New album: “The Death of Slim Shady” – Eminem in his old guise

After a break of over 20 years, Eminem’s famous alter ego “Slim Shady” is back. On his new album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)”, the 51-year-old enters into a musical dialogue with the fictional character who brought him his first major successes. Musically, Eminem also turns on the time machine.

This was already evident in the video for the pre-release single “Houdini”, a homage to the music video for his 2002 hit “Without Me”. The theme of the video – how would the provocative “Slim Shady” be received in 2024 – also runs through the album musically. For example in the song “Habits”, in which “Slim Shady” does not want to be impressed by political correctness and instead raps things like “All these pronouns I can’t remember. They or them, theirs? His or him, hers?”.

Eminem vs Slim Shady

Even Eminem himself does not dissuade him from this in a dialogue in “Trouble” and replies “You gonna cancel me, yeah?”. These dialogues between the two characters occur again and again, in which it becomes clear that Eminem is actually trying to get rid of his alter ego because it is no longer contemporary and is destroying Eminem’s career with his provocative lyrics. But Eminem is not thinking about it at all and is increasingly taking control of Eminem, like a malicious demon.

But the album is not just full of calculated taboo breaking. “Temporary”, a song for his daughter Hailie, stands out in particular. And in the last song, “Somebody Save Me”, Eminem also addresses his daughters and raps about his drug addiction and how he let his daughters down because of it.

In terms of rapping, Eminem is still beyond reproach with this album, and “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)” is also heavily produced by Dr. Dre. In terms of content, the album initially seems like a big statement against the modern zeitgeist, “cancel culture” and Generation Z. But if you listen more closely, it becomes clear: All of this is a metaphor for his addiction. Like he did against “Slim Shady,” he fights against it, but cannot prevent it from taking control of him and destroying his life.

Provocation and seriousness – Eminem can do both

Ultimately, Eminem is using his old recipe for success with his twelfth album. His successful albums “The Marshall Mathers LP” and “Encore” already featured songs with provocative lyrics like “The Real Slim Shady” and “Just Lose It” alongside very serious songs like “Stan” and “Mockingbird”.

In the end, Eminem doesn’t bury his alter ego with “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce).” Instead, he raps about his own death at the end: “As they lower me in my coffin, I feel the tears all fallin’ down on my cheek.”