My Name Is

"My Name Is"
Single by Eminem
from the album The Slim Shady LP
Released	January 25, 1999
Recorded	1998
Genre	Comedy hip hop[1]
Length	4:28
Label	Aftermath Interscope Web
Songwriter(s)	Marshall Mathers Andre Young Labi Siffre
Producer(s)	Dr. Dre
Eminem singles chronology
"Just Don't Give a Fuck" (1998) "My Name Is" (1999) "Role Model" (1999)
Music videos
"My Name Is" on YouTube "My Name Is" (Dirty Version) on YouTube

"My Name Is" is a song by American rapper Eminem from his second album The Slim Shady LP (1999). It is also the opening song and lead single of the album. The song contains an interpolation^[2] (replayed sample) from British singer Labi Siffre's 1975 track "I Got The..." featuring the bass and guitar riff as originally played by British pop rock duo Chas & Dave. The song was ranked at #26 on "VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s".^[3] "My Name Is" was also ranked #6 on Q Magazine's "1001 Best Songs Ever".^[4] "My Name Is" peaked at number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Eminem's first top 40 hit there. Outside the United States, "My Name Is" peaked within the top ten of the charts in Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, and United Kingdom.

The song was placed at number 39 by Rolling Stone on their list of "100 Greatest Hip-Hop songs of all time" in April 2016.^[5] The recording garnered Eminem his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance at the 42nd Grammy Awards in 2000.

Background[edit]

On the first day of recording, Eminem and Dr. Dre finished "My Name Is" in an hour.^[6]

The song contains an interpolation from Labi Siffre's track "I Got The...". Siffre, who is openly gay, said in a 2012 interview that he refused to approve the usage until sexist and homophobic lyrics were removed from the song: "Dissing the victims of bigotry – women as bitches, homosexuals as faggots – is lazy writing. Diss the bigots not their victims."^[7] The original uncensored version of the song with the aforementioned offending lyrics is mistakenly included on the compilation The Source Hip Hop Music Awards 1999. The bass and guitar riff used in the interpolation was originally performed by Siffre's session musicians Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, who later became the duo Chas & Dave,^[8] although the song's liner notes^[9] state that the audio sample used by Eminem was actually an interpolation (re-recording). "My Name Is" is written in the key of F major.^[10] Famous names referenced in the song include Nine Inch Nails, the Spice Girls, and Pamela Anderson (Pamela Lee).^[11]

Music video[edit]

The video premiered on MTV Total Request Live on January 21, 1999. It was directed by Phillip Atwell, who would later direct music videos for several other Eminem songs, including "The Real Slim Shady", "Stan", "Lose Yourself", and "Just Lose It". The video starts out with a stereotypical redneck family watching television, who then come across a show starring "Marshall Mathers" (Eminem's real name). As the video goes on, Eminem parodies several TV shows and movies. He also imitates then-President of the United States Bill Clinton, Johnny Carson, Marilyn Manson, a porn star, and others. Basketball player Gheorghe Mureșan has a cameo appearance as a ventriloquist with Eminem being used as the dummy in the scene. Dr. Dre, the song's producer, also has a cameo as a doctor. It also features a Monica Lewinski lookalike, and Eminem imitating a chemistry teacher. Eminem is seen wearing a red tuxedo in some parts of the video, something that he would pay homage to in his 2020 single "Gnat", 21 years after "My Name Is" was originally released.

The video was ranked #71 in NME's 100 Greatest Music Videos.^[12] As of 2019^{[citation needed]}, the music video has been replaced on all official sites (including the official Eminem YouTube account and MTV's holding accounts) with alternative lyrics online making it more advertiser friendly. Lines such as, "Well, since age 12, I felt like I'm someone else 'Cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt," are replaced with "Since age 12 I felt like a caged elf Who stayed to himself in one space, chasing his tail," also with lines referencing ripping Pamela Lee's breasts off replaced with ripping her lips off and kissing them, saying how they feel soft like silicon.

Critical reception[edit]

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine singled out the song as an album highlight,^[13] while Entertainment Weekly's David Browne wrote that this single and its accompanying video were both "attention-grabbing".^[14]

Track listing[edit]

UK CD1^[15]

UK CD2^[16]

UK Cassette^{[citation needed]}

12" single^{[citation needed]}

Record Store Day 2020 7" single^[17]

Notes

• ^{^[a]} signifies a co-producer.

Controversy[edit]

Eminem's mother Debbie Mathers filed a $10 million slander lawsuit against him for insinuating that she does drugs in the lyrics "99% of my life I was lied to, I just found out my mom does more dope than I do".^[18] Eminem also berates his mother in the third verse of the song, with the lyrics "When I was little I used to get so hungry I would throw fits/How you gonna breastfeed me, Mom?! You ain't got no tits!" Debbie stated in her 2008 book My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, "This line was horrible and upsetting, because I'd contracted toxemia-blood poisoning when I gave birth to him and hadn't been able to breast-feed." The lawsuit was settled in 2001 for $25,000, of which Debbie received only $1,600, after Judge Mark Switalski ruled that $23,354.25 of the $25,000 settlement should go to Fred Gibson, Debbie's former attorney.^[19] Eminem would later reference this in his 2002 song "Without Me" with the lyrics, "I just settled all my lawsuits, fuck you Debbie!"^[20]

Eminem later felt disillusioned by its immense popularity. In 2002 he said "I didn't hate that song when I first made it. But the shit that I really, really like, that I put my heart and soul into, I don't get recognized for, like 'The Way I Am .' There's a difference between me being funny and me being real. I feel like I don't get recognized for my best shit — the shit that's my real, true feelings and emotions."^[21]

• The warbley rhythm that forms the backing track is built around a sample of a 1975 song called "I Got The..." by Labi Siffre. Siffre is a gay activist, so before he let Eminem use his song, he insisted that he change the line right, which had mentions of child porn, which says, My English teacher wanted to have sex in junior high. The only problem was, my English teacher was a guy." to: "My English teacher wanted to flunk me in junior high. Thanks a lot, next semester I'll be 35."
• Eminem's producer Dr. Dre claimed they finished this song in only an hour or two. It was the first time they worked together in the studio, and the pair had an instant connection. Dre told Esquire in 2013: "I put the track on, we had a little bit of idle chitchat, I put on the beat, and maybe five seconds in - I swear to God - he goes, 'Hi, my name is.' That was it. And it's still clicking." Dre and Em recorded three other songs that day that were also included on the album.
• Eminem got so tired of the song that after a while, he only played snippets of it in his concerts, often stopping the song to declare he was sick of it.
• The video parodies many popular figures like Bill Clinton and Marilyn Manson. Eminem repeated this technique on many more of his videos.
• Before the Slim Shady LP was released, an uncensored version was available on the Internet. The original lyrics on the dirty version of the song were: "R***ng lesbians while they're screaming, 'Let's just be friends." The version on the CD was changed to "Running over pedestrians while they're screaming, 'Let's just be friends.'" >>
• The song this samples, "I Got The...," was also used on Jay-Z's 1997 track "Streetz Iz Watching," although Jay used a different part of the song. Chas Hodges played the guitar on the original, and Dave Peacock played the bass. They later formed Chas & Dave, which had a number of hits in the UK across a four-decade career. At the time, they were session musicians.
• The group Insane Clown Posse, who has a long-running feud with Eminem, did a parody of this called "Slim Anus" that they played on The Howard Stern Show. As you can imagine, the lyrics were not kind to Eminem.
• This contains the line, "My mom smokes more dope than I do." Eminem's mother, Debbie Mathers-Briggs, sued him shortly after the song became a hit, claiming that her son had slandered her on the record. They settled out of court for $25,000. Eminem recalled his mother sending someone to serve a lawsuit in an annotated comment on Rap Genius. "Right after the first single came out, I did a signing at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square," the Detroit MC recalled. "While I was there, I got served by a court processor. They knew where I'd be, and they had to physically serve me. The guy got tackled. He was stupid. You don't need to physically serve someone anymore, like in the movies. But the guy was being a cowboy. It was some lawsuit from my mother, I think."
• Soon after the song was released, the NFL used it in a commercial featuring a guy named Joe who answered the question, "My Name Is..." with "Joe."
• Looking back at this breakout song during a 2013 interview with BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, Eminem said: "I understood that 'My Name Is' was funny and that it was a little kitschy. The whole record was tongue-in-cheek. I still do a lot of records like that. That record was almost my anti-pop song. It was my 'hello' and 'f--k you' to the world at the same time. I never understood how that became a pop song."

Awards and nominations[edit]

Charts[edit]

Certifications[edit]

References[edit]