Elvis Presley has the most references on Eminem’s new song, but there is also a list of celebrities who made it to Em’s new lyrics.
Eminem recorded “The King and I” for Buz Luhrmann’s film about Elvis Presley. But Elvis is not the only star that Eminem mentioned in the lyrics.
In the first four lines, Marshall managed to play on three famous personas, interpolating the title of Elvis’s hit single “Blue Suede Shoes”, which also inspired a post-chorus on the track, mentioning 2 Chainz and using Saddam Hussein’s execution in a gruesome simile:
Blue suede shoes, one missin’ a shoelace too
Two chains, you can call me 2 Chainz
Ropes hang like Hussein’s noose
Then Em shouts out one of his most dedicated celebrity fans, Dwayne The Rock Johnson:
I’m about to use the John like Dwayne “The Rock”
Marshall later turn to Wiz Khalifa to use his name more in the association with cannabis than music, but really, you can see the point:
That’s higher than Wiz Khalifa, soon as he lit the weed up
But the most powerful and the most articulate part of the song are probably the bars where Em spells out what he, as the “king of Hip-Hop”, has in common with Elvis, the “king of Rock & Roll”:
Now I’m about to explain to you all the parallels
Between Elvis and me, myself
It seems obvious: one, he’s pale as me
Second, we both been hailed as kings
He used to rock the Jailhouse, and I used to rock the Shelter
Listen to “The King and I” as it was premiered on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet:
