This is the biography Eminem , pseudonym of Marshall Bruce Mathers III (St. Joseph, October 17, 1972), is an American rapper, record producer and actor. His parents, Marshall Bruce Mathers II and Debbie Briggs, were two rather poor rock musicians and therefore forced to move from one part of the United States of America to another, in apartment buildings and caravans.
When Marshall was just six months old, his mother took him away from his father who had been accused of harassment and he later denied it in a letter to Marshall saying he was innocent. At the age of 12, together with his mother, he settled permanently in Detroit. Here Marshall went through a difficult adolescence: he often quarreled with his mother, both because of her drug problems and because of the many stories she had with men who also treated Marshall badly.
Marshall was also very shy: in fact, he was labeled “the loser of the class”, and for this reason, he was often the object of mockery and mistreatment by other classmates and one in particular, a certain De Angelo Bailey, who sent him into a coma for five days when Marshall was only eight years old. The latter in 2001 accused him of invading his privacy and making him look bad in the song Brain Damage.
However, in October 2003 the charges were dismissed by the court in Warren’s Lincoln High School, where he met rapper and future best friend Proof and his future wife Kimberly Anne Scott. At the age of 17, he dropped out of high school and began a relationship with Kim. The young rapper began his musical career even before Kim became pregnant, although to support his family he was forced to work in other jobs; in particular, he worked for a long time as a cook and dishwasher for the local “Gilbert’s Lodge”, in St. Louis.
In 1991 he was devastated by the pain of his uncle Ronnie’s suicide, with whom he had a special bond and which he will mention in Stan, Cleanin’ Out My Closet and My Dad’s Gone Crazy; on his left arm he tattooed “Ronnie R.I.P.”.In 2006 he suffered the hard loss of his best friend Proof, who died in a shootout on 8 Mile Road; curiously, only a year before he had shot the video for the song Like Toy Soldiers, in which he suffered the same fate.
At that time his mother was taking drugs such as Vicodin and Valium; her son reprimanded her several times for drug addiction, but her mother tried several times to deny it, even going so far as to denounce her son for defamation. First hits On February 23, 1999 Mathers released the album The Slim Shady LP for Interscope.
Sales reached 480,000 copies in the first two weeks alone. The album reached second place on the Billboard 200 and was certified four times platinum by the RIAA but with the arrival of popularity began the first controversy over the violent content of his songs. In the song ’97 Bonnie and Clyde, for example, talks about a car trip with his daughter to get rid of his wife’s corpse; while in Guilty Conscience he encourages a man to kill his wife and her lover.
On June 14, 1999 he married Kim, his historical girlfriend, in St. Joseph, Missouri, his hometown. In that year he also duet with Kid Rock in Fuck Off, contained in the album Devil Without a Cause. On May 23, 2000 The Marshall Mathers LP was released, which in the first week immediately sold 1.7 million copies, an unbeaten record for a rap album.
The Marshall Mathers LP is among the most successful albums of his career, having sold 6.5 million copies in the first month and more than 35 million copies worldwide, of which 10 million in the United States alone. His launch single was The Real Slim Shady, which achieved remarkable success, reaching the fourth position on the Billboard Hot 100 and the first in the British Official Singles Chart; his lyrics also contain insults to some U.S. pop singers: for example, he accuses Christina Aguilera of performing oral sex with Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit and MTV’s Carson Daly video jockey.
In the second single The Way I Am Marshall abandons the goliardic tones of the previous one and tells the pressures of his record label, Interscope, to match the success of My Name Is and sell more records; he also tries to defend musicians like Marilyn Manson. In Stan, who samples Dido’s Thank You, he declares he wants to make peace with the fame achieved, from the point of view of a fan who commits suicide by killing his pregnant girlfriend (referring to ’97 Bonnie & Clyde, from The Slim Shady LP).
Stan became Eminem’s second number 1 hit in Great Britain and his first number 1 in Italy. In 2001, he collaborated with Jay-Z on the song Renagade, featured on the New York rapper’s album The Blueprint, and in mid-2002 The Eminem Show was released, which became the best-selling album of the year and was awarded Best Album at the Grammy Awards.
His most famous single is the humorous Without Me; its video clip, a parody of Batman, was also awarded a Grammy for best short video. The single Cleanin’ Out My Closet caused a stir in response to the accusation of defamation and the song Dear Marshall, a track recorded by his mother with the rap group ID-X, contained in the album Set the Record Straight to end their controversy.
In this single, the rapper doesn’t mince words to accuse his mother of ruining his childhood. Then followed the singles Superman, who talks about his relationships after the divorce, and Sing for the Moment, in response to the criticism of incitement to violence in his songs.
In 2003, the single Lose Yourself (from the film 8 Mile, released the previous year, in which the rapper Xzibit also participated) was awarded an Oscar as “Best Original Song” and The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show entered the list of the 500 best albums according to Rolling Stone, respectively at numbers 273, 302 and 317.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Eminem and his ex-wife continued to deteriorate when Kim had to serve two years probation for cocaine possession. Mathers made his official Hollywood debut with the film 8 Mile, released in 2002, dedicated to his life and career. He recorded some tracks for the film’s soundtrack, including Oscar-winning Lose Yourself; it was not performed during the ceremony because he refused to sing the censored version, as requested by ABC.
Eminem was not even present at the ceremony and the award statuette was collected by his longtime collaborator and co-author of the song, Luis Resto. He also worked as a voice actor for the TV show Crank Yankers and the web cartoon The Slim Shady Show. The latter was later distributed only on DVD.Eminem is also an active producer of hip hop albums. He was executive producer of two D12 albums, Devil’s Night and D12 World (where he also rapped some songs); he also produced several tracks for Cheers and Second Round’s On Me by Obie Trice, and for Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and The Massacre, both by 50 Cent, where he participated in some songs.
He also produced some tracks of the third album by 50 Cent, Curtis, where he rapped in Peep Show. He produced the song Runnin, from Tupac Shakur’s posthumous album Tupac Resurrection OST (2003), as well as 13 tracks out of 17 from the late rapper’s fifth album, Loyal to the Game (2004), in which he collaborated with the New Yorker rapper’s mother, Afeni Shakur, and then Mathers produced The People vs. Trick-Trick, and collaborated with Akon on the album Konvicted (2006), with the song Smack That.
Discography
1996 – Infinite
1999 – The Slim Shady LP
2000 – The Marshall Mathers LP
2002 – The Eminem Show
2004 – Encore
2009 – Relapse
2010 – Recovery
2013 – The Marshall Mathers LP 2
2017 – Revival
2018 – Kamikaze
2020 – Music to Be Murdered By
