Technology is weird. Thanks to AI, we can duplicate celebrities’ voices (even against their wishes), and those celebrities can even interact with each other — or themselves. Last month, The Weeknd used ChatGPT to have a conversation with his “10-year-old self,” and today, Eminem was able to interview his alter ego Slim Shady for Complex with the aid of the same sort of de-aging tech that brought back Luke Skywalker and had us all posting pictures of ourselves as babies on Snapchat a few years ago.
Unsurprisingly, Slim was less than nice to Em, roasting him repeatedly throughout the interview and even comparing him to modern-day star Taylor Swift. “We sold all that sh*t off my back, b*tch,” he railed. “Don’t get it twisted; wasn’t for me, you’d still be wearing that ‘same damn Nike Air hat.’ You’re not f*ckin’ Taylor Swift — you only had one era that mattered: mine.”
“You’re not f*ckin’ Taylor Swift. You only had 1 era that mattered”
— Slim Shady roasting Eminem on ‘The Face-Off’ by Complexpic.twitter.com/jZhH3Hc2K2
— NFR Podcast (@nfr_podcast) July 30, 2024
The premise of the interview is that Eminem has been brought forward from the past to berate and deride Em, who seemingly tries to defend his creative choices in light of a changed world and newfound maturity — although, it’s arguable that there’s an angry inner voice controlling the actions of the 51-year-old rapper. Still, you gotta give him props, almost no other rapper has ever committed so strongly to an album concept.