Release Date: Jul 12, 2024
Genre(s): Rap
Record label: Shady Records / Interscope
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Buy The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) from Amazon
A great concept album that's held back by a couple pesky old habits. The cultural significance behind Slim Shady cannot be understated in the slightest. If you were an impressionable youth in the year of our Lord 2000, like me, you'll have probably gobbled up every saliva-soaked onion ring from this rebellious white-tee-baggy-jeans-wearin' Slim Shady character and everything he stood for. In 1999 Marshall Mathers was in the throes of planting Semtex on American culture's weak points with The Slim Shady LP.
Some jokes write themselves; others come true in ways they weren't intended by virtue of oblivion. Fixated on being the center of attention even half a century into his life, Eminem's insecurities about his place in Hip Hop have resurfaced following back-to-back-to-back albums with little to no cultural impact. In an effort to generate a buzz on the same wavelength as The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013), he has once again put together a project alluding to his younger self.
Eminem's Jekyll and Hyde tendencies were evident from the start. Splitting his negative emotions from a more secure place of introspection, the divide between Slim Shady - the cartoonish anti-hero of premium offence - and the autobiographical Marshall Mathers, he earned colossal, generation-defining success. That era purple patch is now more than two decades away, however - for kids who want to be offended, there are a plethora of TikTok-enabled options to choose from.
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