DETROIT — You can practically feel the buzz building.

Nearly five years after his last album of new material, Eminem is headed back into the limelight.

"Relapse," the first of two promised albums for the Detroit hip-hop icon this year, hit stores earlier this week. The record's saucy first single, "We Made You," was released two weeks ago amid much hoopla.

And now the fanfare — which has been on a steady simmer since the autumn release of Em's autobiography — is set to flash to a boil.

But the big question remains: A decade after he broke onto the pop-culture radar, firmly securing Detroit's spot on the hip-hop map, does Eminem still matter?

Cynicism would be easy: His 15 minutes are up. He's old news; in fact, he's old. His audience has moved on.

But that's not the mood of industry analysts, culture watchers and fans as the rapper emerges from seclusion. Does Eminem still matter? They answer with a resounding yes, absolutely. "Relapse," they say, is shaping up to be a bona fide Event.

One thing is certain: The 36-year-old rapper faces a dramatically different world than the one that gave "The Slim Shady LP" a huge welcome in '99. Eminem isn't just a hip-hop elder statesman — he's an elder statesman in a battered industry. No matter how well "Relapse" performs in relative terms — and it's a sure bet to top the charts — the album is unlikely to accumulate the same raw numbers as Eminem's previous best-sellers.

His top career disc remains 2000's "The Marshall Mathers LP," which has moved more than 10 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. "Encore," released in 2004, clocks in just over the 5 million mark.

"It's a new game now," says Mike More, marketing specialist and CEO of online media company Nabbr Inc. "But a brand name still means equity. And anyone who has that — like Eminem does — already has a running start."

In other words, Eminem benefits by being a star who became a star when he did, securing his status before the Internet made such a triumph far more difficult.

"Ten years ago was the last gasp," More says. "The radio and MTV model that was really robust then isn't the same anymore. They're less powerful. The music business had its best year ever in 2000, and it's been losing market share ever since."

But even as the industry lost its footing, Eminem got his own: In the early '00s, the savvy emcee nailed the elusive combination of genuine street cred and sweeping mainstream success. It was a feat that propelled him well beyond flavor of the month, where most hip-hop contenders get stuck.

"He eventually transcended the bad-boy image that a lot of rappers kick off their careers with," says Paula Moore, president of Treadstone Music Intelligence. "He went from stirring the pot of hip-hop culture into showing something more talented and visionary and intelligent — all those elements that help an artist stick. It went beyond the instant gratification of, 'Whoa, that's cool,' into, 'Wow, that's meaningful, I want that to be a part of my life.' "

In that way, he's more akin to a U2 or Madonna than to most of his pop-chart peers. And that gives Eminem a crucial advantage as he navigates the rest of his career, says Warren Griffin of the Urban Network, a hip-hop industry magazine.

"Eminem is most definitely still relevant," says Griffin. "Just because there hasn't been new product doesn't mean people haven't kept listening to the old product. He still has a big place in the market."

Griffin predicts "Relapse" will sell 600,000 to 750,000 copies its debut week: "There's still a built-in base of people who are going to go buy an Eminem album before they even know if they like it."