The Daily Swarm

by Stephen McNearney

Eminem’s “appearance” on Family Guy Sunday…

…marks just one instance of a promotional campaign demonstrative of a new kind of approach to the studio album release. Relapse, which drops today (5/19) in the United States, has been five years in the making – plenty of time to develop a strategy for remediating a series of telling concepts across multiple content channels.

Read this chronology of events as a stratagem for the digital-aged method of studio album release.

April 7 – Em releases the first single (both song and video) off of Relapse. “We Made You” holds true to Slim’s typical E! News formula, bashing topical celebrities from Kim Kardashian to John Maniston. Guess who’s back?

April 21 – Eminem reveals the Relapse album art via Twitter.

April 23 – Eminem.com releases a photo of Mr. Mathers checking into the “Popsomp Hills” (get it?) rehabilitation facility. Hours later, the PopsompHills.com viral marketing site launches as a redirect from The-Relapse.com, which links from Eminem.com. Furthermore, Em releases “3am,” the second official single off of Relapse, via his uncensored satellite radio station Shade45.

May 2 – In a first off for the network, Cinemax premieres the graphic music video for Eminem’s second single, “3am,” uncensored, just before airing their Saturday night pay television premiere of the horror film The Strangers. The chilling video depicts Slim as a pill-abusing patient on a murderous rampage inside the Popsomp Hills rehabilitation facility.

Bagpipes from Baghdad

May 7 – Relapse leaks. Track 5, “Bagpipes from Baghdad,” goes in hard on Mariah Carey, which sparks a very well-mediated beef between Eminem and Nick Cannon (Carey’s husband).

May 8 – Giant Magazine publishes an online article titled The Eminem Relapse Conspiracy, suggesting the leaked album is a decoy, or perhaps the first disc of a two-disc project. Widespread debate ensues.

May 14 – Thisis50.com makes Eminem’s rare indie debut album Infinite available for download. Get the album. Read about it here(album).

May 15 – Eminem makes his first ever late-night talk show appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, flying in roughly 200 laid-off autoworkers from Detroit to fill the studio and enjoy the post-interview performance.

May 19 – Relapse drops. Eminem to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! again tonight.

May 22 – Eminem will appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the third time in one week. It’s rumored that viewers will see footage of a secret Eminem show taking place in the metro Detroit area sometime this week.

This suite of content and its dissemination across multiple channels on different media has contributed to the construction of a product which is not just written on wax or bound by plastic shrink wrap. The Eminem fans who go to the store today are buying into a media conglomerate, and Shady/Aftermath will project itself into the same market with Relapse 2, Dr. Dre’s Detox and 50 Cent’s Before I Self Destruct, all slated for 2009 releases.

With the advent of digital media, the mediation and remediation of concepts becomes integral to defining the identity that music consumers used to buy at record stores and Ticketmaster. In some cases, the more product you give away, the more you sell. However, Eminem’s Relapse release, if widely successful, will argue a new direction by which producers seek to distribute content on a variety of channels, creating a sort of culminating effect for a cumulative album representative of a larger multimedia movement.