Eminem

• 1. Introduction

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  Eminem walked onto the stage at the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001 alongside Elton John, a gay icon performing with a rapper whose lyrics had drawn protests from GLAAD outside the Staples Center that very night. It was, as Entertainment Weekly later called it, "the hug heard 'round the world." That moment captures something essential about Marshall Bruce Mathers III: the ability to be, simultaneously, the most controversial figure in a room and one of its most celebrated. A man from a crime-ridden Detroit neighborhood who wrote letters to an absent father, only to have them all come back stamped "return to sender." A rapper who dropped out of high school, spent three years in ninth grade, and worked 60 hours a week washing dishes to support a newborn daughter. How did he become the best-selling rapper of all time, with estimated sales of over 220 million records? How did a white kid from the working-class Black neighborhoods of Detroit come to hold 15 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? The answers are stranger, harder, and more specific than any of his records suggest.

• 2. Detroit Streets, Distant Father

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  Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born on the 17th of October 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri. His parents had been in a band called Daddy Warbucks, playing Ramada Inns along the Dakotas-Montana border before separating. His father abandoned the family when Eminem was a year and a half old. His mother, Deborah Nelson, raised him alone in poverty. Eminem wrote his father letters. Every one came back marked "return to sender."

  The family rarely stayed in one house for more than a year or two, moving through St. Joseph, Savannah, Kansas City, Warren and Roseville before settling in Detroit when Eminem was 12. There, he and his mother were one of three white households on their block in a working-class, primarily Black neighborhood. He was beaten several times by Black youths. A bully named D'Angelo Bailey once severely injured his head, an incident Eminem later recounted on the song "Brain Damage"; his mother filed a lawsuit over it in 1982, which a Macomb County judge dismissed the following year.

  His uncle Ronnie Polkingharn, his mother's half-brother, gave him his first rap song: "Reckless", from the Breakin' soundtrack. Polkingharn became a musical mentor to the boy. When Polkingharn died by suicide in 1991, Eminem stopped speaking publicly for days and did not attend the funeral.

  By the time he was 14, Eminem was rapping with high-school friend Mike Ruby, the two adopting the names "Manix" and "M&M." On Saturdays, he and his friend Proof snuck into Osborn High School's lunchroom for freestyle battle rap, and attended open mic contests at the Hip-Hop Shop on West 7 Mile Road, which was considered ground zero for the Detroit rap scene. After spending three years in ninth grade because of truancy and poor grades, he dropped out of Lincoln High School at 17.

• 3. Slim Shady and the Dre Deal

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  In 1995, Eminem signed to Jeff and Mark Bass's F.B.T. Productions and recorded his debut album, Infinite, for their independent Web Entertainment label. When it came out in 1996, Detroit disc jockeys largely ignored it. One piece of feedback he received was: "Why don't you go into rock and roll?" The rejection pushed him toward something rawer. He developed a sadistic, violent alter ego he called Slim Shady, a character that let him express anger through lyrics about drugs, rape, and murder, while also addressing the more pressing realities of poverty and family difficulty.

  He recorded the Slim Shady EP in the spring of 1997. After being fired from his job and evicted from his home, he traveled to Los Angeles to compete in the 1997 Rap Olympics, a nationwide battle rap competition. He placed second. An Interscope Records intern named Dean Geistlinger was in attendance and asked for a copy of the EP. Geistlinger sent it to company CEO Jimmy Iovine. Iovine played it for record producer Dr. Dre, founder of Aftermath Entertainment and a founding member of N.W.A. Dre recalled: "In my entire career in the music industry, I have never found anything from a demo tape or a CD. When Jimmy played this, I said, 'Find him. Now.'" Although associates criticized Dre for hiring a white rapper, Dre was direct: "I don't give a fuck if you're purple; if you can kick it, I'm working with you."

  Eminem had idolized Dre since listening to N.W.A as a teenager. He was nervous working with him, but grew comfortable after a series of productive recording sessions. On the 9th of March 1998, he signed to Aftermath and Interscope. The Slim Shady LP was released in February 1999. By year's end it was certified triple platinum and became quadruple platinum by the RIAA. It was one of the year's most popular albums and also one of its most controversial, with lyrics that described disposing of a wife's body in a trip with his infant daughter. The song "Guilty Conscience" marked the beginning of a lasting friendship and musical bond between Dre and Eminem.

• 4. Record-Breaking and Controversy

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  Recorded from 1999 to 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP was released in May 2000. It sold 1.76 million copies in its first week, breaking US records held by Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle for fastest-selling hip-hop album and Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time for fastest-selling solo album. The album was certified Diamond by the RIAA in March 2011 and sold 21 million copies worldwide.

  In July 2000, Eminem became the first white artist to appear on the cover of The Source. That same year, he performed with Elton John at the Grammy Awards in a rendition of "Stan" despite GLAAD's public opposition. The song "Stan" was ranked by Q as the third-greatest rap song ever and would later be listed 296th on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

  The Eminem Show followed in May 2002 and sold 27 million copies worldwide, becoming the bestselling album of that year. At the same time, Eminem starred in the semi-autobiographical film 8 Mile, which he described as a representation of growing up in Detroit rather than a literal account of his life. The film's song "Lose Yourself" topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks, the most for a solo rap song at the time, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003, making him the first hip-hop act to win the award. He was absent from the ceremony; co-composer Luis Resto accepted in his place.

  Encores 2004 release brought a different kind of controversy. The single "Just Lose It" mocked Michael Jackson's child molestation trial, his plastic surgery, and the 1984 incident when his hair caught fire during the filming of a commercial. Jackson phoned Steve Harvey's radio show on the 12th of October 2004, a week after the video's release, to express his displeasure. Stevie Wonder called the video "kicking a man while he's down." Black Entertainment Television stopped airing it, though MTV said it would continue. The album also included the anti-war song "Mosh," a pointed critique of President George W. Bush released one week before the 2004 presidential election.

• 5. Addiction and the Years of Silence

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  During the production of 8 Mile, Eminem developed insomnia while working 16 hours a day. An associate gave him an Ambien tablet, which knocked him out, and he obtained a prescription. That was his first encounter with drug addiction. Near the end of Encore's production, he described going "into the studio and goof off with a pocketful of pills." He began taking drugs to feel normal. By his own account, he could consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium and perhaps 30 Vicodin in a single day. His weight climbed to 230 pounds and he was eating fast food regularly, sometimes sitting alone at Denny's or Big Boy. He once overheard two teenagers arguing about whether the heavy man nearby was really him.

  In December 2007, he collapsed in his bathroom after an accidental methadone overdose. A dealer had told him the pills were just like Vicodin. Doctors told him he had ingested the equivalent of four bags of heroin and was about two hours from dying. After leaving the hospital, he tore the meniscus in his knee after falling asleep on his sofa and then had a seizure. His drug use, by his account, ramped back to where it had been within a month. He began attending church meetings to get clean, but after being asked for autographs he sought help from a rehabilitation counselor and began an exercise program centered on running. Elton John called him once a week during this period. Eminem has been sober since the 20th of April 2008.

  His comeback album, Relapse, came out on the 19th of May 2009. Recovery followed on the 18th of June 2010. Recovery sold 741,000 copies in its first week in the US, topped the Billboard 200 for five consecutive weeks out of a seven-week total, and became the first album to sell over a million digital copies in the US. Billboard named it the bestselling album of 2010, making Eminem the first artist in Nielsen SoundScan history with two year-end bestselling albums.

• 6. Ten Number Ones and the Alter Ego's End

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  On the 17th of January 2020, Eminem released Music to Be Murdered By as a surprise album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 279,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. With that chart position, he became the first artist to have ten consecutive albums debut at number one in the United States. His tenth number-one also made him one of only six artists to have released at least ten US number-one albums total. The song "Unaccommodating," which referenced the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, drew significant criticism; the mayor of Manchester described the lyrics as "unnecessarily hurtful and deeply disrespectful."

  Four years later, Eminem announced a twelfth studio album titled The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) at the opening ceremony of the 2024 NFL draft in Detroit, appearing alongside Roger Goodell. The trailer, shown on the NFL Network, framed the project as a true crime account of the murder of the Slim Shady persona. The album was released on the 12th of July 2024, through Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment, and Interscope Records. It became his eleventh number-one album on the Billboard 200, ending Taylor Swift's chart run. Critics praised his rapping technique while describing the album's attempts at shock as "predictable", "disjointed and incoherent", and featuring "infantile wordplay."

  In February 2022, Eminem performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige. That year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, with Dr. Dre presenting. His mother, Debbie, publicly paid tribute to him at the ceremony in November 2022. She died of complications from lung cancer in December 2024. A documentary film titled Stans, focusing on his career through the perspective of his most devoted fans, was set for a global theatrical release in August 2025, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring a previously unreleased track titled "Everybody's Looking At Me."

• 7. The Craft Behind the Voice

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  Eminem's approach to writing is documented in his book The Way I Am, published on the 21st of October 2008. He is known to write most of his lyrics on paper, sometimes spending several days or a week crafting a single set of lines. He describes the process as a drill he developed as a teenager: writing long words or phrases and then working out rhymes for each syllable underneath, even when the words made little sense together. The goal was to train his ear for sounds and patterns.

  The rappers who shaped his voice include Kool G Rap, Masta Ace, Big Daddy Kane, Tupac Shakur, Newcleus, Ice-T, Mantronix, Melle Mel as heard on "The Message", LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., Rakim, and Boogie Down Productions. At his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2022, he named more than 100 artists from hip-hop's golden age as contributors to who he became. The book How to Rap quotes Guerilla Black observing that Eminem "listened to everything and that's what made him one of the greats."

  His production instincts are equally distinctive. He is considered unusual for structuring his songs around the lyrics rather than writing to beats. Most of The Eminem Show was produced by Eminem and his longtime collaborator Jeff Bass. He co-produced Encore with Dr. Dre and, after doing little production on Relapse and Recovery, took on a significant share of The Marshall Mathers LP 2. He was also the executive producer of D12's first two albums and of 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and The Massacre. On his role producing his own music, he said: "Sometimes, I may get something in my head, like an idea or the mood of something that I would want, and I'm not always gonna get that by going through different tracks that other people have made. They don't know what's in my head."

  The BBC described him in 2002 as a "modern-day William Shakespeare" comparable to Bob Dylan. Elton John, who shared the Grammy stage with him that year, said: "When Eminem made his entrance, I got goose bumps the likes of which I have not felt since I first saw Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin." John added: "Eminem is a true poet of his time, someone we'll be talking about for decades to come."