And on the album’s single “My Name Is,” his English teacher who tried to flunk him famously got his nuts stapled to a stack of paper. On another, his baby daughter served as an accomplice while her mother’s corpse was stuffed into a trunk and dumped into the ocean (a scene also depicted on the cover). On one song, a childhood bully whose real name, DeAngelo Bailey, was used got mercilessly beaten with objects from a janitor’s closet (and in real life, Bailey subsequently sued Eminem). In this fantasy world, every single person who crossed Slim was exacted revenge upon in brutally sadistic fashion. Most of the album’s themes centered around things teenagers identify with-being broke, working minimum wage jobs, getting beaten up, trying to get laid in the backseat of your Ford Shitbox. Slim Shady was Eminem letting the vitriol and insecurities of his id run amok through cartoonishly gratuitous violence. He developed Slim Shady, an alter-ego who made his debut on his follow-up 1999 album, The Slim Shady LP. After Eminem’s seldom mentioned debut album Infinite tanked upon its release in 1996, the Detroit rapper adopted a new persona for himself. The road leading to this level of regard was tough. The rapper’s punk cred was hard-earned but earned, nonetheless. But once the two were in the same room, he looked at Eminem and thought, “He’s just some regular guy, I can’t beat him up.” He asked for a picture together instead. A frontman of an iconic punk band who asked not to be named once told me that a bunch of bands on the tour pooled money together to pay him to beat Eminem up. In 1999, he did 31 dates on the Warped Tour alongside bands like Pennywise and Blink-182 and during every performance, some ornery punks would try to pelt him with trash. And for the rockers, Eminem was a guy who could hang. A white boy who somehow lucked his way into a predominantly black industry.
So deep was my hometown’s love of Eminem that a Rolling Stone cover story on him in 1999 centered around a show at a local venue where a female fan, possibly even a classmate of mine, boasted about touching his dick.įor the guidos-suburban kids who wanted to be rappers-he was a hero. I found myself having in-depth musical conversations with kids I’d managed to avoid freshman year. This being during the rise of music-sharing programs like Napster, some entrepreneurial kids with fast enough internet connections were soon burning copies to sell outside their lockers. Guidos and rockers alike cut class to go buy the CD at Sam Goody (which is basically like America's HMV). On the record’s release date, my school was a ghost town. An X-rated Dennis the Menace for a dial-up modem generation. He represented everything high school years are about: blind rage, misguided rebellion, adolescent frustration. Then in my senior year, while the guidos were listening to “Hypnotize” and the rockers were raging against, Eminem dropped The Marshall Mathers LP and suddenly the lines blurred.Įminem was the one artist high school kids seemed to unanimously connect with. For four years, the two social circles seldom crossed paths to agree on anything save for the occasional episode of South Park.