My Name Is Guilty Conscience Essay

Eminem’s “My Name is/Guilty Conscience” mash-up performance at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards concert constituted a breakthrough performance. The set opened with Eminem, dressed in baggy pants, an oversized white tee, a backwards baseball cap and a Nike, hoodie with the ironic label, “Role Model” flashing across his chest in LED lights. In front of mobile home cutouts and an LED “Trailer Park” sign, Eminem rapped his 1999 single, “My Name Is,” which introduced his alter ego, the hedonistic, misogynistic rebel, “Slim Shady” to the world. Then, opposite Dr. Dre, Eminem performed “Guilty Conscience,” the B-side to the single and a dialogic song about the internal conflict of three characters: a liquor store thief; a 21-year-old partygoer debating the conditions of consent; and a 29-year-old construction worker who has just been cuckolded. With this performance, I argue that Eminem played with racial binaries, discursively emphasizing his difference and sameness in order to appeal to black and white audiences alike, and established himself as an authentic artist in a predominantly black genre.
Eminem’s initial foray into hip-hop was complicated by the history of the genre itself. A predominantly black genre, hip-hop originated in the ghettos of New York, following the FBI’s suppression of late ‘60s black radical groups.
Much like the African-American entertainers before him, Eminem mimics himself, conjuring his “white trash” background with the flashing “Trailer Park” sign and mobile home cut outs. While many black rap artists “promote their class struggle as a key to their legitimacy,” any blatant moves by Eminem would have been perceived as gimmicky (Is Hip-Hop Dead, Hess 8). Yet these subtle invocations relate Eminem to the black community and earn him authenticity and “coolness” in the hip-hop