May 2, 2026 at 3:36 AM Yeah he mixed the entirety of Relapse, quite beautifully might I add. That’s one thing I do love about that album, Dres mixing is top notch. Mastering is different to mixing. Mixing is when you mix each individual recorded track (vocals, drums, bass, guitar, keys whatever it may be) to all blend together in the best possible way, like making sure the vocals sit right, making the bass thump, panning and so so on… Mastering is a technique done once all those individual tracks are are mixed down into one waveform. The Masteing engineer takes that one singular piece of audio and enhances it, usually with limiting, compression and EQ to make it radio ready, cd ready, streaming ready. Essentially it’s just making everything as loud as possible without distorting it, but doing that is an art in itself. Dre doesn’t do this part, he has used the Mastering engineer Brian “Big Bass” Gardner for almost everything he’s ever produced since the 90’s. Brian also mastered every single Eminem album from SSLP onwards, and most other Eminem related stuff. He’s one of the top mastering engineers in the world. Although I personally love the way he mastered albums like TES, MMLP, 2001 and even Relapse, I wasn’t really feeling how Recovery wasn’t mastered, it sounded way too over compressed and limited. Dudes been doing it since the 60s so I don’t know how old he is but I don’t know how long he can keep it up, with all the problems that come with the aging process, especially your hearing. He mastered the whole of Doss only 2 years ago.
May 2, 2026 at 7:30 AM I appreciate this breakdown. Thanks. And yea, something is different with Recovery and I attributed that to lack of Dre. (Still a 10/10 album though)
May 2, 2026 at 9:12 AM There’s an old thread on gearslutz from like 2010 about the mixing on Recovery and one of the main engineers who worked on it (Ryan West) and mixed like 4-5 songs on it posted in there that his original mixing on the songs, the versions he had before the mastering process, was much more open sounding and not so overly squashed and compressed.
May 2, 2026 at 10:24 AM Kells, you f---ing with the original (Yeah) But you already Know who I Am Kelly! (Slim) Keep commenting, and I’m Back on that Bully Like the cowboy on a Bull that’s c-mming (um?) Wall-E with a loaded Semi (Dad?!) Rapping with a USB, Now who’s Cloning Dummy Off Key like Mariah Kelly in 2013 (Heehe) I wrote MMLP, what you gonna tell me? (It’s Bad) “Oh it’s not Hip-Hop, it’s Pop” Well that’s what Gen Z do when they get Jelly “The Weekend’s Better, I rather Stream Carti” Well s---t I better hit up JB before I lose relevancy So I leave to Walgreens for a cheap Redbull drink And you wouldn’t believe what I see Paparazzi magazines saying “Slim Shady Drinks” Aight, let me give you caffeine dweebs something to tweet “Eminem Drinks Sugar Free” Now go head and cancel me like a Sex & the City DVD
May 2, 2026 at 10:27 AM The birth of Pop Eminem. From that album on, Eminem became the joke he used to make fun of. It's why so many people disrespect him now, he went from Dr Dre to Skyler Grey.
May 2, 2026 at 10:35 AM Keep laughing, so what if I like Pop. Nobody says s--- to Dr. Dre when he sips Dr. Pepper in front of his opps. Or what about Jermaine, I saw him carry a case of lemonade. Or what about Drake, he had a Sprite. and Wayne gets away with Purple Diet stuff I can’t identify. And why yall let Mike drink that Pepsi? It gave him epilepsy. Told ya Cola is better, who else knew?! I did dude, I been on another level too…. Like J. Cole reaching for a Mountain Dew.
May 2, 2026 at 11:18 AM That's Beautiful from Relapse, not Recovery. And it's dope That's why Beautiful fits Recovery more than Relapse
May 2, 2026 at 11:41 AM Yeah fax and he clearly put it on there as a safety net. He can say it was for personal reasons but it's obviously as they didn't have enough singles material - I mean this is EMINEM'S RETURN and they had a serial killer track and a goofy celeb track. They were prolly like 'yo we need one more' and he probably thought nothing else from Relapse could play on radio due to content, so he's like 'aiyt what do I have from this batch', and that was the one. And also a stylistic safety net like 'okay if they don't like this, but like this... that's the direction'. And that's exactly what we saw. All the critics and fans just mentioning 'Beautiful', and then Recovery is basically 'Beautiful' part 2. Not done as well, musically, but thematically = soft rock samples and emotional content.
