Eminem revealed the cover art of his highly-anticipated new album, REVIVAL, by projecting it against Detroit’s famous and vacant Michigan Central Station in Corktown last night.
The drone footage, shot by long-time Shady Records collaborator Jeremy Deputat, as well as Camera Jesus and 1xRun, is infused with an instrumental version of Eminem’s latest single, “Walk on Water,” featuring Beyoncé. The wordless piano track makes these smooth, aerial tracking shots from Detroit’s night skies an even more somber affair for anyone rooting for the rap veteran’s renewed success. It may not seem like Eminem has anything left to prove, but you wouldn’t know that from the backlash the recent spoken-word single has received by a large portion of the hardcore hip-hop community.
The video and album cover are fairly restrained, melancholy yet hopeful, and dare I say, beautiful. All of this might point toward a general theme of the album, a combination of exhaustion in the face of the world’s current political climate while championing the strength and fortitude of America, and particularly Detroit. The Detroit native, who lambasted President Trump in a recent BET Cypher freestyle, may hue more political in this album than his last three efforts have.
There’s plenty of speculation online. Will this be Recovery 2? Are the pop-singers revealed on the album’s tracklist an indication of that? What kind of revival, exactly, will this creative work entail? Are we getting a classic Shady album? While some of those questions are based more on reality than others, none of these questions currently have definitive answers. We’ll have to wait until Dec. 15 to get those. What we do know, is that this album reveal has been unlike any other in the legendary emcee’s career, and it was filmed with help of an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Let’s take a look.
While we don’t know yet which type of UAV was used for this production, the footage here is gorgeous. Steady panning and tracking, with some downward spirals, and cityscape reveals. Cody Calebra, the designer of the album’s cover art, shared a few photos of last night’s affair on his Instagram account.
“Tonight’s random adventure involved hooking up my talented pal @light_bender and his team with @1xrunand @shadyrecords to tease the release of the new #eminem album by projection mapping the album cover onto the train station and another building downtown! #projection #hiphop #detroit,” he wrote on Instagram. Fortunately, eminem.com has a few high-quality images from last night.
Enjoy the photographs and the wild ride that the rollout of REVIVAL has and continues to be.