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You can listen to Eminem’s new song featuring Gwen Stefani, “Kings Never Die,” here.

My feelings on post-comeback Eminem are very, very mixed. While it’s been revisited and reappraised in many circles I still can’t enjoy Relapse at all. Recovery was a solid album with some great songs, but also a few stinkers and a distinct lack of the character and wit Eminem usually brings to his music. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was almost impressive in how wildly inconsistent it was, featuring both some of Eminem’s best (“Bad Guy,” “So Far”) and worst (“So Much Better,” “Stronger than I Was”) material.

Since then we’ve had the lacklustre compilation album ShadyXV and a handful of guest verses that, while technically impressive, feel far too try-hard for my liking. It seems like Eminem can no longer complicate a track, he has to completely dominate everything he’s featured on, for better or worse.

That’s not even getting into his lyrical maturity, or lack thereof. Eminem has always been controversial for the sake of controversy, but these lyrics are a lot less charming and harder to shake off when they from a guy in his forties in 2015, rather than a guy in his twenties in 1999. It’s made even more frustrating by the fact that he shows some fantastic moments of clarity and growth and always, without fail manages to squander them. It’s hard to believe “Bad Guy” (“I’m the bullies you hate/That you became with every faggot you slaughtered/Coming back on you, every woman you insult, batter but the/double-standards you have when it comes to your daughters”) and “Brainless” (“It’s okay to be scared straight, they said I provoke queers/’Til emotions evoke tears,”) come from the same album.

And yet despite all this, I’ve always given Eminem the benefit of the doubt. It’s hard not to, Eminem was my introduction to rap and my favourite rapper growing up. The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP are among the best in the genre, and while the cracks were starting to show on The Eminem Show, it’s still a fantastic record with some of Em’s best songs.

And because of that I can’t help be feel oddly sad to say that I’m just done with his work. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still check out any album he releases, because he still has a lot of talent. But upon listening to “Kings Never Die” I realised I just don’t care anymore. The song is terrible, “Phemonenal,” the previous song released from the Southpaw soundtrack was awful too, and Eminem is just going through the motions more than ever.

It’s not just these tracks though. It’s a buildup of frustrations with Em’s music that’s just left me bored. I’m bored of one of the most enduring artists of all time worrying about how he can’t stay popular forever. I’m bored of him claiming he’s leaving the rap game in one song, and rapping about how he’ll never quit in another. I’m bored of his weird persecution complex about not being on “your list” when he’s the best-selling and one of the most-acclaimed rappers of all time. I’m bored of him spending more time telling me how controversial he is than actually being controversial. I’m bored of him coming off as more mean spirited than anything else whenever he tries to be controversial. I’m bored of him straining to create a technically impressive flow on every song regardless of whether it sounds good. I’m bored of him contorting every lyric to awkwardly fit in more rhymes. I’m bored of him sounding like he’s trying far too hard on every song, when he used to make it sound effortless.

I’m just plain bored of Eminem. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still check out his albums, but I really do feel like the excitement’s gone. It used to be that I would get incredibly hyped for a new Eminem album. Now? Well, if he never released any more material, I don’t think I’d miss him at all. I know he’s not in his twenties anymore, I don’t expect him to approach music with the same youthful energy. But he’s failed to mature enough to replace that energy. Instead every release sounds like he’s just trying too hard to impress me. And “Kings Never Die” is just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. The song that convinced me that the king may in fact be dead.