Over the past decade, American critic Robert Christgau has been Eminem's most intelligent defender—he even found a way to love Encore—and in 2006, Christgau wrote the smartest thing that will ever be written about the art of Marshall Mathers for The Believer. A sample:

Part of the charm, brilliance, and power of [Marshall Mathers III]’s triune persona is the way it disintegrates. On the one hand, it’s a subtly calibrated work of psychological imagination, on the other three-card monte to sucker the thought police. Nevertheless, Eminem’s album titles—The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, Encore, and finally (so far) the greatest-hits Curtain Call—do signify an aesthetic evolution, from persona to person to artist to goodbye to now-I’m-really-going. Once I rated Marshall Mathers over Slim Shady because I thought the debut thinned out toward the end and because, as a card-carrying mature person (it gets me in cheap at the movies), I appreciated the depth of “Stan,” “Kim,” and “Who Knew,” in all of which Marshall the person reflects on the surprising success of Slim the reconstructed id. Shifting and feinting, the debut’s “My Fault” and “Rock Bottom” have a lot of Marshall in them, but not like The Marshall Mathers LP, where the illing title track, for instance, suggests Marshall the real-life homophobe, etc. rather than Slim wilding—Slim gets his own space only in “The Real Slim Shady,” “Kill You,” and “I’m Back.” Some would include “Kim,” but the song’s moral is too powerful for Shady’s purposes. Held up by philistines, ideologues, and ninnies as Exhibit A in the case of The Good People v. Marshall Mathers, Eminem’s second excellent wife-murdering song exposes, complexly but unmistakably, the shameful and indeed unmanly insanity of jealous rage. Go after something dumber—Neil Young’s “Down by the River,” say.

All of which makes Christgau's diss of Relapse—a record that "disappointed, even shocked" him with its failures—all the sadder. (See subject line.)

Re: the alleged failures of Relapse: I'm still trying to figure out what it's trying to do, and only after that can i judge if and how it's failed. (But the would-be confessions about stepfather sex abuse are...something.)

Xgau illo cribbed from his Rock&Roll&... column (and full, highly searchable virtual Xgau vaults here.)