It is hard to defend the indefensible, but while Eminem has said some unconscionable things in the past about womankind, he worries at length about being a good father to his daughter (and the two nieces he adopted from his ex-wife's sister). 'Ow!' he mugs, having now ticked off the box marked 'the One That Re-establishes I Have Not Gone Soft'. But there's also an amusing bit where God strikes him down with lightning. Track one, 'Cold Wind Blows', reiterates what a sick, sociopathic individual Eminem is, challenging all comers with shorty-hatin' abuse. 'The last two albums didn't count,' Eminem sniffs, resolving to employ the zeal of the recently recovered to rhyme dextrously about doing vile things to women. Lil Wayne and Kanye West have become the genre leaders, a fact Eminem acknowledges on the engagingly self-flagellating 'Talkin' 2 Myself'. No Eminem album has ever really flopped – Relapse 'only' sold 3 million it won him his third Grammy – but hip-hop has moved relentlessly on since Eminem released his first three imperial albums. His last album, 2009's Relapse, marked the return of the rapper after a long addiction to prescription drugs Recovery continues the process of trying to crowbar Marshall Mathers and his sweary soap opera (starring his multiple personalities) back into cultural relevance. As it's Eminem, all that fuss – the repeated postponements, renamings and leaks – is turned up to 11.

'Cinderella Man', a track on Eminem's album Recovery was produced by Script Shepherd, not, as we said, Just BlazeĮminem's sixth album, Recovery, comes pre-installed with the kind of histrionic fannying-about now featured as standard on high-profile US urban releases. The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday 11 July 2010

Eminem recovery album art