Earlier this month, Eminem released his highly-anticipated conceptual album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), which sees the star, real name Marshall Mathers, battle his alter ego, Slim Shady, to the death through a series of songs and rap battles.
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For context, Marshall created Slim in the very early days of his career back in the ‘90s, and the persona is renowned for his provocative and offensive lyrics.
Throughout the album, Marshall repeatedly acknowledges the childish way that Slim has targeted marginalized communities over the years, and calls him out for deliberately provoking outrage for the attention.
In “Guilty Conscience 2,” for example, he raps: “Just immature and literally you’re still mentally 13 and still thirsty for some controversy.”
On the other hand, Slim mocks Marshall for “gaining a conscience” and accuses him of being scared of getting “canceled.”
And Eminem continued with the theme of his album by going head-to-head with an AI version of Slim in a new video created with Complex.
Complex / Via youtube.com
In the video, Marshall seems to be exasperated when Slim appears in the chair next to him and claims: “I’ve been sent from the past to save our career.”
“Save my career?” Marshall asks. “My 25-year career where I sold, like, a billion albums? I think I’m doing pretty fucking fine.”
But Slim hits back, and the two end up bickering with one another as Marshall shades himself by criticizing the alter ego that he ultimately created.
“So you think it’s entertaining to be a dickhead and just piss people off?” he asks. “Look, man, I’ve grown up, my fanbase has grown up, the world’s changed. Fucking people are way more sensitive now.”
He then references the increasing backlash he has faced online in recent months as he said: “Every other week on TikTok, Gen Z discovers you on Monday and cancels me on Tuesday!”
Slim retorts that he’d rather be canceled for being offensive than writing bad lyrics as he dragged a particularly weak bar from Eminem’s 2017 song “The Storm,” where the rapper rhymes: “Awfully hot coffee pot.”
Complex / Via youtube.com
Marshall agrees that this wasn’t his best work, but argues: “I wrote ‘Stan’ and ‘Love The Way You Lie,'” to which Slim slow-claps and sarcastically says: “Congratulations, you wrote the fucking national anthem for stalkers and domestic abusers.”
The two then lock horns over who wrote Eminem’s 2005 song “Fack,” with neither willing to take the credit for it.
Marshall later asks Slim: “Who hurt you?” as he calls out the way that the persona punches down and targets marginalized communities.
Addressing Slim’s anti-trans jokes specifically, he says: “It’s fucking 2024, man, let people live their lives. This shit ain’t got nothing to do with you; it’s not that fucking hard. Just respect whatever people want to be called and keep it moving.”
Marshall then reflects on Slim’s origin story, saying: “I invented you because my life was fucked up, my music was going nowhere, and I was broke, but you didn’t fix anything. You actually made that shit worse.”
Complex / Via youtube.com
“You’re the reason I had to self-medicate,” he adds. “I almost lost my fucking career, my fucking family, my life.”
“Life’s been great since you’ve been gone,” Marshall concludes, encouraging Slim to learn from the therapy that he has had as he also acknowledges that they are both responsible for his success.
“We both made Eminem,” he tells him. “He’s the best of both of us.”
Slim responds by earnestly using all of the so-called “therapy talk” that often gets used against Eminem. He says: “My bad, dog, I sometimes get triggered, man. It’s like I’m obviously just wracked with imposter syndrome, overcompensating with misplaced aggression.”
“I needed this trauma-bonding shit to fucking help me protect my peace,” he concludes. “No one understands how fucking toxic it is to always be the bad guy.”
The video ends with Slim and Marshall sharing their appreciation for one another, before recreating Paul Rudd’s infamous Hot Ones meme, where the actor said: “Hey, look at us… Who would have thought?… Not me!”
Complex / Via youtube.com
And while the bizarre video has gone down incredibly well with most pop culture fans, there was one moment in particular that caught viewers off guard.
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For reference, Eminem is renowned for the way he insults and feuds with his fellow celebrities — a trope that he particularly utilized in the early days of his career.
In addition to violent songs about people in his personal life, Eminem has publicly taken aim at everybody from Will Smith to Britney Spears to Mariah Carey to N’Sync, with his most notable pop star nemesis arguably being Christina Aguilera.
But despite Eminem’s apparent disdain for pop singers, during Marshall and Slim’s face-off, Slim actually praised global superstar Taylor Swift.
While throwing shade at Eminem, Slim pointedly told Marshall: “You’re not fucking Taylor Swift; you had one era that mattered: mine. Everything that people think of when they think of Eminem is fucking yours truly; from the blonde hair, to the middle finger, to the fucking jokes, all of it.”
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Swifties have been left pleasantly surprised by the brief-but-positive Taylor namedrop, and took to Reddit to speculate on how Taylor managed to escape what so many of her industry peers have been subjected to.
“Game recognizes game ❤️” one popular comment simply reads. Another fan wrote: “He realizes she is a powerful woman & she’s a force of nature like him.”
“Taylor writes her own stuff and Eminem is known to hate ghost writers,” somebody else theorized.
Others recalled how Eminem defended then-19-year-old Taylor following the infamous Kanye West VMAs moment back in 2009, when Ye interrupted her acceptance speech to say that Beyoncé should have won instead.
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Speaking to Spin magazine after the incident, Eminem, who was 37 at the time, said: “He shouldn’t have done that, man. I mean, she’s a little girl.”
Fast-forward 15 years, and all that’s left to ask is: Eminem and Taylor collab when??
