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Although her son has called her a horrible
mother who drank and took drugs and deserves
to burn in hell, rapper Eminem's mother
doesn't take it to heart.
"He's got a persona to live up to, an image,"
his mother, Debbie Nelson, told Primetime's
Jay Schadler. |
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Nelson says that she doesn't take her son's rage-filled lyrics
literally. Even when he sings, "You selfish
bitch, I hope you f---ing burn in hell for
this s--t," she says it doesn't bother her.
"That's just artistic expression," she said.
"He's very sad on the inside. He is hurting a
lot. And I can see it. I can see through my
son. I know him like the back of my hand."
Her son's violent, resentful lyrics have also
been good for his record sales, Nelson says.
"The minute you start becoming destuctive and
being different — you know, kill your mother,
rape this one and kill that one — I mean,
people love it. The more he went in that
direction, I mean, he was selling just like
crazy. I mean, everybody wanted more."
Nelson, who brought a $10 million defamation
lawsuit against her son in 1999 but ended up
settling out of court for a few thousand
dollars, said she is sure he still loves her.
Part of the reason he continues to say
horrible things about her in his music, she
said, is commercial: "He's got everybody else
pulling him in different direction: managers,
different people, telling him what to say. And
money is power, you know."
Tough Times, But No Drugs or Alcohol, Mom Says
Nelson was just 17 when Eminem, whose real
name is Marshall Mathers, was born. She admits
the family went through some tough times. By
the time Marshall was 2, she fled an abusive
marriage and started a tough life as a single
mother. "We'd get into homes, fix it up and
they'd sell it out from under us, so it was
kind of tough," she said. "I went from
paycheck to paycheck."
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But Nelson denies that she was the kind of
mother depicted in her son's music. He has
accused her in his lyrics of being an
alcoholic, smoking marijuana and abusing
prescription drugs — all of which she denies.
"None of that is true," she said.
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Eminem's reputation as a rapper is built
around his raw depiction of grim realities in
his life, including what he says was a
difficult childhood with a bad mother. Nelson
stops short of calling her son a liar, but
insists that what she says is true. "That is
what I'm saying, but I don't want to call him
a fake," she said.
The rapper declined Primetime's request for an
interview and chose not to respond to his
mother's comments.
Nelson has said in the past that she is an
excellent mother, but she conceded to
Primetime that she would give herself only
nine points out of ten as a mother, "because
no one is perfect." In 1996, the Michigan
Department of Social Services alleged that
Nelson "exhibits ... almost paranoid
personality" and accused her of abusing
Marshall's younger brother, Nathan. He was
temporarily removed from her custody but
eventually returned under state supervision.
Says Eminem Was a 'Momma's Boy'
Nelson says her son was a shy, imaginitive boy
when he was little, who loved play-acting at
home and dressing up as Batman and Robin. "He
was a Momma's boy. He always wanted to be with
Mommy," she said.
Also, she said, he showed evidence of rhythm
and musicality from a young age — by bouncing.
"Marshall was very different. Marshall had
always liked to bounce. He liked to bounce a
lot. I mean, sitting on a chair against the
wall, on a couch, in a car.... A lot of people
thought that he was maybe retarded in school,
because he'd bounce off his desk."
Although Nelson insists that at this point she
is immune to her son's lyrics, she said that
some of his actions have had an impact on her:
for the past several months, she said, he has
prevented her from visiting his daughter. On
one of his albums, he had rapped that she
would never see her granddaughter, with the
threat: "She won't even be at your funeral."
Nelson admits being hurt that she cannot see
the girl.
But a card her son sent her in 1998 suggests
that this might be just the latest turn in a
tangled mother-son relationship. In the card
he wrote: "Mom, I know that we fight a lot at
times, but it doesn't mean that I don't love
you. Happy Mother's Day. I love you, Marsh."
"That's Marshall!," Nelson said.
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