As a white male growing up in the 2000s, I firmly believed there was no better rapper to ever grace this earth than Eminem.

Of course I was first introduced to some of his tamer stuff — songs like Lose Yourself were clean enough to listen to in my earlier years, but still hard enough to put the hood up on my sweatshirt and believe I was a street-hardened thug at the age of 12.

But then I got to high school and I had a friend that was a little too much into Eminem (in a Stan-like way), and he introduced me to some of Em’s earlier, darker work.

Songs about rape, murder, hard drugs, and the works — stuff that really resonated with a middle-class white kid in the Midwest going through puberty and smoking weed and drinking beer for the first time.

There’s no denying that most of the lyrics from his earlier stuff were fucked up, but the music made me feel some type of way and it played right into the hands of my teenage angst.

When Recovery dropped, it wasn’t the same Eminem from the Slim Shady LP that I had become accustomed to — but I still loved it.

I remember listening to the album on my iPod in the backseat of the car before I could drive, staring out the window with “Space Bound” on repeat as I thought about all the girls that broke my heart.

Eminem became one of the defining artists of my high school years — listening to him in the car with friends, in the locker room before games, and at parties while we drank.

And then college came.

I don’t know if it was gradual or all at once, but at some point within the first year that love for Eminem completely faded.

Sure, there was still some of his bigger hits I liked — but for the most part when one of his songs came on I had one thought: this shit is whack.

I don’t know if the times were changing or music was evolving or I just wasn’t an angsty teenager anymore, but I started to see Eminem as a total cornball.

And everything he put out after that point only confirmed it further.

So I no longer cared about anything he did.

THAT IS until news broke last month that peaked my interest.

In July, Eminem announced he would be releasing his second greatest hits collection, Curtain Call 2.

Truthfully I didn’t think that this would be the spark that made me become an Eminem fan again — but it was a cool announcement nonetheless.

The first Curtain Call was great and I figured he had to include tracks from Relapse and Recovery, albums that I actually liked.

And then today he released the track list:

Sure it features some of the songs I was hoping to see, but my mind was blurred by the tracks I didn’t recognize — stuff from Kamikaze and Music To Be Murdered By (two of the absolute lamest album names imaginable).

Look, I haven’t done deep dives on these albums but I’ve heard songs from them. And they’re bad. Not just musically bad, but lyrically awful.

How could this once-great rapper and lyricist fall off so hard?

But at this point I realized, it’s not just the songs.

Every time I see Eminem make a public appearance now I think: who is this guy?

He looks like a completely different person — and it’s not just the beard.

He looks… weird. Paler, more plastic-y with dark, beady eyes.

THIS is not my Eminem.

Curious, I did the only logical thing:

Googled “Why does Eminem look like that now”.

And what I was discovered was both shocking… and believable.

See… it’s believed by many that this person that we see today posing as Eminem is not the original Marshall Mathers.

What we are seeing is believed to be either a double or a clone or even an android of the rapper.

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Seems ridiculous, right?

Buckle up.

In 2005 Eminem checked into a rehab facility for an addiction to sleeping pills. It’s at this point that many believe he relapsed and either overdosed or got behind the wheel of a car and died in a crash.

Due to his popularity though (and the money he was generating), executives were not ready to right him off.

So they implemented a double of some sort.

As crazy as this may sound, many have claimed it’s been done before — famously with Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

This theory coincides with the fact that Eminem went on a bit of a hiatus after 2005, not releasing another album until 2009’s Relapse.

Still with me?

Take a look at this picture:

These are clearly two different people.

Now cynics will say: “He’s just aged. It’s plastic surgery. It’s from addiction.”

But none of those are explanations for a complete facial reconstruction.

His jaw has been re-shaped, his ears completely different, and his eyes — no longer a bright sparkling blue — but rather black and soulless.

And let’s not forget the fact that after 2005 his music slowly declined and his style completely changed.

It’s possible that before, or even during rehab, he was still writing and making music — so executives would have been able to compile and release these after his death, which explains why Relapse and even Recovery were still good.

But once the well ran dry, they left it up to the fake Eminem to continue to carry the torch — which would be why the new stuff sucks so bad.

But where does the clone/android theory come in?

It started in 2013 when Eminem appeared on an ESPN broadcast and seemed to glitch/malfunction on live TV.

There’s no denying that the side-to-side repeated movement with the locked, open jaw and dead-eye gaze is eerily similar to a broken animatronic.

When he/it finally speaks, the decoy attributes the erratic behavior to the nerves of being on live TV (?).

This is supposed to be someone who’s performed live in front of millions of people, not to mention a person well-known for his IDGAF attitude?

Naysayers will say: “Maybe he was just on drugs”.

But Eminem is clean at this point, so there’s no substance to that claim.

The conspiracy continues to grow after this when another famous rapper, B.o.B., puts out a string of cryptic tweets claiming that human cloning has been around for years, especially for celebrities in Hollywood and the music industry.

And then ANOTHER rapper, Tom Macdonald (very bad rapper name), released a song called ‘Cloned Rappers’ that in the lyrics claims ‘Illuminati and Execs took bone samples to clone rappers’.

The cherry on top? The song mentions Eminem by name and a character that looks very similar to him is featured in the music video — meaning those in the industry must know.

Still not convinced?

In 2017, Eminem put out an album called Revival which featured the song “Arose”. Here’s the opening lines from the song:

If I could rewind time like a tape
Inside a boombox, one day for every pill or Percocet that I ate
Cut down on the Valium, I’da heard everything
But death is turning, so definite, wait!
They got me all hooked up to some machine

The song references his possible overdose from sleeping pills, as well as points to at his near-death point being ‘hooked up to some machine’ — possibly the cloning device. Maybe the Eminem copy is trying to give us some hints?

Look I am not saying it’s a fact, but things with Eminem have not been adding up for some time.

And when the people you once admired and enjoyed start to change — and their music becomes really bad and they start to look like a lesbian woman — you take any explanation you can find to justify this new reality.

Because the truth may be just too hard to accept.

One thing I know though.

I miss the REAL Slim Shady.