Eminem has been awfully quiet in the 2020s. The rapper who dominated pop culture in the 2000s and the pop charts in the 2010s hasn’t dropped an album in four years. The wait for new music is finally over, though. Eminem made a seemingly random appearance at the start of the NFL Draft on April 25, but the pieces fell into play when Em uploaded a video teaser to YouTube. It seems like the appearance was a way to drum up excitement for the rapper’s upcoming album, The Death of Slim Shady.
Eminem modeled the teaser after crime shows like Unsolved Mysteries. A man in a trenchcoat details the enemies that “Slim Shady” has made over the years due to his “tongue-twisting rhymes.” 50 Cent, Em’s longtime collaborator, then appears to voice his concern for the rapper’s alter ego. “He’s not a friend,” 50 says fearfully. “He’s a psychopath.” The teaser incorporates clips from classic Eminem videos like “Without Me” and “The Real Slim Shady.” The premise of the new album really comes focus, however, when the narrator reveals that Shady was killed. “The same rude and controversial lyrics may have ultimately led to [Shady’s] demise,” he theorizes.
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Eminem’s 12th Album Will Come Out Summer 2024
The teaser confirms that Eminem’s new album, The Death of Slim Shady, will be released in summer 2024. The best part of the announcement comes at the very end, though when a pixelated Eminem moves to the side and accidentally reveals his true identity. The album boasts the subtitle “Coup de Grace,” which means “a final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.” Eminem created Slim Shady as a means of voicing his discontent when he was starting out. “When I started rapping as that character,” he told Fact Magazine. “It was a way for me to vent all my frustrations and just blame it on him. If anybody got mad about it, it was him that said it.”
The rapper has periodically returned to his alter ego over the years. He distanced himself from Slim Shady on Recovery (2010) and Revival (2017), but dove into the character’s zany antics on The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2014). Eminem’s recent albums have also tried to reckon with the skeletons of his past, whether it be addiction or family drama, so it makes sense he would close the book on his Slim in dramatic fashion.
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