Eminem is giving his fans the first taste of his upcoming 12th album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce),” dropping this summer, with the release of its first single “Houdini.”

The song begins with a classic Eminem trope, enlisting his longtime manager Paul Rosenberg to share his distaste of the album that’s to come. “Hey Em, it’s Paul. I was listening to the album… Good fucking luck, you’re on your own,” says Rosenberg.

“Houdini” is somewhat of a callback to his 2002 single “Without Me,” beginning with the singsong rhymes, “Guess who’s back, back again / Shady’s back, tell a friend.” The song, produced by Eminem and his longtime collaborator Luis Resto, cites Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” on the chorus, and references Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting incident on one of the lines. “If I was to ask for Megan Thee Stallion if she would collab with me / Would I really have a shot at a feat? I don’t know, but I’m glad to be, back,” he raps.

In classic Eminem form, he stokes controversial flames, referencing transgender individuals, RuPaul and referring to his own children as “brats.” “Cancel me, what? Okay, that’s it, go ahead Paul, quit / Snake ass prick, you male cross dresser, fake ass bitch / And I’ll probably get shit for that (watch) / But you can all suck my dick, in fact, fuck them/ Fuck Dre, fuck Jimmy, fuck me, fuck you / Fuck my own kids, they’re brats (fuck ’em) / They can screw off, them and you all (yeah) / You too, Paul, got two balls, big as RuPaul’s.”

The music video for the song is a direct homage to “Without Me,” as Eminem steps into a portal back to the year when the song came out. The clip, shot in a comic strip style like the video for “Without Me,” features guest appearances from 50 Cent, Pete Davidson, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Alchemist, among many others, and sees two Eminems — one from 2002 and another from the current day — rapping along to “Houdini.”

Details surrounding “The Death of Slim Shady” have been relatively scarce since he announced the album last month. In March, his longtime collaborator Dr. Dre went on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and revealed that Em was working on a new project, and that he worked on several songs slated for inclusion on it. He also said that he was scheduled to hear the album for the first time the day after the appearance on TV.

During the NFL Draft in April, Eminem announced “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)” with a Detroit Murder Files crime show teaser, suggesting that the project would signal the demise of his longtime alter ego. A few weeks ago, he ran a fake obituary in the Detroit Free Press bidding adieu to Slim Shady.

Earlier this week, he released an Instagram Reel with magician David Blaine where he announced “Houdini” as the first single. “For my last trick, I’m going to make my career disappear,” he told Blaine.

• Israeli forces have reportedly ceased operations in Jabalia after destroying tunnels and conducting air strikes.
• In Rafah, at the south end of Gaza, Israeli forces discovered rocket launchers, weapons and tunnel shafts built by Hamas.
• The Israeli military withdrew from Jabalia to prepare for further operations in Gaza after recovering the bodies of seven hostages.

Israeli forces have ended combat operations in the Jabalia area of north Gaza after destroying more than six miles of tunnels during days of intense fighting that included over 200 air strikes, the military said on Friday.

At the south end of Gaza, Israeli forces pressing an offensive into Rafah found rocket launchers and other weapons as well as tunnel shafts built by Hamas in the city centre, the army said. Tank-led Israeli troops aim to break up Hamas’ fighting formations in the city on the border with Egypt.

In an update on more than two weeks of intense fighting in Jabalia, the Israeli military said troops had completed their operation and withdrawn to prepare for other operations in Gaza.

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During the operation, troops recovered the bodies of seven of the 250 hostages Hamas-led militants abducted when they stormed over the border into Israel on Oct. 7 last year and killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air and land war in Gaza, its Hamas-run health ministry says, and much of the densely populated enclave lies in ruins.

In Jabalia, a densely packed urban district populated by refugees from the 1948 war of Israel’s founding and their descendants, Hamas turned the “civilian area into a fortified combat compound”, the military statement said.

It said Israeli troops killed hundreds of militants in close-quarter combat and seized large caches of weaponry and destroyed rocket launchers primed for use.

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Underground, Israel forces disabled a weapons-filled tunnel network extending over 10 km and killed Hamas’ district battalion commander, it said.

Israel has blamed what it calls Hamas’ deliberate embedding of fighters in residential areas for the high civilian toll in the war. Hamas has denied using civilians as cover for fighters.

Jabalia has been battered by intense combat for weeks, underscoring Israel’s difficulty in destroying Hamas units.

There were weeks of heavy fighting in Jabalia in the early stages of the Israeli campaign and in January, the military said it had killed all the Hamas commanders and eliminated the combat formations of Gaza’s ruling group in the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to eradicate Hamas as a fighting and political force has run up against the Islamist group’s deep roots in Gaza’s social fabric.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel on Wednesday to come up with a post-war plan for Gaza, warning that without one, further military gains might not be durable, and lawlessness, chaos and a Hamas comeback could ensue.

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RAFAH FIGHTING

Israeli tanks rumbled into the centre of Rafah on Tuesday as part of a series of probing operations around the area that has become one of the main focal points of the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.

The army said it had come across longer-range rockets as well as stocks of rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and ammunition as it continued “intelligence-based operational activities” in Rafah, which skirts Gaza’s border with Egypt.

Hamas fighters demonstrated their continuing strength in Rafah last week, launching missiles at Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv for the first time in months on Sunday.

Islamic Jihad, Hamas’ smaller militant ally, said on Friday it fired a barrage of mortar bombs at a gathering of Israeli soldiers and vehicles penetrating the vicinity of Salah al-Din Gate on Rafah’s southern fringes. It gave no more details.

Rafah, the only major city in Gaza yet to have been taken by Israeli forces, had been a refuge for more than one million Palestinians driven from their homes by fighting in other areas of the small coastal enclave, but most have now left after being told to evacuate ahead of the Israeli operation.

Hundreds of thousands are now living in tents and other temporary shelters in a special evacuation zone in nearby Al-Mawasi, a sandy, palm tree-dotted district on the coast, as well as areas in central Gaza.

Israel has signalled for weeks that it intended to mount an assault on the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah, drawing international condemnation and warnings even from allies like the United States not to attack the city while it remained full of displaced people.

The risks were underlined on Sunday when an Israeli airstrike targeting two Hamas commanders outside the city set off a blaze that killed at least 45 people sheltering in tents next to the compound hit by the jets.

As the war has dragged on and Gaza’s infrastructure has been widely demolished, malnutrition has spread among the 2.3 million population as aid deliveries have slowed to a trickle, and the United Nations has warned of incipient famine.

An assailant with a knife attacked and wounded several people in a square in the southwestern German city of Mannheim on Friday, police said. Police shot at the attacker, who also was hurt.

Police said the incident happened shortly after 11:30am. They said that they couldn’t immediately give any information on the severity of the injuries.

Euronews understands that German far-right activist and anti-Islam critic Michael Stürzenberger was injured in the attack.

Our journalists are working on this story and will bring you more as it develops.