The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce): Eminem's Dance With His Shadow

"You're not f---ing Taylor Swift. You had one era that mattered, mine. Everything that people think of when they think of Eminem is f---ing yours truly. From the blond hair, to the middle finger, to the f---ing jokes, all of it — me."

- Slim Shady to Marshall Mathers

It's crazy to think that after his era-defining first run of mainstream albums from 99-06 (Slim Shady LP to Curtain Call: The Hits), the second act of Eminem's career has been nearly triple the lenght of this iconic original run. And well, while that second phase (starting with 09's Relapse and ending with 2022's Curtain Call 2) has certainly not been short of it's own fair share of memorable milestones and highs, the more recent years have also been marred by Em's struggle in finding thematic focus for his work as well as figuring out what the fans want.

A struggle made even harder by virtue that a popular answer to this question is something seemingly impossible: They want him from the early '00s (and often from one's childhood). They want Shady back.

Now, with Eminem moving into what one might call the third act of his career, kicking it off with confronting his "evil" alter ego, whose shadow he doesn't seem to be able to escape, is a great concept on paper. So, how much life does The Death of Slim Shady have in it? Well, lets explore what might be one of the most focused bodies of work Em has ever created.

The Challenge: Tricky Concept of A Concept Album

Concept albums are a great way to put together a cohesive body of work. They also present an artist with a damn near impossible balancing act. Delve too deep into the concept and you might compromise the ability of individual songs to stand alone on their own. Play too loose with the concept and reveal your own ineptitude with the subject matter. So, not only does making a concept album require meticulous planning, but also, an actual and deep understanding of the concept at hand. And, well, Slim Shady is quite a concept to break down. So, lets talk about that guy.

First off, who or what even is Slim? Is he a vessel for some of Em's actual messed up views, feelings and self destructive tendencies that he masks under a character? A Joker-esque figure, whose purpose is to offer Em an artisic freedom to let loose on the mic, with no real motive other than to provoke? A smoke and mirros type of trick to protect his privacy? Or is he simply a conduit created by a talented but struggling young MC to channel his inner fire and gain confidence? Probably a bit of each.

However, whatever way one wants to define Shady, he is the clearest symbol for a turbulent but iconic era in Em's journey. One that catapulted him into the center of culutral zeitgeist, while also almost costing him his life. And, well, while fans and he himself try to move beyond it, it also seems to be impossbile not to measrue all his subsequent work against it. Shady made Em but he also seems to have a knack for trying to destory him. So, the only way for Eminem to truly move on, is to confront Shady head on. Cue the story.

The Story: Battle of Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady

While the tale laid out to us in The Death of Slim Shady does leave plenty of room for interpretation (and has already been interpreted in many creative ways), there's also a strong clarity to it. Here's my take:

• Renaissance starts with the retrun of Shady partly due to Marshall's frustration with critics. It's a good aggressive opening track and a proper cold open.
• Habits sees Slim kidnapping Marshall, thus establishing the Jekyll and Hyde dynamic that carries on throughout most of the album, as Em constantly switches between his current voice (Marshall) and one that is altered to make him sound he did 20 years ago (Slim). The song is also about Slim slowly settling in Marshall's psyche again, as the latter begins to remember just how addictive lashing out at the world through the cartoony Slim Shady's character is. Slim is like a drug and Marshall, now 16 years sober, is increasingly induldging in it again with each verse.

Would this rhyme be okay if South Park had did it? (Okay, screw you guys)

Would it make you less angry if Cartman spit it? (Goddammit)

• Trouble (skit) sees Slim asserting his dominance over Marshall, as he tries to get them cancelled by saying the most depraved stuff he can think of, while forcing Marshall to go on drugs again, so that Shady could be truly unleashed.
• Brand New Dance is the result of that, as Shady is now completely on the loose and at his most tasteless, tactless, callous and careless, as he returns to mocking the late great Christopher Reeve. This also establishes just how stuck and dated Slim is with shtick (literally bringing out a track, which was originally created in 04 for Encore ).
• Evil atmospherically follows it with Shady reveling in his, well, evil, as he has now firmly reclaimed his comfy seat as the devil in the back of Marshall's mind. Marshall, at the same time, is falling further back into his old self destructive ways.
• All You Got (skit) is finally, where we get Shady riding his core point home to a kinapped Marshall: He (Shady) is the sole reason Eminem has his success and no matter how many times Marshall tries to kill or outrun him, he will always come back.
• Lucifer then proceeds to take it all on an even darker path, as Slim keeps upping the ante by, among other things, waging his rather one-sided war against Gen Z, pronouns and todays culture in general, while also jesting at those, who take his words too seriously.
• Antichrist doubles down on everything with even more careless energy, as Marshall and Slim are now completely merged into this one monster. It is all capped off with a surprise verse from Bizarre, adding fuel to the intentionally messed up tone going on here (it's cool that Bizarre feels here more like Shady's former partner in crime rather than Marshall's old friend from the D12 days).
• Fuel is, where things begin shifting however, as Marshall starts to slowly come down from the high that Shady created. However, like any addict, he is still determined to keep going on full throttle despite riding on fumes.
• Road Rage further hammers this shift home, as we witness a mentally drained Marshall still not able to stop. Thus, he searches for the tiniest reason to snap at any group of people to get his high back. Slim is a drug and those are the after effects (this is probably also Em's message to fans, who want him to go back to Shady by showing just how unsustainable and even cringe going full Shady would be in 2024).

• Houdini is where we see Marshall starting to fight back and become more playful again about the comparisons with "old him" and his own current place in modern culture. Shady, in the meanwhile, is still running loose and wreaking havoc to his life.

• Breaking News (skit) gives us the results of this havoc, as Slim shows Marshall the news, which cover how Eminem had released an album, where he is trying to cancel himself, as people are protesting and boycotting his music because of his insensitive comments and statements.
• Guilty Conscience 2 is the culmination for all of it. This is where Marshall has finally gained enough strenght to confront Slim, as both sides of Em's psyche trade verbal blows and point out each other's hypocrisy. It's worth noting that, while Marshall does get in a few good shots at Slim, he's not really gaining an emphatic moral upper hand here. Instead, he is just left to acknowledge that Slim is right about him. He has been reaping the benfits of being Shady, while also trying to use this same alter ego as a scapegoat.

Marshall:

You wanna judge people? (Yeah)

Matter of fact, ain't you the same one who hated bullies calling you bad names? (Yep)

Then you turn around and did the exact same (So?)

Just immature and literally

You're still mentally

Thirteen and still thirsty for some controversy

You still picking on Christopher Reeves

Slim:

Yeah, but you're me

And we're a team

So that means, we're in cahoots

That's conspiracy to commit murder lyrically

So clearly, you're the accessory like jewelry

You ain't the judge or the jury, you're just as guilty

Marshall:

You rip on paraplegics, man, seriously?

Slim:

Oh, b*ch, it's a joke

Marshall:

No, it's not, it's embarrassing (What?)

...

Marshall:

Should've knew when I found you, you were just too good to be true (Hmm)

...

Slim:

Yeah, and I scare you 'cause (why?) I'm who you used to be (who?)

The you who didn't crumble under the scrutiny (wait, what?)

When it was you and me (yeah)

I gave you power to use me as an excuse to be evil (I know)

You created me to say everything you didn't have the balls to say (yep)

What you were thinking but in a more diabolic way

You fed me pills and a bottle of alcohol a day (okay)

Made me too strong for you and lost control of me (you're right)

I took over you totally

You were socially awkward 'til you molded me (yeah)

You was a loner and nobody

'Cause of me, you didn't take shit from nobody

• Admitting that Shady is right, however, also seems to be, where Marshall gains the conviction to move past living behind Shady's shadow, thus delivering a coup de grâce to finally kill Slim Shady. Following that, we find out, how the entire album thus far has been a fever dream, as Em wakes up from it and calls his manager, Paul, who, as we know, is always just delighted to get a call from Em.

• This is essentially, where the album's main story ends, as we enter a long epilogue, that sees Marshall, now up from his crazy but enlightning dream, finally free to express himself without the shadow of Shady. He does it by owning his legacy rather than struggling with it in Head Honcho and Bad One , by focusing on his heart in gut punch delivering Temporary and confidently embracing and claming his rightful place as a hip hop great in Tobey.

• Guess Who's Back (skit) then given us a small hint that Em is never going to completely abandon the juvenile antics of Slim, as another classic Eminem character from a different era makes a brief return to deliver a very true to the character rendition of Houdini's chours.
• Somebody Save Me brings us back from this small detour to end the album with a beautiful ballad of what would have happened, if Marshall had actually let Slim win back in 07 and lose his battle with addiction. That, in turn, brilliantly brings the album's story to a close, with Marshall now understanding how he's better off by not letting Slim dominate him. Slim is an important part of him, but Eminem is so much more.

Now, is it all Em's way of trying to have his cake and eat it by showcasing how messed up it would be to bring Shady back, while simultaneously doing just that and letting himself loose as this character for almost an entire album? Well, wouldn't rule it out. However, be as it may, it doesn't take anything away from the brilliance of the self exploration at hand here. One, that luckily doesn't falter on the technical front either.

The Delivery: A Technical Powerhouse With a Few Chinks in Armor

It's fair to say that even during these more recent times in his career, where Em has often seemed conceptually and thematically a bit lost, his technical prowess has never suffered because of it. And this album doesn't make any discounts on that front either. His rhyme schemes, flow, subtext and dilvery as well as his ability to keep switching it all up remains as brilliant as ever.

Got the most content on the continent

And constant compliments give me confidence (I'm a)

A cross of common sense and incompetence (uh)

I'm cognizant that conflict's a consequence

Of accomplishments accomplished through competition

I've conquered and conked 'em into unconsciousness

Though conscious, I conjure this King Kong and just

Call me "Kamikaze, " I'm concoctin' this (woo, my bad) -

- Eminem in Fuel

However, this time around, outdoing himself technically isn't the main focus, as every song is decisively crafted to serve the the overall story and concept of the album.

Same goes for the album's impressive list of features. None of them are presented as the draw but rather, as an integral part off driving home the chapter of the album's story their song represents. We already covered Bizarre and everyone else fit into their songs perfectly as well. BabyTron and Big Sean are on top form and embrace the tone in Tobey to a tee. Much like JID does on perhaps the album's most technically impressive song Fuel. The ever brilliant Skylar Grey and Jelly Roll tenderly serve what are two of Em's most personal songs in form of Temporary and Somebody Save Me, while White Gold and Sly Piper understand the assignement perfectly (Habits/Bad One and Lucifer/Road Rage respectively). Ez Mil, on the other hand, adds another layer to album's theme of duality by laying a part of his verse down in tagalog (the national language of the Philippines, where Ez hails from).

As for a few little gripes, I do think that some individual songs can suffer at times due to serving this bigger concept, as many of them are great, when listening the album in order, but not ones you would necessarily listen on their own. Like a strong collection of B-sides (although I know it's a bit of a moot point, when talking about a concept album). On the beats front, while certainly well produced, they can feel a bit one-note from time to time. At least for someone, who actually enjoyed the more pop and rock inspired beats from Recovery and Marshall Mathers LP 2 respectively (probably a minority on that one).

Then there's the album's lenght. I've seen many point out that it should have ended with Guilty Conscience 2 and I can see, where they're coming from. However, I actually liked this extended epilogue part of the album, as it shows Em finally getting a good handle on his own legacy, thus paving the way for the future. Speaking of which.

The Future of Eminem: Life After The "Death" of Slim Shady

Come down, Slim. We both made Eminem. He's the best of both of us. And really, it's not about me or you. It's about him and the fans.

- Marshall Mathers to Slim Shady

Coming back to the theme of eras, The Death of Slim Shady is like a declaration of intent from Em. Instead of calling it quits after not being able to find a clear focus for almost a decade, Em dug deep and explored the very core of this struggle with his legacy. Of course, who knows what the future brings, but that perseverance seems to have put him on a new path, where he can go beyond the weight of that legacy to uncharted waters and bring with him the best of different elements that make Eminem, well, Eminem.

As for Slim, I don't think Em will ever bury the bugger for good. Yeah, he's still lurking around there somewhere, waiting for the right time to jump on a rhyme and coconspire another lyrical crime (so sorry for that line).