Eminem Drops VMA Surprise: New Album Release Date Is Set!

Shady’s back. Late last year, Eminem hinted that he would drop his eighth solo album in 2013, and an official announcement finally came in a commercial tonight during the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.

Before the show officially kicked off from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Em Instagrammed a photo of the show’s logo with the caption, “Guess who’s REALLY back? #VMAs.” It’s still unclear whether he also has a surprise performance in store tonight — fingers crossed — but one thing’s for sure: His new album is coming.

During a brief, no frills Beats by Dre commercial, Shady announced that his new album, Marshall Mathers LP 2 — a sequel to 2000’s Marshall Mathers LP — will arrive November 5 and the project has been executive produced by Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin. A new track from the Detroit rapper scored the ad, which finds him spitting, “Let’s take it back to straight hip-hop and start it from scratch/ I’m about to bloody this track up, everybody get back/ That’s why my pen needs a pad because my rhymes’ on the rag.”

During a recent visit to Em’s longtime collaborator and producer Alchemist explained that the “8 Mile” rapper has been pushing himself to experiment on the new album. “That’s my boss. I DJ for him, and I’m not at liberty to speak on much, but you know his caliber and what he does,” he explained. “[He’s] clearly going to further territories. I think what you would expect, especially after the last go-round.”