Marshall Bruce Mathers the third was born on October 17, 1972, in Kansas City Missouri. His mother, Debbie Nelson was only 15 at the time and she almost died while giving birth to him. His father walked out on them a short 6 months after he was born. Later on when asked about his father Marshall said “My father? I never knew him, Never even seen a picture of him.”(1)
Debbie later took Marshall to live with his aunt in St. Joseph, Missouri. He switched schools over 20 times in the next years and that made it really hard for him to make real friendships. The only real friend that he had in those times was his uncle Ronnie. Ronnie was the one that first introduced Marshall to rap.
He was always going between living in Kansas City and Detroit, before his mother finally decided to stay in Detroit. “We just kept moving back and forth because my mother never had a job. We kept getting kicked out of every house we were in. I believe six months was the longest we ever lived in a house.” (2) Once there Marshall was constantly being made fun of and bullied on because he was white. He was once put in a coma for 9 days from the bullies in his school.
He started rapping when he was for, just rhyming words together, but when he was 14 he started to take it a little more seriously. He used to battle kids at lunch time and any other time he could find. Marshall chose the name “Eminem” because those where the initials of his name, Marshall Mathers.
Marshall later met his girlfriend while he was in high school. She had been kicked out of her parent’s home, and lived with Marshall and his mom. At first they fought like brother and sister, but as time went on they became almost inseparable. After failing 9th grade three times Marshall dropped out of school.
On December 25th, 1995, Kim gave birth to their first child, Hailey Jade. Marshall wanted to be a good father so he worked hard at his job at the time at Gilbert’s Lodge. Later in 1996 he lost his job and became very depressed, he tried to release and album, “Infinite,” but it sold just over 1,000 copies. He then wrote the song, “Rock Bottom,” took a lot of pills in an attempt at suicide.
Later on Marshall was invited to a freestyle contest in LA there was a $500 prize for first place. He entered and took second. He felt discouraged, and Jimmy Iovine asked for one of his demo tapes. Marshall gave him one and didn’t think much of it.
Jimmy played the tape Dr. Dre, Dre wanted to see Marshall and work with him. They later met and recorded 4 songs in 6 hours, 3 of them made it onto his first CD, “The Slim Shady LP.”
Marshall was at first made fun of because he was a white rapper, but he just had to ignore the comments and keep going. The Slim Shady LP was released on February 23rd, 1999 and it later went triple platinum. The CD was named after his alter ego, and nick name, “Slim Shady.” “Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head. Things I should be thinking about,” (3) is what he said when asked about his nick name.
His second album “The Marshall Mathers LP,” sold even more than his first. It sold almost 2 million in the first week, which made it the fastest selling hip hop album of all time. But, because of the lyrics, he became a target. “I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech limit.” (4) A lawsuit was filed against him by his own mother, and he was targeted as being a sexist and being against gays. While a lot of his lyrics did have a little bit of truth to them most were just him trying to be funny, but people took it the wrong way. “People should be able to tell when I’m serious and when I’m messing around. That’s why a lot of my songs are funny. I got a warped sense of humor I guess.” That was what he thought of all of it.
Later to put a stop to some of the comments, he sang the hit single “Stan” from “The Marshall Mathers LP,” with openly gay, Elton John, and even hugged him onstage after it was over.
That night Marshall won 3 Grammys for Best Rap Solo Performance, for “The Slim Shady LP”, Best Rap Performance for “The Marshall Mathers LP”), and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or group (For the song “Forgot About Dre” that he did with Dr. Dre.
Marshall kept recording and put out the album “Devil’s Night” except this one he did with his group, D12 in 2001. After that he released “The Eminem Show” it was said to be “One of the most critically heralded albums of 2002 and his most personal work yet.” (5)
In 2003 the movie “8 Mile” was released with Marshall as the main character. The movie was loosely based on Marshall’s past, when he was growing up in Detroit. He put on such a good act that critics thought he might get a “Best Actor” nomination for the Oscars.
Eminem’s latest album, Encore, was just released on November 12th 2004, and is already approaching 5 times platinum.
