Rapper looks back on first major-label video 25 years later for Vevo Footnotes
When Eminem made his first major-label music video, “My Name Is,” in 1999, he had no idea how huge it would become. At the time, he just wanted to (allegedly) take ecstasy and goof around as Bill Clinton, according to the notes he wrote for the newly released Vevo Footnotes edition of the video.
For the redux, the rapper wrote about how Dr. Dre dropped a needle on a record at their first session together, and he instinctively started saying, “Hi, my name is.” Feeling the vibe, he went home to the L.A. apartment he was staying at and wrote verses. “We both thought it would be a good way to introduce me to the world,” Eminem wrote. They made the music video with director Phillip Atwell a few months later.
Some of the most revealing parts of the video are about the “dummy” scene, where a ventriloquist operates Em to rap. “Gheorge Murasan is 7-foot-7,” the rapper wrote. “He was the tallest guy we could think of that could play the ventriloquist so that I could sit on his lap and look like I’m the size of a dummy. I’m glad he had a sense of humor and was down to shoot it with us.”
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Also, Eminem looked back fondly at his scenes impersonating President Bill Clinton. But like the former POTUS, he won’t admit to inhaling (or in Em’s case, taking pills). “If you look closely at my eyes during the scene where I was dressed like Bill Clinton, it may look like I was high on ecstasy during that part of the shoot … but that’s just a rumor,” he wrote.
The clip ends with Eminem speculating on the video’s legacy as it passes its 25th anniversary. “I don’t think I could write an update [of the song] in 2024,” he wrote, “but maybe I’ll have them write ‘Bye, My Name Was’ on my tombstone.”