Is Eminem really killing off his alter ego with his new album?

Looks like this is the end of the road for the rapper's old alter ego.

Nobody lives forever, not even fictional alter egos. More than 20 years after Eminem first created "Slim Shady," the rapper seems poised to put the persona to rest with his next album.

On Thursday night (during the first rounds of the NFL draft in Eminem's hometown of Detroit, Mich.), Eminem released a trailer on social media for his next album, titled The Death of Slim Shady. He first created the titular persona for 1997's Slim Shady EP, and continued with it into his mainstream breakthrough The Slim Shady LP in 1999.

The trailer features a crime reporter discussing Slim Shady's death as if it's a real police matter. Over old clips of music videos that featured Eminem as Slim Shady, the reporter gravely intones, "Through his complex and oft-criticized, tongue-twisting rhymes, the blond antihero known as Slim Shady has had no shortage of enemies. The same rude lyrics and controversial antics may have led to his demise."

50 Cent shows up in a cameo appearance to say, "he's not a friend, he's a psychopath," suggesting he may contribute to the music of the album as well. 50 Cent also said last year that he and Eminem were working on developing a TV show version of 8 Mile.

In a parody of true-crime reports, Eminem himself appears as a blurred-out witness with a distorted voice, until "accidentally" revealing himself at the end of the teaser.

Eminem created Slim Shady when he was a young emerging Detroit artist. Competition was tough, which he likened to, "crabs in a bucket, and everybody's trying to fight to get their way to the top and pulling the next one down. I had any excuse in the book thrown at me — from being white to I can't rhyme or I'm biting someone else's style," he told The Detroit Free Press.

At the time he noticed how musicians like Insane Clown Posse and Esham used alter egos to differentiate their brands ... so Slim Shady was born.

The Death of Slim Shady is set to be released this summer.

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