When Eminem released his third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP in 2000, its eighth song on the track list and lead single “The Real Slim Shady” stole the show. Peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, his highest placement on the chart at that point, the song saw the Detroit native truly emerge as a superstar. But, this also came at the expense of a few of his celebrity peers.
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In the same vein as the song, where Eminem calls out copycat acts aiming to capitalize off his ubiquity, the visual for “The Real Slim Shady” sees Em depict himself as the prototype for a litany of other male musicians that the media glamorized. Additionally, his other superstar namedrops and subsequent portrayals saw the public eye sour towards him a bit.
The accompanying video boasted appearances from Fred Durst and Kathy Griffin, among others. Portraying the nurse at a psychiatric hospital Em was stuck in, Griffin said her inclusion was thanks to Snoop Dogg, who became familiar with her when they met at the 1999 Billboard Music Awards.
“Months later, I got called to do a part in the Eminem ‘Real Slim Shady’ video, and it was directed by Dr. Dre,” she said during VH1’s 2017 Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party special. “And I said to him, ‘What made you guys think of me?’ I played the nurse in that video. And Dr. Dre said, ‘Snoop said you were really funny.’ So Snoop got me a job in an Eminem video. What about that? That’s a friend.”
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Throughout the lyrics of “The Real Slim Shady,” Em makes several allusions to marquee names like Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, Will Smith, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and more, using them as a vehicle to groan about the minutiae of Hollywood. Also, he depicts many of these celebs without remorse, which understandably ruffled some feathers.
At one point, he and a group of actors dress up as, and mock, *NSYNC, a prominent boy band at the time with whom Em was evidently tired of being grouped.
I’m sick of you little girl and boy groups, all you do is annoy me
So I have been sent here to destroy you
And there’s a million of us just like me
Who cuss like me, who just don’t give a fuck like me
Who dress like me, walk, talk and act like me
And just might be the next best thing, but not quite me
When elaborating on this in a later interview, Em said that he would do whatever he could to duck the comparisons to boy bands like *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.
“Back when my first album came out, you know, all this boy band shit was not really… it was going on, but it wasn’t as ridiculous as it is now,” the rapper said in a quote retrieved by MTV. “And in my opinion, the shit is corny. I’ve read articles: ‘Eminem looks like a Backstreet Boy.’ And I find myself, a lot of times, placed in that category. So the best way that I know to separate myself from that category is to separate myself from it, period. Lash out or whatever.”
In response to this, at the time, *NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick would go on MTV’s Total Request Live and label Em a controversy magnet, likening him to the late Animal Planet star Crocodile Hunter. Em would subsequently diss Kirkpatrick again on his 2002 song “Without Me.”
A tisket, a tasket, I’ll go tit-for-tat wit’
Anybody who’s talkin’, “This shit, that shit”
Chris Kirkpatrick, you can get your ass kicked
Ultimately, though, “The Real Slim Shady” not only helped Eminem separate himself from the pack as a musician and cultural figure but also set the precedent that he had an inclination to provocateur, an indictment he proudly accepted.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
