To be a long-suffering listener of Eminem is to contend with this petulant fake-radical impulse, but it remains an impulse that defined the scope and tenor of The Marshall Mathers LP and became part and parcel to its success.īefore “The Real Slim Shady” came out, Eminem was convinced he didn’t have another song in him that could attract as many new fans as his 1999 breakout single, “My Name Is.” The fear of being a one-hit wonder-a point hammered in a 1999 interview with a pretty-racist Howard Stern, widely regarded as the impetus for the line about “cocky caucasians” who thinks he’s some “wigger”-hung over his head. Like, fuck you.” He defended this ugliness using the modern troll’s boilerplate: double down on the thing they want you to change until they can’t tell what you believe and what you don’t. He wrote later that, because of his critics, he went into what he called the “‘faggot’ zone” for this album “on purpose. He was also, and remains, a homophobe, a misogynist, a confessed domestic abuser. Dre-who got Eminem’s demo tape in the late ’90s and co-signed this twentysomething, lemon-faced, twiggy, vociferously self-proclaimed son of a bitch from the East side of Detroit born Marshall Bruce Mathers III. Dre- N.W.A., The Chronic, Aftermath Records, kingpin of West Coast rap-Dr. He killed JAY-Z on his own track, thus spoke Nas. He blew a young Kendrick Lamar’s mind, teaching him things about narrative clarity that he wouldn’t learn elsewhere. Whatever he’s become since, there can be no question that Eminem was one of the greatest to ever do it. By virtue of his whiteness and talent in almost equal measure, Eminem would come to rule pop culture in America by becoming this century’s prototypical troll. Congress, add a word to the dictionary, and incite protests from no small number of social justice groups. He would cross over from rap to pop and rock radio, sell out arenas, win Grammys, rankle Lynne Cheney in front of the U.S. It’s still the best-selling rap record of all time. What I thought, instead, was: This guy is really fucking good at rapping.Īfter the release of The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem would shatter sales records with 1.7 million copies sold in the first week alone, 6.5 million in the first month, and eventually, over 35 million sold worldwide. As he stormed the theater with about a hundred carbon copies of himself, countless sociopolitical minefields were being set up around me. I was Eminem’s audience, a teen from Middle America, one of millions. Long before I ever started thinking critically about music, I sat watching Eminem’s VMA performance from my rural Wisconsin couch, a 10th grader with no social media, no cell phone. This was 18 years ago, two or three epochs in music-industry time, back when “Total Request Live” held sway while boy bands and newly crowned pop stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera filled the airwaves. He knew it before many: People like the stuff they recognize.
#Slim shady album release date tv
As reality TV gained traction, Eminem’s dressing-down of celebrities endeared him to a generation who would soon find “drama” to be the coin of the entertainment realm.
It was an echo-chamber of MTV-watchers, a real-time “Beavis and Butt-Head” for those who would be later be crowned millennials. Specifically, what was on television at that very moment. ”The Real Slim Shady” wasn’t rap about what was happening on the streets of Brooklyn or Compton or Atlanta or even Detroit.
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