'97 Bonnie & Clyde (The Slim Shady LP)

And now we turn our attention to the song that preceded Kim, even though it's a sequel: '97 Bonnie & Clyde.

Kim and '97 Bonnie & Clyde are like twins. Kim is the louder, more aggressive twin, while '97 Bonnie & Clyde is the quiet--but in many ways, more frightening--sibling. In Kim, Eminem shouts directly at his wife for the whole song...in '97 Bonnie & Clyde, Eminem sweet-talks his daughter, dressing up the description of his wife's violent death in baby language.

As horrifying as Kim is, it's not even in the same universe as '97 Bonnie & Clyde when it comes to creepy. Nothing is quite as twisted as a father rationalizing to his daughter, in baby terms she can understand, her mother's murder, while professing his love for her and turning her into an unwitting partner-in-crime. The fact that his daughter is the accomplice in this crime is the reason Eminem called the song '97 Bonnie & Clyde: Bonnie and Clyde were a pair of lovers/outlaws who committed crimes together. In this song, Hailie is Bonnie, and Eminem is Clyde:

Wanna help Dada tie a rope around this rock?
We'll tie it to her footsie then we'll roll her off the dock
Ready now? Here we go, on the count of three
One, two, three: wee!

Another reason for the title of the song is that it was an homage to Tupac's '96 Bonnie & Clyde, a metaphorical love song about him and his gun. Eminem has replaced "gun" with "daughter" and created a masterpiece. Considering it as a sequel to Kim makes it even scarier. He goes from a furious rage to a creepily calm, affectionate tone in the sequel. It's sickly. It's morbid. It's genius. Tell me you don't get goosebumps when you listen to his love letter to Hailie at the end of the song, right after disposing of her mother. He actually sounds like a psychopath:

That's all we need in this world, just me and you
Dada will always be here for you
Your dada's always gonna love you, remember that
You ever need anything just ask
Dada will be right there

Eminem refers to this in a later album, The Eminem Show, in Hailie's Song: Hailie, remember when I said if you ever need anything, Daddy will be right there? Well guess what? Daddy's here..

Another reason this is so creepy are the chilling euphemisms Eminem uses so that his baby daughter can understand. Here is a list:

blood = ketchup on her shirt
the slit in Kim's throat = boo-boo on her throat ... a little scratch
smell of Kim's rotting corpse = dead skunk
The real knife he used to slit Kim's throat = Dada's toy knife
Kim getting dumped in the lake = Wash off in the water
Killing her = putting her on time-out
Your mother is dead = Mama's too sleepy to hear you screaming
Help dad dump her stepfather/stepbrother in the lake too = Help dad with two more things out the trunk

But I haven't even mentioned the #1 CREEPFACTOR of this song...which is the voice of Eminem's ACTUAL daughter in the background of this song. Holy shit. Adds to the whole authenticity of this song and blurs the line between fact and fiction very nicely.

It's a little-known fact that Eminem lied to Kim in 1997 about taking Hailie out to Chuck E Cheese...he was actually taking her to the recording studio so he could record '97 Bonnie & Clyde and also record her voice. It was this song, along with Guilty Conscience, that raised the most eyebrows in the lead-up to the release of The Slim Shady LP and the aftermath as well. Murmurs of "Apparently there's a song where he kills his wife on it..." swept across America. This song made SSLP a notorious album before it even hit the shelves.

But let's get to the actual lyrics of this song before we get too carried away. In the first verse, Eminem puts Hailie in the car, the very same car in which he's screaming at Kim in the second verse of Kim. The very same car Kim's body is in, along with her new husband and her stepson. The entire first verse he's talking to her in the car (you can hear the sound of driving in the background).

You can assume he's driving to the lake (he lies to Hailie, saying it's a beach, perhaps to make it sound more fun than it is) at night time, since Eminem says "I know what you're thinking: it's kinda late to go swimming." Not to mention the sound of crickets, which are more prevalent in the night time (well at least that's what I think). Let's not forget that Eminem is drink-driving (from Kim: "You're drunk!"), so he is putting Hailie's life in danger too. But fuck it...it's fiction.

The second verse begins with:

A place called Heaven and a place called Hell
There's a place called prison and a place called jail
And Dada's probably on his way to all of them except one
'Cause Mama's got a new husband and a step-son

I love these lyrics...he's saying he's going to Hell and he's going to jail. But I was always confused because prison/jail are the same thing.

What makes Eminem's story-telling so formidable is he is able to create links and running threads through the narrative:

Come on, hey hey, we goin' to the beach/I know what you're thinkin', it's kinda late to go swimmin'/don't you wanna help dadda build a sandcastle?/And mama said she wants to show you how far she can float/We'll let her wash off in the water and me and you can pway by ourselves, can't we?/And Dad'll wake her up as soon as we get to the water/We're gonna take mommy for a little walk along the pier/But don't worry, Dada made a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake/We'll tie it to her footsie then we'll roll her off the dock/There goes mama, spwashin' in the water/Now we'll go play in the sand, build a castle and junk

Rhyming

The obligatory rhyming section of my reviews. Here are some subtle rhyme schemes you may have missed:

Thinkin'/swimmin/women, throw a fit/go of it/so upset

Along the pier/wrong idea

New brother/you wuv her