Eminem Locks His Alter-Ego In A Basement In New “The Death Of Slim Shady” Trailer

Eminem‘s new album The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) is right around the corner, yet the promo material for it hasn’t slowed down one bit. Moreover, he shared yet another trailer for the new project after already revealing its conceptual tracklist flow and imploring fans to listen to it in order. In it, Slim Shady (presumably) sits with his hands tied to a chair in the basement, watching a news report on how the Detroit rapper is trying to “cancel himself” with this new LP. In the video’s description, it makes reference to the “Real Slim Shady” bar about locking people up in basements, although in that classic track, the victim was Dr. Dre.

Furthermore, this rollout for The Death Of Slim Shady has roped in other pop culture happenings today, such as Eminem embracing the “Hawk Tuah!” meme while visiting his alter ego’s gravesite. It’s all a pretty campy and overt display of showmanship, but this is Marshall Mathers we’re talking about: is the cartoonish vibe really surprising you? Regardless, he’s certainly not slouching on the lyrical end, at least with his latest single “Tobey” featuring Big Sean and BabyTron. Whatever this new album has in store, there’s a good chance that its story will make all these extracurricular promotions make much more sense.

As for previous trailers for this album, one of them showed Slim Shady rising from the dead, so maybe the persona’s “death” will be a little more complicated. After all, Eminem has “retired” and “come back” so many times now that it’s hard to tell when he really means to emulate his other half. Perhaps this record will instead reflect on whether or not this “death” is even possible, since an aspect of his contemporary output is that he doesn’t make that distinction as obvious as before. Still, there are a lot of possibilities and angles for Em to explore here.

While Eminem’s chart performance with the new singles wasn’t anything out of this world, we can expect the album to be an absolute smash. Some fans want that conceptual greatness that’s been teased, others want straight-up bars, and many just want something new from him. No matter what road the “Houdini” spitter chooses, it’ll be a fun one to travel alongside him. So join us in eagerly anticipating The Death Of Slim Shady, which will be out in just a couple of hours as of writing this article.