Should Slim Shady Be Canceled? Eminem’s Young Fans Say No.

Eminem himself does seem to have generations — and his legacy — on his mind. “The Death of Slim Shady” has been marketed as a farewell to the smirking persona he introduced in the late 1990s. “Guilty Conscience 2” is a showdown between Slim Shady and Marshall Mathers (his given name) that ends with a gunshot — and the possibility the battle was just a dream. Its second single, “Tobey,” features lyrics boasting of his place in the rap pantheon and a feature from BabyTron, a 25-year-old rapper from Detroit — where Eminem is also from — representing his hometown’s future.

Some TikTok users have chronicled how Eminem has actually strengthened their bond with their children. Upon the release of “Houdini,” Chrissy Allen, who specializes in lighthearted skits and shorts, posted a video captioned, “My 8 year old son is obsessed with Eminem and I couldn’t be prouder.”

“We were playing Eminem’s ‘Mockingbird’ one day, and he knew all the words to it,” Allen said in a joint video interview with her son, Brady, from her home in San Diego. “And I was like, ‘Man, how do you kids know this?’ Even though he hates all the other music I listen to. But for some reason, Eminem is just one of those cool ’90s artists that’s cool to listen to for kids.”

Brady said that he discovered Eminem through background music from soccer videos he watched on YouTube Shorts, and that he’d also encountered the rapper in the video game Fortnite, where he appeared last year as a Godzilla-esque giant while performing his 2020 single of the same name. “I just think that his rapping is really fast,” Brady said.

“Once you know the words, you’re like, ‘This is good,’” he added with a smile. “‘I like this.’”

Eminem’s acrobatic lyricism has long been part of his appeal. In earlier eras, music critics praised the rapper’s virtuosic delivery and provocative wordplay even as they expressed concern over what he was actually saying. In a Rolling Stone review of his 2000 album, “The Marshall Mathers LP,” Touré called him “the most quotable MC alive, both consistently funny and ridiculously far over the top,” but also noted that his “insistent, tiring gay bashing almost begs you to hate him.”