The Real Slim Shady

"The Real Slim Shady"
Single by Eminem
from the album The Marshall Mathers LP
Released	May 16, 2000
Format	CD
Genre	Hip hop, comedy rap
Length	04:47
Label	Aftermath/Interscope
Writer(s)	Eminem
Producer	Dr. Dre and Mel-Man
Certification	Gold (RIAA) Platinum (BPI)
Eminem singles chronology
"Bitch Please II" (2000) "The Real Slim Shady" (2000) "The Way I Am" (2000) Curtain Call: The Hits track listing "Like Toy Soldiers" (10) "The Real Slim Shady" (11) "Mockingbird" (12)

"The Real Slim Shady" is a hip hop song written by Eminem for his second 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 on the UK Singles Chart 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.

Premise

"The Real Slim Shady" was not included on the original copy of The Marshall Mathers LP before its release. Interscope Records chairman 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."^[1]

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 (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.)^{[citation needed]}
• 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?"

The 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, Kid Rock, Fred Durst, Carson Daly, Kathy Griffin, Pamela Anderson, 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,^[2] 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."^[3]

The video also features Eminem dressed in a Robin-like superhero costume with a plastic derrière 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. (...like Tommy just burst in the door/and started whoopin her ass worse than before/they first were divorced, throwin' her over furniture)
• An obese man in underwear being enslaved by a 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 1940s Looney Tunes-like cartoon of a frog tap-dancing on a turtle 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 and she eats the onion ring which Eminem spat on as she walks away. The same scene also shows Eminem driving recklessly around in circles in a parking lot in a blue car. (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 obese 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:

• "The Real Church Lady", a Saturday Night Live parody in "Church Chat" with Dana Carvey
• "The Saddam Song", A parody (flash animation) about events surrounding the U.S. build up to the Iraq War.^[4]
• "Slim Anus", by group Insane Clown Posse, to disrespect him on a famous radio station.
• "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up", two parodies have been recorded under this name:
  • A song was originally written by Mike Spencer and performed by a female rapper named Emily Ellis for the US radio station KLUC. It is sung from Christina Aguilera's point of view, and due to Ellis' similar voice it is commonly mistaken for Aguilera herself.
  • A song performed by Cletus Haus, with the narrator portraying a parody of Eminem admitting to his own fame and talentlessness.
• "The Real Greg Brady", a song written and performed by Barry Williams.
• "The Real Bing Cavy", a song by a superstar guinea pig^[5]
• "The Real Eggman", a flash video on the internet about how Dr. Eggman, Sonic the Hedgehog's main enemy, is the fattest out of all the versions of himself.
• "The Real Sin Savior", by Christian parody band Apologetix
• "The Real Slim Penis", by rapper DJ Jake.
• "The Real Sugar Baby", by Stephanie Beard.
• 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".

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. In the episode, an appalled Walter Koenig asks "How can you do a spoken word version of a rap song?", 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.^[6]

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

CD single

Cassette Single

{{Track Listing = 1 The Real Slim Shady (4.44) 2 My Fault (3.59)

Chart performance

References

External links

• "The Real Slim Shady" music video at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash)