'97 Bonnie & Clyde is a song from hip-hop artist Eminem's 1998 release The Slim Shady EP, but it was titled Just The Two of Us. It was later re-released as the 7th track on Eminem's major-label debut album, The Slim Shady LP. It describes a fantasy situation in which Eminem and his daughter drive his recently murdered wife to a lake to dispose of her corpse. The song added to the already strong controversy surrounding the album and its songs, as well as being the first of many parodies of pop artists and clean rappers such as Will Smith by Eminem, as it is known to be a semi-parody of Will Smith's song Just The Two Of Us from the album Big Willie Style. It is an epilogue to the song "Kim", even though it was written first. "Kim" is featured on Eminem's following album, The Marshall Mathers LP. "Kim" uses a skit called "Mommy" (from The Slim Shady EP) at the end and "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" uses it at the beginning.
The song was later covered by singer Tori Amos on her 2001 concept album Strange Little Girls.
Lori Burns and Alyssa Woods have studied Amos's cover version as a process of "signifyin(g)" the songs by "making a personal claim" on the existing song. Her version seeks a personal intimacy with the listener, as Amos takes on the perspective of the murdered woman in the song, rather than that of the murderer who narrates Eminem's original. Burns and Woods claim that this process of emotional re appropriation authenticates Amos's artistic presence even in songs that fall outside the standard confessional structure of pop music.[1]
[edit] Track listing
- CD single
|
| 1. |
"'97 Bonnie & Clyde" |
Marshall B. Mathers II, Jeff Bass, Mark Randy Bass |
Bass Brothers, Eminem |
5:16 |
[edit] References
- ^ Burns, Lori and Alyssa Woods. "Authenticity, Appropriation, Signification: Tori Amos on Gender, Race, and Violence in Covers of Billie Holiday and Eminem." Music Theory Online, 10.2 (1994). [1].
