How Eminem became Slim Shady and formed one of rap’s biggest alter egos
Had he never created his Slim Shady persona, the rapper we know as Eminem would never have become the cultural sensation that he proved to be.
Em’s first album, Infinite, was a bit of a dud when it came out in 1996, lacking in the distinct, erratic character of the releases that would come later. It was, in short, missing the alter ego of Slim Shady, with Eminem instead playing around with more conventional rapping and storytelling techniques.
Infinite wasn’t especially well-received, which did not escape Eminem’s attention at the time. He was so disgruntled by the criticisms of the work that he started to craft angrier, moodier songs in response. It is this new approach that, ultimately, helped him to stick out from the crowd.
“That was the pinnacle of him being polite and cool,” Em’s D12 bandmate, Kuniva, recalled of his underdeveloped style on Infinite, speaking to Billboard in 2015, “He was really a straight-up cool cat, but the frustration came out when he started getting the criticism about the Infinite shit, like, ‘It’s kind of soft. You sound like this person [or] that person’.”
Kuniva claimed that Em’s work with D12 was ultimately what helped him to form his Slim Shady persona in the aftermath of Infinite. The group formed around that same time, with each of its six members agreeing to take on a unique alter ego as part of their approach.
The alter egos were central, even giving the group its name. Six members, plus an alter ego each: that makes 12; hence D12, the Dirty Dozen.
“Basically, the whole thing of D12 is everybody has an alter ego,” Kuniva explained, “so try to be the villain, a person completely different from who you are. That’s when he took the name, Slim Shady”.
As Kuniva tells it, Slim Shady was born out of the collective experiment that was D12. But, obviously, the persona would outgrow the group and become a sensation in its own right. D12 would find success, but it was, in large part, driven by the existing popularity of Slim Shady.
The Slim Shady EP, released in late 1997, introduced the world to Eminem’s new and wild alter ego, and it generated a much greater buzz than Infinite ever had. Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre took note of it, with Dre signing him to Aftermath Entertainment and establishing a creative partnership that would become historic.