Hard-hitting and inventive lyricism, along with a careless life philosophy craft one of the greatest rap songs of all time. Today we take a look at Eminem's hit "The Real Slim Shady"
A screenshot from the music video to "The Real Slim Shady" |
The Real Slim Shady is a track from Eminem's third album The Marshall Mathers LP, which was released in 2000. It won a grammy award for Best Rap Solo Performance and it is one of his greatest hits.
The Real Slim Shady manages to be both funny and serious simultaneously. It's an early Slim Shady track, where Em gets to display his amazing rapping skills and funny rhyme schemes.
On the track Em disses and references a lot of celebrities. Be sure to check the break down of some of the lyrics at the bottom of this story.
K-Solo is a Bronx rapper, who probably had no idea that his little-known song would turn into one of the biggest rap songs ever |
The chorus of the track references K-Solo, who asked if the "Real Solo Please Stand Up".
Tommy Coster Jr. spoke about the making of the track in an interview |
According to Tommy Coster Jr., him, Em, Dre and a couple other people were in the studio and done with The Marshall Mathers LP. Then Jimmy Iovine walks in and sits down. At this point he's filled with energy and says "Listen, this record is incredible, but we need one single to open up this record, because the record is very dark". He was concerned about the records ability to appeal to other than hardcore hip hop fans.
A couple of days later Tommy gets called to the studio without further notice. He walks and gets told, that today he is working on Em's new single. It was Tommy, Mike Elizondo, Dre and the engineer in the studio. There was this drum loop going around and around on an MPC. He remembers Eminem sitting on the couch with a jacket over his head, tired from all the work they had been doing.
Eminem is a very authentic artist, which meant he knew he wasn't gonna like the song. Em has never written music for it to be just popular, and that was what he got asked to do here.
At one point Tommy chose to sit alone with his keyboard trying to figure out what the song needed. Classical sounds, classical chord progressions, has to be a playful and fun melody. With these things in mind he starts getting to work. In his heart Tommy is a jazz musician and if you listen to the keyboard playing in "The Real Slim Shady" it's a c minor scale with a major 7.
Em then write the creative lyricism for "The Real Slim Shady" and the track gets made.
"The Real Slim Shady" is a notorious hip hop track being able to connect the general world of entertainment to the rap game. It gained a lot of attention a became a part of pop culture, along side as playing a dominant role in the rap game.
Breaking down some of the lyrics:
"Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records (Nope)
Well, I do, so fuck him and fuck you too!"
In 1999 Will Smith's "Miami" won over "My Name Is" for Best Male Video at MTV Video Music Awards. In his speech Will said:
"I never killed anybody in none of my records, I never used no profanity in none of my records and I still managed to get up here"
Em was upset about it, and he responded:
"I used to respect Will Smith. Now he's dissed the whole genre of rap. He dissed gangsta rap music. And that is one of the most influential musics out there. I respect him for saying his opinion, but not everybody is as happy as Will Smith. Not everybody sees life as happy and as positive as he sees it"
Eminem is definitely in his right to speak up about this. Will's 1997 album "Big Willie Style" and general music was primarily about having a good life and time. Not all rappers can relate to that and uses rap as an art form to convey their more in-depth feelings. Or they use rap to display the life they live, which sometimes is the gang-life. This is what rap is meant to be, it isn't just meant to be summer days and butterflies.
DJ Jazzy Jeff also spoke on the mini-beef recently. Apparently Jazz played Em's darker version of Will's "Just the Two of Us"
Listen to Em's version of "Just the Two of Us" here!
Will told Em, "you'll either be the biggest flop, or the biggest thing we've ever seen". Em wasn't happy about the quote either and felt that he needed to respond to Will's VMA speech not only to stick up for hip hop as an art-form and a way of conveying your actual problems, but for himself personally as well.
Christina Aguilera's cover for "Self Assignment" released in 2000 |
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