The Untimely Rebirth Of Slim Shady: The Problem With Modern Eminem

22/06/2024

Alfie Sansom discusses Eminem's newest release 'Houdini', and how the character of Slim Shady has lost the original appeal

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Image by mika-photography

By Alfie Sansom

I have worked at a large cinema chain for just over four years. Aside from the obligatory popcorn scooping and inevitable popcorn sweeping, workers are often assigned as ‘screen checkers’. Essentially, this involves popping your head into one of the films, checking that no one is pirating the film or causing a disruption, and leaving. We do this three times per film, and each check has to take at least two minutes, otherwise we run the risk of a disciplinary (the managers are keen watchers of CCTV and let few mistakes slip).

Back in the winter of 2021, I had the displeasure of being a regular ‘screen checker’ for Sing 2, and somehow, beyond any kind of logic or probability or sense, I would always end up checking the screen during the audition scene. Those anthropomorphised animals performing the blandest covers of the most recognisable and overplayed pop songs of the past 20 years. Excruciating. And my least favourite auditions were three insolent chicks dressed like Dick Van Dyke singing Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’, followed by some incompetent monkey magicians almost killing a tortoise to the tune of Steve Miller Band’s ‘Abracadabra’. It wound me up immeasurably, and it happened at least 30 times.

Now, imagine my face when I started listening to ‘Houdini’, in which Eminem has decided to create my own personal hell by singing the chorus to ‘Abracadabra’. But what makes this even worse, more so than my Sing 2 trauma, is that ‘Houdini’ is a truly awful song. Aside from the choppy and grating delivery, lyrics that are too cheesy for a Christmas cracker joke, and plainly bland production, the worst thing about ‘Houdini’ is its laziness.

One part of Eminem’s original appeal was his ballsy attitude. He rapped about sex, drugs and other misdeeds, and while this had been done in a myriad of other songs, his Slim Shady personality gave it a unique childishness and arrogance that captivated young fans everywhere. ‘The Real Slim Shady’ is rife with vulgar lyrics and lewd references to pop culture, and yet it still got to Number One in the UK.

The other part of his appeal was his genuine talent as seen in ‘Drug Ballad’ from The Marshall Mathers LP, for example. There is the same delivery of verses about drug abuse and adultery, but underpinning it all is internal rhyming, clever imagery and twisted humour. He demonstrates the cycle of addiction, and can still make you laugh by asking a grim question: “what’s a little spinal fluid between you and a friend?”.

That was back in 2000. In 2024, Eminem is 51, and his age is most apparent in the ‘Houdini’ music video. The concept is that Slim Shady steps through a time portal from 2002 into the modern world, with the current Eminem having to stop him from causing havoc. Its opening mirrors the ‘Without Me’ video, as does the rest of the video, while that song’s chorus is interpolated for the first 45 seconds. Seeing middle-aged Eminem dancing next to his digitally de-aged doppelgänger is a pitiful sight.

Although he has maintained a strong commercial presence, Eminem seems to be running out of ideas. Having moved from critical darling in the early 2000s, to a growling angst-rapper in the late noughties, and eventually to a rapper who thinks that rapping quickly will hide the fact that he has become lyrically mediocre since, it seems that Eminem has chosen the easy option of weaponising past success and labelling it as ‘irony’ and ‘parody’ to avoid criticism. Why is the ‘Houdini’ music video full of immature references to Slim Shady? Parody. How are the lyrics, which are a past imitation of his old style, supposed to be funny? Irony. Who cares?

Unfortunately, Eminem’s career has been a constant cycle of do-overs. Relapse in 2009, Relapse: Refill that same year; Recovery in 2010; Revival in 2017; a revamped greatest hits record, Curtain Call 2, in 2022. Hopefully, Eminem will reconsider the regrettable decision to dig up his past. By clinging so desperately to the light of his former self, he has only illuminated his dusty skeleton, void of the bashfulness and audacity that made him a superstar. He needs to put the tight spandex away, stash his hair dye for good, and accept that he doesn’t have that same spark almost two decades later. Perhaps, he should pick up the flute like André 3000, and let the dead stay as a rap character from the early 2000s.