Submitted by Shiva Suntoo -
This morning, Eminem killed Relapse 2. But by the afternoon, he explained his puzzling tweet (”There is no Relapse 2“) by announcing he’s finishing up work on another new album titled Recovery. The follow-up to his 2009 comeback LP Relapse will be released on June 22nd, just over a year after its predecessor hit stores. On Recovery, Slim Shady collaborates with Just Blaze, DJ Khalil, Jim Jonsin and Drake producer Boi-1da.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Relapse 2 was originally scheduled to drop soon after Relapse in 2009, but the sequel was delayed until this year as Eminem hit the studio with Just Blaze and Mr. Porter to work up new tracks. Last month, Em promised “big news” was coming soon via Twitter.
“I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year,” Eminem said today in a statement. “But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves its own title.” Relapse dealt explicitly with Eminem’s troubles with prescription-pill addiction, so perhaps Recovery will focus on his struggle to return to normalcy.
There’s no word as to whether anything originally planned for the sequel, namely the tracks produced by Dr. Dre, will find their way onto Recovery, nor did Eminem reveal details of a first single.