There is a hidden story behind the birth of Eminem’s alter ego- Slim Shady. If many of you believe that Slim Shady was actually born in Detroit, then you are wrong.
Many of you have probably heard Eminem’s quote about Slim Shady’s name popping into his head while he was sitting on the toilets:
‘ I was takin’ a shit. I swear to God. And the fuckin’ name just popped into my head. Then I started thinkin’ of twenty million things that rhymed with it.” – On how he came up with the name Slim Shady ‘
Ok, that’s for the common story most of you have heard about. But there is a less known and hidden story behind the existence of Eminem’s evil alter ego.
Eminem’s former friends were very conscious that Marshall wouldn’t succeed with his Infinite style. Not that it was bad (Infinite is lyrically rich and well written), but the public wanted to hear something else, something more incisive, scarier, full of beautiful wordplays and dark humor:
‘Em wasn’t like this angry kid back in the day. But then Infinite didn’t hit, and he wanted to quit. He got discouraged; nobody wanted to take a chance with him.
‘I was telling him he needed to get more current. Like Proof; Proof sounded more up-to-date than Em. He was still on that tongue-twister style, real fast ‘ super-fast, so fast you couldn’t understand what he was sayin’. Me and the roommates were telling him, like, ‘You need to get a gimmick. Get more metaphors and not just syllables.’ In Detroit, it’s different. You can’t be too serious; I told him to throw some dick into the party, you know, be humorous.’
(DJ Rec)
Eminem decided to travel to New Jersey with his fellow D12 member Bizarre who wanted to record with the Outsidaz. The Outsidaz were not that enthusiastic when they got to listen to the Infinite LP.
After listening to Infinite, the Outsidaz members said:’ This ain’t shit!’ ‘
‘ I think they thought it was cool, but not really what he should be doing. He looked up to them ‘
‘They put Em in the studio and I’m sure they were blew the fuck out, because he came out with some shit like they’d fed him an acid tab, just a complete 180 from what he was talking about before. When he came back, he got the tattoo and he was Slim Shady from that point on. Nobody knows that shit, though ‘ you never hear him mention the Outsidaz.’ (MC Hush)
Then Marshall got Slim Shady tattooed on his left arm and was definitely ready for his change of persona.
Bizarre told Hush:
‘ Bizarre came over to my house on Bentler and he was like, ‘We created a monster.’ ‘ (MC Hush)
As DJ Rec will kindly remind you of it, please avoid calling him ‘ Marshall ‘:
” He used to get really pissed when we’d call him Marshall.’
Now you know the whole truth about how Slim Shady took possession of Marshall and became the evil monster we know from his records.