The Real Slim Shady

"The Real Slim Shady" is a hip hop song written by Eminem for his third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP (2000). It was released as the lead single a week before the album's release. The song was later released in 2005 on Eminem's greatest hits album Curtain Call: The Hits.

"The Real Slim Shady" was Eminem's first song to reach number one in the UK and it also peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, giving him his biggest hit up to that point. The song was the 11th best selling of 2000 in the UK. It won multiple awards, including MTV Video Music Awards for Best Video and Best Male Video, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. In October 2011, NME placed it at number 80 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".^[2]

Premise

"The Real Slim Shady" was not included on the original copy of The Marshall Mathers LP before its release. Interscope Records's Jimmy Iovine wanted Eminem to have a song to introduce the album, similar to the way "My Name Is" was the first single on The Slim Shady LP. Eminem wrote "The Real Slim Shady" just hours before the final copy of the album was due. The first single was intended to be "Who Knew."^[3]

The song is a critique of manufactured pop songs that were being churned out at the time. It was a hit single, becoming Eminem's first chart topper in some countries, and garnering much attention for insulting various celebrities, including:

• Actress Pamela Anderson's alleged abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, rocker Tommy Lee (Jaws all on the floor like Pam, like Tommy/just burst in the door and started whoopin' her ass worse than before)
• Eminem claims in one line to have murdered Dr. Dre, and that he's locked him in his basement. This was a spin on one of his previous songs, "My Name Is", where Eminem says, "And Dr. Dre said..." then Dre comes on and says, "Slim Shady, you're a basehead." (And Dr. Dre said—nothing, you idiots/Dr. Dre's dead, he's locked in my basement.)
• Comedian Tom Green's humping of a deceased moose on TV, and his song "Lonely Swedish". (Sometimes, I wanna get on TV and just let loose, but can't/but it's cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose.)
• Rapper Will Smith's brand of commercialized and clean rap music and his VMA acceptance speech where he boasted that he didn't need to cuss or kill anybody on his records (Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records/well, I do. So fuck him, and fuck you too.)
• Eminem also criticized Britney Spears, (You think I give a damn about a Grammy?/Half of you critics can't even stomach me, let alone stand me/"But Slim, what if you win, wouldn't it be weird?"/Why? So you guys could just lie to get me here?/So you can sit me here, next to Britney Spears?)
• Christina Aguilera was angered by his claim that she performed oral sex on Carson Daly, an MTV VJ, and Fred Durst, of the band Limp Bizkit. (Shit, Christina Aguilera, better switch me chairs/so I can sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst/and hear 'em argue over who she gave head to first.)^[4]
• He also makes fun of the boy band *NSYNC, when he appears to dance in the video, with the "group." (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.)

The chorus is about the sudden fashion changes caused by Eminem's success: "I'm Slim Shady, yes I'm the real Shady/All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating/So won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?" The chorus imitates the catchphrase of the quiz show To Tell the Truth: "Will the real ______ please stand up?"

Music video

The music video features Eminem performing the song in a psychiatric ward, a local Detroit neighborhood nearside a park, a fast-food joint, the Grammy Awards, and even in a factory where multiple clones of the rapper are produced. The video also features cameo appearances by Dr. Dre, D12, a lookalike of Kid Rock, Fred Durst, a lookalike of Carson Daly, Kathy Griffin, lookalikes of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, and even a stuffed Bill the Cat doll can also be seen being held in possession by one of the mental patients in the hospital scenes.

Actress and comedian Kathy Griffin, who is also known for insulting celebrities in her act,^[5] appears in the video as an attending nurse in a psychiatric ward. Griffin said during a July 21, 2005, interview on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno that Eminem selected her for the video because fellow rapper Snoop Dogg told him she was "really funny."^[6]

The video also features Eminem dressed in a Robin-like superhero costume with a plastic butt chasing a boy band, taking one of its members down to the ground and putting 'his bum on the man's lips.' The costume can be seen later in the "Without Me" music video following the release of The Eminem Show.

There are also more scenes showing one or more of the following (when the lyrics roll along with the video):

• Two little boys watching the Discovery Channel on television with two rhinoceroses mating, then looking at each other in awe. (Of course, they're gonna know what intercourse is by the time they hit fourth grade/They got the Discovery Channel, don't they?)
• Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee chasing each other around a couch and Pamela screaming in front of the camera. (...I smell cinnamon rolls!)
• An obese man in underwear being enslaved by a sexy dominatrix with a paddle. (Yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose, but no worse than what's goin' on in your parents' bedrooms.)
• A gay marriage is shown and Eminem breaks up the two men about to kiss each other (as a rejection to homosexuality) and showing disgust. (But if we can hump dead animals and antelopes/then there's no reason that a man and another man can't elope)
• Eminem performing in a private room with all his clones produced from the factory with their heads bobbing to the music. (the chorus: 'Cause I'm Slim Shady, yes, I'm the real Shady/all you other Slim Shadys are just imitating/So won't the real Slim Shady please stand up?/Please stand up?/Please stand up?)
• Eminem at the Grammy Awards dressing as Britney Spears, along with Fred Durst and Carson Daly pulling a blow-up doll of Christina Aguilera between their seats towards each other angrily until it flies out of the chair. (Christina Aguilera better switch me chairs so I can sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst, an' hear 'em argue over who she gave head to first.)
• A clip from a cartoon of a frog tap-dancing on a turtle (from the 'Flip the Frog' film, Fiddlesticks) can be seen on a TV in the hospital and the viewer laughs at it.
• Eminem working in a fictional fast-food joint with an 'Ask Me' patch giving an obese woman her order and rejecting it because of the onion rings being forgotten, however he gets the onion rings and he spits in them, and gives the onion rings to the woman to complete her order, which she begins eating as she walks away. The same scene also shows Eminem driving recklessly around in circles in a parking lot in a blue AMC Pacer. (He could be workin at Burger King, spitting on your onion rings/or in the parking lot, circling, screaming: "I don't give a fuck!"/With his windows down and his system up)

In the explicit version of the music video, the fat man in underwear wears a ball gag; in the censored version, he does not. The edited version also does not show Eminem putting his middle fingers up, instead pointing to the camera.

Covers and parodies

Parody songs include:

• In the UK Queen-musical We Will Rock You the phrase Who (the Hell) is the real Slim Shady appears during an interrogation.
• "The Real Church Lady", a Saturday Night Live parody in "Church Chat" with Dana Carvey
• "The Real Greg Brady", a song written and performed by Barry Williams.
• "The Real Sin Savior", by Christian parody band Apologetix
• "The Real Sugar Baby", by Stephanie Beard.
• "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up", a parody written and performed by a female rapper Emily Ellis, who is frequently confused with Christina Aguilera^[4]
• A performance in the UK satirical spoof documentary Brass Eye in the controversial 2001 "Paedogeddon" episode. It features satirist Christopher Morris performing as a rapper, "JLb-8".
• In their song On Passing Lilac Urine from the 2001 EP, Editor's Recommendation, Half Man Half Biscuit sing "I'm Slim Shady/I'm the real Slim Shady/the other Slim Shady's gone to play tennis"
• "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Shut The Fuck Up", a parody written and performed by Cledus T Judd, with a clip of Emily Ellis' version

Cover versions:

• The song was featured in "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Angry White Boy Polka" on his album Poodle Hat.
• William Shatner performed a spoken word cover of the song during the "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" episode of Futurama prompting Melllvar to exclaim, "He found a way." This is a parody of Shatner's spoken word music album The Transformed Man, as well as his recitation of Elton John's Rocket Man at the 1978 Saturn Awards.
• In an episode of Coronation Street, Kirk Sutherland recited the main chorus of the song in order to win the heart of Fiz Brown.
• "The Real Pacers Fans", by Indianapolis, Indiana-based radio station RadioNow 93.1, when the Indiana Pacers were playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000 NBA Finals.
• In the final episode of Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights, this was performed by Jerry St Clair (Dave Spikey) impersonating Eminem as part of the Stars In Their Eyes sequence.
• "Seurasaari Rap" featuring Seurasaari Open Air Museum, Helsinki, by Tapio Nurminen. The Finnish-language rap from 2000 deals with the museum, guides, their parties and the tourists.^[7]
• ProjectRNL, an Israeli band did a progressive rock cover to this song.^[8]

Awards

"The Real Slim Shady" was very successful at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, winning awards for Video of the Year and Best Male Video, as well as being a nominee for Best Rap Video, Best Direction, Best Editing and Viewer's Choice. The song was also performed by Eminem at the show with look-a-likes of himself, as in the video.

"The Real Slim Shady" also won at the 43rd Grammy Awards for Best Rap Solo Performance.

Track listing

European CD single

UK CD single

European Maxi single

Chart performance

See also

• List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Rhythmic chart
• List of number-one singles of 2000 (Ireland)
• List of European number-one hits of 2000
• List of number-one singles from the 2000s (UK)

References

External links

• "The Real Slim Shady" Official music video on YouTube