So, your last album made you the most notorious recording artist in the world - now what do you do for an encore? Well, judging by his latest offering Eminem hasn't a clue. Desperately short on new ideas, The Eminem Show spends most of its time revisiting some very familiar old ground, including his miserable, white-trash childhood, his feud with his mother and his increasingly uneasy relationship with stardom. There's nothing wrong with this per se - the man remains an awesome rapper with a rare ability to be both uncomfortably savage and outrageously funny in the space of a single line, and around half of the 20 tracks are as good as anything he's ever done. Now that Eminem is rich and famous, however, you wonder how long he can keep up the victim act - and some of his targets here (AIDS, September 11) are reminiscent of a spoiled teenager trying to shock for the sake of it. As an exercise in marking time, The Eminem Show is fine - but next time the great performer needs to show us a few new tricks.

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