Eminem’s newest record, “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace)”, was released on July 12th, and after just 11 days it topped Billboard’s charts. The album ended the 12-week run by Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” as being the top spot. This is now the 11th time an Eminem album has been crowned number one. In order of recency they go “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace)”, “Kamikaze”, “Revival”, “The Marshall Mathers LP 2”, “Recovery”, “Relapse”, “Curtain Call”, “Encore” “The Eminem Show” and “The Marshall Mathers LP”.
The name of the album itself brought in plenty of listeners, leading fans to believe that this could be the last time they heard from their beloved Slim. The day before the album dropped Eminem took to Instagram to post a PSA about the album, “Death of Slim Shady is a conceptual album, therefore, if you listen to the songs out of order they might not make sense. Enjoy.”
The album tells the story of Eminem’s struggles with his alter ego Slim Shady. There are some tracks and skits on the album of the two fighting each other, Slim telling Eminem that he needs him and how he is what made him famous. This feels like something that really goes through the rapper’s head and he made these thoughts into an entire album. The Slim Shady persona is much more out of pocket and unafraid to speak his mind, while Eminem is meant to be a more level-headed artist.
In one of the skits, a gunshot can be heard when the two are arguing with one another, it is never mentioned who killed who, but the remainder of the album is sung by the Eminem persona. This back and forth has caused a lot of confusion between fans trying to figure out the story in its entirety. Some super fans have noticed that when you play the record backward it tells a more complete story, where it starts with Eminem and ends with Slim Shady, proving that Slim will never die.
You can make your own theory by giving “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace)” a listen, available everywhere now.
