Eminem - Houdini (Initial Thoughts)

I just went to YouTube to check what time does the video drop today and it had just dropped 23min ago when I went to do that, so I was like "ok, I guess we're doing this now!"

(I think it dropped midnight his time? It's 7:42 here now as I'm typing, I'm in the bus, on my way to work.)

The new album this song is on is called The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). So, people have been speculating it a lot - does this just mean the death of Shady or does this mean he's ending his career. Before seeing this video, I was hoping this would mean Shady is gone but Eminem stays - Shady was fun at the time, in the early 2000s, performed by a young dude, but the world has changed, and I was hoping maybe he's changing with it, rather than being in his 50s and stuck in the past. But what I thought to be a more probable option was that he's just trolling, he's not really ending this career or completely killing off Shady either. That it's a marketing scheme, but a fun one, not an annoying one.

In the Instagram story (?) he published the other day, where he announced this song dropping, he said "for my last trick, I'm gonna make my career disappear". (I don't remember where it was published originally, I saw it on Cliff's channel.)

Now, in this music video, a time portal opens and Slim Shady from 2002 walks through to our timeline. And then Eminem and Dr Dre go out to try and stop Shady from causing havoc.

So, turns out the album is going to be even more interesting than I thought! Because now it seems to me like the over-aching thought behind the album is going to be "What if Eminem never invented Slim Shady? Would he be just as successful but just more socially accepted by Gen Z because he wouldn't have that past, or would this mean his career never took off?" If Eminem kills Shady, how will that change the timeline?

And where does this stem from? Does Eminem wish he would have never done Slim Shady? I'd say maybe, on a rare occasion, when he feels like he's changed so much over the years. I mean, we all do that. We look at the person we were in our youth and mostly feel neutral, but then there are those rare occasions when we feel embarrassed to have been that person. Everyone was young and stupid once, we get that, but when it comes to us ourselves, we judge that young stupid person harsher than we would other people.

Mostly, I think Em feels neutral or positive about it, though. His career wouldn't have been the same if he never invented Shady.

"For my last trick, I'm going to make my career disappear."

I can think of four possible reasons it'd disappear:

1) Em kills Shady, Em's career never takes off and therefore, he doesn't have a career anymore. / Em and Shady are too close to being the same person and he ends up accidentally, or as a sacrifice to save the world from Shady, killing himself. (Obviously just a thought experiment, 'cause Shady is fictional and time travel doesn't exist.)

2) Em kills Shady, doesn't die himself, becomes "too woke" and his old fans abandon him. A possible career suicide / a fresh start of a new one. The outcome I'm rooting for, but don't actually believe will ever happen.

3) Shady cannot be killed or Eminem fails to kill him, Shady makes a comeback, overly sensitive "woke" people cancel Eminem and his career is "over", as a joke. Not really, it's fuckin Eminem. His career is over when he says it's over.

4) He's actually ending his career, for real.

Now, for the actual song & video itself, from what my 'hiphop newbie foreigner who hasn't seen the lyrics' ass can gather:

- there's a lot of sonical and visual references to his early 2000s music videos, like The Real Slim Shady and maybe My Name Is? It's been a while, I can't remember what happens in which video... But there's i.e. the comic book elements, the superhero costumes, the one (real) Slim rapping to a crowd of fake Slims, some of the lyrics/adlibs are from his old songs, I think even the beat is from an old song, or a remix of an old beat. The entire thinf feels like a throwback, like we got taken to 2002 and not that 2002 came to us...

- Slim steps into our dimension and is like "what the fuck is this shit?" He speaks on the video. I bet the album is going to be Shady's last album after all. But he goes out with a bang. He'll have some shit to say and will have several songs on the album before Eminem takes him out.

- Shady dances and Eminem facepalms. He does feel a bit embrassed of how he used to be, as people do.

- the song IS called Houdini, and Harry Houdini died of his own trick... someone's dying. Shady, Em, both? But I don't think it's an option anymore that NO ONE dies...

- "Sometimes I wonder what the old me'd say if he could see how things are today", plus the rap battle Em and Shady are gonna have on the video... yup, Shady will have some songs on the album. And Em is going to comment on Shady with his bars. I'm very interested and invested on this. Whether Shady actually dies or not. Em is clearly aware he's grown as a person and is going to comment on that, like, demonstrate how his views have changed. Which is exactly what I've been thinking this past 1,5 years when I've really gotten into rap - I've heard he's changed, but his career is so long I haven't known where to start getting deeper into it. I've only heard his biggest hit songs and a couple of the old albums back in my teens. I heard Doomsday Pt. 2, but before that, I think Godzilla is the newest I've heard...

- "he'd probably say it's all gay (like happy)" 🤣 I love his ability to laugh at himself and troll us at the same time...

- I'm not getting deeper into the lyrics before I see them, I don't trust my ability to catch bars. And I want to hear Knox's and Cliff's commentary first, they have way more insight into this than I do.

I think the entire album is going to be a meta fiction piece where Shady comes back, comments on some things of today's society, then Eminem comments back to him with his current views, and then Shady dies. It is yet unclear if Em dies as well, that remains to be seen.