009. “A lot of people were expecting Relapse to drop last year,” said Eminem. “I was one of them. Then Dre and I went back in the studio in September for a few days, and that turned into six months. We were on such a roll; we wound up with a ton of new music produced by Dre. Putting out Relapse 2 will let everyone get all of the best stuff.”
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