There will never be another Slim Shady.
A fake obituary recently surfaced for Eminem’s longtime alter ego Detroit Free Press, declaring him “dead” as the rapper prepares to drop his 12th studio album, Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), this summer.
Eminem, now 51, released Slim Shady 1997, and then on February 23, 1999 Slim Shady — the latter which really put him on the map, earning him the first two of his 15 Grammys to date thanks to the hit single “My Name Is.”
At the time, listener reactions were mixed. PEOPLE and Teens PEOPLE ran endless stories about the star (real name: Marshall Mathers), calling neighbors who called him “awesome” and talked about his involvement in the community, warning that his records were “not for the faint of heart.” (He was even voted Teen PEOPLE’s “Sexiest Rapper” in the summer of 2000.)
Although he’s been called out for harsh lyrics targeting the gay community and fellow musicians, including Christina Aguilera — not to mention running into legal trouble as his popularity has grown — Slim Shady reached number 2 on Board charts and continued to shine on Eminem’s stars.
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“Kids who listen to my music get the joke,” the rapper said Rolling stone in 2000. “They can tell when I’m serious and when I’m not. They can tell the fun in it.”
The party really happened at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio Music Hall in New York City when Eminem — just after the release LP Marshall Mathers — opened the show with a herd of clones bouncing along to his latest single, “The Real Slim Shady.”
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Eminem at rehearsal for the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards in New York. Frank Micelotta/Getty
“Eminem made great videos that were probably the most popular on TRL and MTV at the time,” said former MTV president Van Toffler in an oral history of the moment given to MTV.com in 2015. “The challenge for all of us was, how do you recreate that chaos in a live performance? How do we recreate the opulence of Eminem’s video?”
Former VMAs executive producer Dave Sirulnick added that the rapper’s personality “was so big, so the idea was, we’re not going to be able to do this with five, 10 or even 20 Slim Shadys. This was very much 100 Slim Shadys.”
Toffler recalled watching Eminem “go completely nuts” when he saw the bleached blonde actors in rehearsal.
But producer Dr. Dre, who helped come up with the idea, was the one who had “the biggest reaction,” Sirulnick remembers. “[He was] jokingly saying, ‘Oh my God! It’s my worst nightmare!’ He loved it.”
So does Eminem, Sirulnick said. “During the show, he owned every second of that performance,” he said. “He was as good a performer as you’ll ever see on television.”
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While the obsession with Slim Shady began to wane as the rapper continued to release new music, an obituary for him in May 2024 did indeed mark the end of an era — and led some fans to wonder in the star’s Instagram comments whether Eminem’s upcoming album was his last.
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“Ultimately, the very things that looked like tools he used became the calling cards that defined an existence that could only come to a sudden and horrible end,” the obituary read in part. “His complex and harrowing existence has come to an end, and the legacy he leaves behind is no closer to resolution than the manner in which this character left this world.”
“May he truly find peace in the afterlife that he could not find on Earth,” it concludes.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education