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Dept. of Retro Cool

Eminem Rap God? Welcome Back, Max Headroom

By Marcia Alesan Dawkins on November 27, 2013 in Music, TV + Web

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For your consideration, Eminem’s “Rap God” video, where the real Slim Shady looks a lot like the real Max Headroom, the 1980s artificial intelligence character known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. The controversial MMLP2 track, co-produced by DVLP and Fithy, shows us exactly how the rap god updated his operating system. Equal parts 1970s poverty and racial tension, 1980’s media like Max Headroom, old school video games and comic book heroes, 1990’s transhuman Neo from The Matrix, underground cyphers and black outlaw gangsta rappers, 2000’s MMLP1 spiritual and social criticism and 2010s wearable technology. During the Max headroom sequences, only Em’s head and shoulders are seen against a “computer-generated” backdrop of a slowly rotating wire-frame cube interior. The distinguishing sounds are chaotic speech patterns—as Eminem’s voice pitches up and down and occasionally gets stuck in a robotic-sounding loop. Like the original, the Rap God’s personality is interpreted best as a satire of egotistical media personalities (a/k/a talking heads) and their insincere, unqualified opinions.

And here’s the Real Max Headroom.

 

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TagsEminemMarcia Alesan DawkinsMax Headroommusicmusic videosrapRap Godretro coolSlim Shady

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About the author

Marcia Alesan Dawkins

Marcia Alesan Dawkins

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Marcia Alesan Dawkins is an award-winning writer, speaker, educator and visiting scholar at Brown University. She is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor UP, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).

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