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"The Real Slim Shady"
Single by Eminem from the album The Marshall Mathers LP
Released	2000
Format	CD
Genre	Rap
Length	4:44
Label	Aftermath/Interscope
Producer	Dr. Dre and Mel-Man
Eminem singles chronology
"Bitch Please II" (2000) "The Real Slim Shady" (2000) "The Way I Am" (2000)

"The Real Slim Shady" is a song by the rapper Eminem, released in 2000. It was the first single off his album The Marshall Mathers LP, also released in that year. It was his first #1 on the UK Singles Chart. The song's chorus is based on that of K-Solo's song "Real Solo Please Stand Up" from his 1990 album Tell the World My Name.

The song is a critique of manufactured pop songs that were being churned out at the time. It parodies these songs by including features of a typical pop song, a repetitive chorus etc. Most hardcore rap and general music fans missed the irony, and classed this as a novelty pop song itself rather than a parody of one.

The song was a hit single, becoming Eminem's first chart topper in some countries, and garnering much attention for insulting various celebrities, including:

• Actress Pamela Anderson's alleged abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, rocker Tommy Lee
• Eminem jokingly claims in one line to have murdered Dr. Dre, and that he's locked him in his basement. This was a spin on one of his previous songs, My Name Is where Eminem goes, "And Dr. Dre said..." then Dre comes on and says "Slim Shady, you're a basehead".
• Comedian Tom Green's humping of a deceased moose on TV, and his song Lonely Swedish
• Rapper Will Smith's brand of commercialized and clean rap music.
• Eminem also criticizes Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, both similarly commercially-oriented pop singers; Aguilera was angered by his claim that she performed oral sex on Carson Daly, an MTV VJ, and Fred Durst, of the band Limp Bizkit.
• He also makes fun of Justin Timberlake and the *NSYNC, when he appears to dance in the video, with the "group".

The chorus is about the sudden fashion changes caused by Eminem's success: "I'm Slim Shady, yes I'm the real Shady/All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating/So won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?". The chorus echoes the tagline of the classic TV quiz show To Tell the Truth. (The TV show's signature phrase is ""Will the real ___________ please stand up?")

Certain parts of the song feature allusions to other songs, such as Bloodhound Gang's The Bad Touch. This could possibly be construed as mocking impersonation and lyric-theft, for comedic value.

The music video features a montage of scenes that follow the song's context featuring cameo appearances by D12, Dr. Dre, Fred Durst, Mel-Man and Eminem dressed as Britney Spears while attending the Grammy Awards. The main image is a factory that turns young white men into clones of Eminem, with hair dyed platinum blond, baggy jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

This video won the MTV Awards for Best Video and Best Male Video, as well as being a nominee for Best Rap Video, Best Direction, Best Editing and Viewer's Choice. Many fans view it as one of the best videos of Eminem's career.

"The Real Slim Shady" won the 2001 Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance and was later released on Eminem's greatest hits album, Curtain Call: The Hits.

Actress and comedienne Kathy Griffin, who is also known for insulting celebrities in her act[1], appears in the video as an attending nurse in a psychiatric ward. Griffin said during a July 21, 2005, interview on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno that Eminem selected her for the video because fellow rapper Snoop Dogg told him she was "really funny."[2]

Parody songs include:

• The Real Church Lady, a Saturday Night Live parody in "Church Chat" with Dana Carvey
• The Saddam Song, A parody (flash animation) about events surrounding the US build up to the Iraq War.^[1]
• Will The Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up, two parodies have been recorded under this name:
  • A song was originally written by Mike Spencer and performed by a female rapper named Emily Ellis for the US radio station KLUC. It is sung from Christina Aguilera's point of view, and due to Ellis' similar voice it is commonly mistaken for Aguilera herself.
  • A song performed by Cletus Haus, with the narrator portraying a parody of Eminem admitting to his own fame and talentlessness.
• The Real Greg Brady, a song written and performed by Barry Williams.
• The Real Bing Cavy, a song by a superstar guinea pig^[2]
• The Real Sin Savior, by Christian parody band Apologetix

Cover versions:

• This song was featured in "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Angry White Boy Polka" on his album Poodle Hat.
• William Shatner also performed a spoken word cover of the song during the "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" episode of Futurama. In the episode, an appalled Walter Koenig asks "How can you do a spoken word version of a rap song?", prompting Melllvar to exclaim, "He found a way."

• The Real Slim Shady wasn't on the original copy of The Marshall Mathers LP. Jimmy Iovine wanted Eminem to have a song to introduce the album, similar to the way My Name Is was the first single on The Slim Shady LP. Eminem wrote The Real Slim Shady just hours before the final copy of the album was due. The first single was intended to be "I'm Back", but was not released as a single due to the lyrics concerning Columbine High School.^{[citation needed]}

Source: VH1's Ultimate Albums: The Marshall Mathers LP

• US Comedian Kathy Griffin starred as a nurse in the film clip.
• The lines "they got the Discovery Channel, don't they?" and "we ain't nothing but mammals", refers to the song "The Bad Touch", by The Bloodhound Gang.
• In the video where Eminem is spinning around in a room full of D12 members, it bears resemblance to one of the videos of "Made Niggaz" where 2Pac is in a room full of The Outlawz.