Eminem: The Eminem Show

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

Here he goes again, rappin' them ole hip-hop super-celebrity blues.

But unlike the provocative fun Eminem had with his identity crisis on the previous The Marshall Mathers LP, or the gutter genius he displayed on it, this third album isn't quite as scintillating.

It's certainly a more personal affair. Well, if that's the term for the initially uncomfortable experience of hearing his young daughter, Hailie, supply the cute hook to the final and possibly best track My Dad's Gone Crazy - hip-hop finally has its father-daughter answer to Frank and Nancy Sinatra's Somethin' Stupid.

Then there are the skits which give his own spin on incidents from his headline-grabbing, gun-totin' life. And tracks like Cleaning Out My Closet, on which he further tramps the dirt down on his estranged mother, who sued her son for emotional distress. And Saying Goodbye to Hollywood, where he does the same to his long-departed father.

So it's an occasionally, wincingly ugly kind of personal and, of course, frequently, terribly funny with it. Though it's hilarious for the wrong reasons on the teeth-hurting ditty that is Hailie's Song.

The main problem with The Eminem Show is that it lacks something musically and something new to tell us, even with its many September 11 references, as on Crazy, when he slips in the line: "There's no tower too high, no plane that I can't learn to fly ... ".

That heard-it-before worry is especially true of the likes of opener White America, where he's boasting about his appeal to white suburban kids (no, really?) while railing about free speech.

He does it again on Sing for the Moment (with its Aerosmith-sampled rock chorus making it not quite Walk This Way II) and in a few other places.

Meanwhile, on the otherwise amusing Without Me, he dishes out his habitual insults to the usual suspects in the MTV first division, which this time includes Moby, Limp Bizkit and 'N Sync's Chris Kirkpatrick, while on Superman and Drips he again shows his worrying contempt for womankind.

Maybe its sense of stagnation wouldn't be so noticeable if the music behind it all pushed harder and with more imagination.

Past producer Dr Dre is credited with only three tracks - the early Business and Say What you Say, and My Dad's Gone Crazy towards the end - and they do stand out in the 15 songs with their heartier funk and intricate arrangements among what is an often rhythmically-anaemic bunch.

That said, the likes of Square Dance and When the Music Stops remind that he got to be where he is today - before the paranoia and the lawyers - by being a gymnastically great rapper.

And judging by the charts, the fact that this is not quite as good as its predecessor isn't about to become a problem for anyone. Except maybe those parents he addresses in the album's last line: "I don't blame you, I wouldn't let Hailie listen to me neither".

Label: Interscope