Eminem is making his "Relapse" a double:  not only did the best selling rapper reveal the release date for his highly-anticipated return to the rap game, but he announced that the follow-up will drop in 2009 too.

"Relapse," Eminem's first full album of new material in four years, is due from Interscope/Aftermath/Shady on May 19.  The album's first single, "Crack the Bottle," is currently at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.  A second album, "Relapse 2," is promised before the end of the year.  "A lot of people were expecting Relapse to drop last year," said Eminem in a statement. "I was one of them. Then Dre and I went back in the studio in September for a few days, and that turned into six months. We were on such a roll; we wound up with a ton of new music produced by Dre." 

In an exclusive interview with Billboard last year, Eminem spoke about the studio reunion with producer and mentor Dr. Dre.  "Me and Dre are back in the lab like the old days, man," Eminem said. "Just him banging away on tracks and me getting that little spark that makes me write to it. I don't have chemistry like that with anyone else as far as producers go -- not even close. Dre will end up producing the majority of the tracks on Relapse.' We are up to our old mischievous ways ... let's just leave it at that."