On your new album, “Recovery,” which comes out on Monday, you assume a confessional tone and back off from the misogyny and demented violence you pushed in your earlier work. Would you agree?
I think I’d have to go back and listen to it. Did I?

Does Slim Shady, your raping and killing alter ego, still exist? Or have you split with him?
Shady still exists. But I don’t think the subjects on this record call for, you know, bring the chainsaws and axes out and murder everyone on this record. There was so much stuff like that off the last record that I felt like I was starting to run it into the ground. I think consciously I went in a different direction with this record.

Read the whole interview at NYTimes