Eminem Appeared in a Classic Korn Video Before He Was Famous
If you look real close at Korn’s classic video for “Got the Life,” you may catch a second of one of rap’s greatest talents before he was famous. A young Marshall Mathers was an extra on the set for “Got the Life,” and he may have shown up looking for his big break.
Korn released “Got the Life” to massive acclaim in November 1998. Though the song only hit the No. 15 spot on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, the video became a staple of MTV’s Total Request Live and was the first music video to be “retired” in the show’s history. By that point, however, Korn’s Follow the Leader album had already hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Eminem’s cameo is only momentary, but he managed to make an impression on guitarist Munky even though he was wasted during the video shoot.
“There were some extras on the set of our video ‘Got the Life.’ Some kid came up to me and gave me his demo,” Munky recalls. “I was really drunk and I was like [out of it]. He’s like, ‘Hey, check it out, I’m a rapper.’ I’m like, ‘I’m just a guitar player.’ It turned out that kid that was on our video was Eminem. He was an extra in that video. I vaguely remember that happening.”
Fellow Korn guitarist Head followed up by joking, “Thanks a lot, man. Would could’ve been billionaires. We could’ve signed him before Dre.”
Eminem Cameos in Korn's "Got the Life" Video
In addition to Eminem, artists like Fred Durst, Wes Borland and Sam Rivers of Limp Bizkit, Orgy’s Jay Gordon and rapper WC are in the video, as is former UFC fighter Tito Ortiz.
A few years later, Korn’s Untouchables would unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow Eminem from the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200. In its fourth week of release, The Eminem Show still managed to sell over 100,000 copies more than what Untouchables was able to move in its debut week. No shame on Korn, though, as Eminem eventually became the highest-selling music artist of the 2000s in the United States.
See if you can catch Slim Shady at the very end of “Got the Life” below. (He's somewhat shrouded by the video's end slates.)