Canadian comic and ex-MTV star made name for himself in the late 90s and this name has forever stayed in “The Real Slim Shady” lyrics.
Tom Green popularised a special breed of shock comedy and absurdist pranks that for years became MTV’s signature brand. Starting from the mid-90s he did things unimaginable on today’s television. The list of controversies aired in his shows includes but is not limited to humping a moose, wearing a bloody skin of a deer, placing a severed cow’s head in his parent’s bed, including footage of his actual testicular cancer surgery, and more. In the video for his “Bum Bum Song” Tom Green was actually pressing his bum to a variety of objects including, as it goes in the lyrics, men.
So the amount of shock and controversy connected to Tom Green’s persona is exactly what referenced Eminem in his hit “The Real Slim Shady”:
Sometimes I wanna get on TV and just let loose
But can’t, but it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose
“My bum is on your lips, my bum is on your lips”
Even a costume with a fake bum, which Shady wears in the video, is a clear reference to Tom Green’s character in his “Bum Bum Song” visuals. For Tom Green, all of it came as a surprise, says the comedian in his recent interview. He remembers the first time he heard the song:
It’s wild. I was just driving in Los Angeles and it came on the radio and I heard it. Nobody had told me about it before and I guess it had just been released. It was pretty cool. I mean, it’s pretty cool getting a name dropped in an Eminem song. It’s funny, sometimes people interpret it like it’s a diss, but if you really listen to what he’s saying, it’s not actually a diss. He’s saying that he wants to go on TV and let loose, but he can’t, but it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose, right? So, he’s sort of almost saying he envied the fact that I was able to let loose on TV while he couldn’t. But he did, of course, end up getting to let loose on TV himself. And when he did, he did not choose to hump any moose.
The 1990s were wild. And it is fascinating to watch what remains to be alive and relevant from this time and what turns into a footnote.
Watch the segment from the interview that Tom Green shared on his Twitter tagging Eminem:
Awesome!! Thanks Dan! And thanks @Eminem !!! https://t.co/2cqiUSyJJA
— Tom Green (@tomgreenlive) April 5, 2023
Watch Eminem – The Real Slim Shady:
