Rapper’s long-awaited seventh album finally gets an official title and release date. By Gil Kaufman Eminem Photo: Chelsea Lauren/ Getty Images News about a hip-hop album being pushed back multiple times or even scrapped entirely in favor of fresh tracks is not exactly a shocking development these days. But when the artist is Eminem and the release is the highly anticipated sequel to his comeback album, 2009’s Relapse, every scrap of information is treated like a Dr. Dre-blessed gold nugget. So it was confusing on Wednesday when Slim Shady shocked fans by telling them that there would be no Relapse 2. Just like that, after a year of hype, Em had given up on part two, which was reportedly going to be more emotional and lyrical than the first installment. The Evolution Of: Eminem Just hours later, though, he revealed that it would be replaced by a whole new album called Recovery, due out on June 22. Wait, what? The long and winding road to Recovery began way back in November of 2008, when details first began to leak out about Relapse . By January of 2009, 50 Cent revealed that Relapse was “almost done” and we soon learned that it would drop in May . By March, it was already known that Marshall had recorded so much material that he planned to put out a follow-up LP by the end of 2009 . Because the reclusive rapper didn’t do many major interviews to set up Relapse, most of the news about his plans came out through 50 and other members of G-Unit. “You can’t ask for more excitement from a hip-hop perspective than two Eminem albums,” 50 said in March of 2009. “One is great. It’s a treat. But the second one is exciting. … Actually, it was my idea for him to release two albums, because he had so much material over a time period,” Fif added. “The [second album] kind of feels like a sequel. They’re both written to one album topic almost, that it felt like part one and part two of the [same album]. They tie together.” A month later, Em himself revealed on his Shade 45 Sirius satellite station that he was planning to release Relapse 2 at the end of 2009, since he was already almost done with it. “It’s extremely close to being finished,” he said of the sequel LP at the time. “It just depends on how many songs I wanna put on it.” Around the time of the first album’s release, there was a lot of talk about the blood-drenched video for “3 A.M.” , the run-in with Br
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