In the nearly 30 years that it’s been on the air, South Park has earned itself a good number of celebrity fans. Jerry Seinfeld was one of the show’s early followers and tried to voice a character during the first season (they offered him the role of a turkey). Years later, pop star Katy Perry tweeted a picture of herself decked out in South Park pajamas on her tour bus. Even rapper DMX was a fan and sang “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo” in an old MTV special.
But there’s one celebrity South Park fan who stands way ahead of all the others: self-proclaimed “Rap God,” Eminem. The Detroit rapper first let his fandom be known on a track called “The Kids,” which was featured on certain editions of 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP. Eminem voices three different characters throughout the song, the most prominent being a substitute teacher named Mr. Shady, who raps to his students about the dangers of drugs. Mr. Shady is introduced and assisted in song by a character who sounds a lot like Mr. Mackey (right down to the “m’kay”). Both are occasionally interrupted by a Cartman soundalike named Brian. Eminem, as Brian, jokes at the end about getting sued by South Park; take a listen:
This wouldn’t be the last time Eminem tipped his cap to the show. Later in 2000, he launched a short-lived animated web series called The Slim Shady Show. In the first episode, “The Party Crashers,” the animated Slim Shady’s crew loses a basketball game to some kids from “Southwest Park.” They get their revenge on the South Park doppelgangers by plying them with Viagra and Ex-Lax, making for an explosive ending, to say the least.
Eminem’s appreciation for South Park hasn’t waned in the last 25 years either. On the song “Habits” from his 2024 album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce), he aims cancel culture. At around the album’s midpoint, a sample of the character Reality, who served as a sort of villainous personification of truth in the South Park episode “Safe Space,” can be heard. Finally, at the end of the song, Eminem raps, “Would this rhyme be okay if South Park had did it? / Would it make you less angry if Cartman spit it?” He tops it off by doing a Cartman imitation in the background.
The post The Multi-Platinum Selling Rapper Who’s Been Paying Homage to ‘South Park’ for 25 Years appeared first on VICE.
