I hate Eminem. I think he's a complete jackass, but I can't deny his rapping skills. Yeah, all of his singles sound like lame carnival music with goofy voice-overs, but his rhymes are insanely clever. His subjects have always been easy targets just as his insults were cheap shots, but he wove them all together so tightly it was almost impossible to call him out. Until now. Encore is Eminem's first serious stumble. It's trite rehash after trite rehash followed by pointless filler. Lyrically, he's still pretty much just poking a retarded girl with a stick underneath his cowardly layers of meta-dialogue, but his grouses are so petty, it's nearly impossible to empathize.