It feels like a montage or tribute to his entire career. (Renaissance sounding akin to infinite, Lucifer is a nod to 'music to be murdered by', Temporary is like When I'm gone 2, for example)
I think his last two albums were hinting towards this project.
If you put it under a magnifying glass and go through it with a fine tooth comb, you find more and more. This album just keeps giving and it gets better with every listen.
It has been promoted as 'the death of slim shady' and that this character is being laid to rest and that concept works but this album has layers of meaning and different concepts work.
'Heres a concept that works': Eminem first promoted this album with 'Houdini' and in his promotion for Houdini he claimed, 'I'm going to make my career disappear'. Now was that Eminem or shady claiming that?
Well if you listen to the album in order it seems like Eminem is killing off Slim shady but the album also works as a montage/tribute to his entire career and how slim shady died off over his career starting with how Eminem decided to take the Christopher Reeves song off of Encore.
This was a defining moment in his career, as I remember myself thinking, why didn't he just leave it on? Has he gone soft? And he never really felt like shady since then,
UNTIL NOW!
SLIM SHADY IS BACK!
and if you listen to the album in reverse order of the track listing it conceptualises his rise to fame coming from poverty and being saved from that but his downfall with addiction. alongside that, in reverse it is Slim shady that kills Eminem!
The album makes Chronological sense in reverse order...
Could there be a part 2/ B sides of a complete Shady take over?