The story of Eminem

A restless childhood

Marshall Bruce Mathers the Third was born on the seventeenth of October 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri. His mother, Deborah Nelson, known as Debbie, went through a seventy three hour labor that nearly killed her. She and his father, Marshall Bruce Mathers Junior, had played together in a band called Daddy Warbucks, working Ramada Inns along the border of the Dakotas and Montana. The marriage did not last. His father walked out when the boy was about a year and a half old, and Debbie raised him alone and poor. As a child he wrote letters to his father. According to his mother, every single one came back marked return to sender.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mother and son rarely stayed anywhere longer than a year or two. They bounced between St. Joseph, Savannah and Kansas City in Missouri and the Detroit suburbs of Warren and Roseville, usually living with relatives. Marshall later said he changed schools two or three times a year and was forever the new kid, shoved into lockers and beaten up in bathrooms and hallways. The worst attack came in January 1982 at Dort Elementary, when an older boy named DeAngelo Bailey knocked him down in the snow. His mother said he suffered a brain hemorrhage and drifted in and out of consciousness for days. She sued the school district, but a judge dismissed the case in 1983, ruling that schools were immune.[1] [2] [3]

When he was about twelve they settled in Detroit, in a small bungalow in a working class, mostly black neighborhood, where theirs was one of only three white households on the block. His half brother Nathan was born in 1986. Marshall loved stories and dreamed of drawing comic books, until his uncle Ronnie Polkingharn, his mother's half brother, gave him the soundtrack to the film Breakin'. A track on it called Reckless was the first rap song he ever heard, and Ronnie became his first musical mentor. In 1991 Ronnie took his own life. Marshall was so shaken that he stopped speaking for days, and he could not bring himself to go to the funeral.[1]

At fourteen he started rhyming with a school friend, Mike Ruby. They called themselves Manix and M and M, after Marshall's initials, and M and M slowly became Eminem. With his friend DeShaun Holton, later known as Proof, he would sneak into Osborn High School at lunchtime for freestyle battles, and on Saturdays they went to open mic contests at the Hip Hop Shop on West Seven Mile Road, the heart of the Detroit scene. School was another story. He repeated ninth grade three times because of truancy and poor grades and dropped out of Lincoln High School at seventeen. English was the one subject he was always good at, and he says he later earned a high school equivalency diploma.[1] [2]

In 1987 his mother took in a runaway teenager, Kimberly Scott, who had fled home with her twin sister Dawn. Kim and Marshall began an on and off romance, and he always dated it to the fourteenth of January 1991. To help pay the bills he worked jobs like one at a Little Caesars pizza place in Warren, though he later claimed his mother still threw him out and kept most of his paycheck. When she went out to play bingo he turned the stereo up and wrote. His method was obsessive. He would write a long word or phrase on paper and work out rhymes for every syllable underneath, filling pages that made little sense but trained his ear.[1] [2]

Infinite and rock bottom

His first group, formed in 1988 when he went by MC Double M, was called the New Jacks. It grew into a crew that became Soul Intent, which included Proof. In 1992 Mark Bass, one half of the Detroit production team the Bass Brothers, heard a white rapper freestyling on a local radio show and invited him in for free studio time. The brothers had worked with George Clinton, and they took the young man on through their production company. Jeff Bass remembered a kid who could easily work twenty hours a day, in a cramped two story studio where the engineers lived upstairs so they would get to work on time.[1] [2] [3]

On Christmas Day 1995 Kim gave birth to their daughter, Hailie Jade. The young family lived in a rough neighborhood where their house was burgled again and again. Marshall cooked and washed dishes for minimum wage at Gilbert's Lodge, a family restaurant in St. Clair Shores, working sixty hour weeks for months after Hailie arrived. At the same time he recorded his debut album, Infinite, in the Bass Brothers' basement studio, with Mr. Porter producing most of it and Proof programming drums. Released on the twelfth of November 1996 on the brothers' small Web Entertainment label, it was deliberately radio friendly and borrowed heavily from the style of Nas and AZ. Detroit radio ignored it.[1] [2]

The reaction stung. People told him he sounded like other rappers, or asked why a white boy did not go into rock and roll instead. Only about a thousand copies were made, and he sold some himself from the trunk of his car. He was fired from Gilbert's Lodge five days before Christmas, which was also Hailie's birthday, with about forty dollars to buy her a present. Drink, drugs and despair piled up, and after Infinite he attempted suicide. By March 1997 he had lost the restaurant job for good and was living with Kim and the baby in his mother's mobile home.[1] [2] [3]

Out of that anger came a new voice. One day the name Slim Shady hit him, and he immediately started thinking of words to rhyme with it. Shady was a gleefully sadistic alter ego who could say the violent, drug soaked, absurd things Marshall was feeling. In the spring of 1997 he recorded the Slim Shady EP, released that December. Alongside the cartoon mayhem it dealt with poverty, family trouble and a failing relationship, and his flow no longer sounded like anybody else. He later told Zane Lowe he made five hundred copies and sold only slightly more than half. It was barely a release at all, but it was about to land in exactly the right hands.[1] [2] [3]

Discovered by Dr. Dre

In 1997 he reached the final of the Scribble Jam battle in Cincinnati and lost to MC Juice. Then, fired and evicted, he travelled to Los Angeles for the Rap Olympics on the twenty fourth of October 1997, where the prize was five hundred dollars and a Rolex watch. He came second, beaten by a rapper called Otherwize. But an Interscope intern named Dean Geistlinger asked him for a copy of the Slim Shady EP. It worked its way up to the label's boss, Jimmy Iovine, who played it for Dr. Dre. Dre later said that in his whole career he had never found anyone from a demo, and that this time he told Iovine to find him, now.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Some people around Dre warned him not to sign a white rapper. Dre waved it away, saying he did not care what color someone was as long as they could rap. For Marshall, who had idolized Dre since hearing N.W.A as a teenager, the first meeting was nerve racking, but on their very first day in the studio they finished My Name Is in about an hour and cut three more songs, including Role Model. He signed to Aftermath and Interscope on the ninth of March 1998. By then he had also met Paul Rosenberg, a young Detroit lawyer who became both his manager and his attorney, and a Detroit rapper called Royce da Five Nine, with whom he formed the duo Bad Meets Evil.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Slim Shady LP came out on the twenty third of February 1999 and entered the American chart at number two. My Name Is, built on a sample of the British singer Labi Siffre, became his first Hot 100 hit, and its video parodied Marilyn Manson among others. On Guilty Conscience, Dre and Eminem played the angel and the devil on a man's shoulders. Other songs were far darker, including a murder fantasy about Kim featuring the voice of baby Hailie. To record her, he told Kim he was taking their daughter to Chuck E. Cheese's. The album won Grammys for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance and made him famous and hated in equal measure.[1] [2] [3]

Fame brought trouble fast. In September 1999 his own mother sued him for ten million dollars, claiming a line about her drug use in My Name Is was slander. After two years she was awarded twenty five thousand dollars and, after legal fees, kept around sixteen hundred. There was grief as well. On the twenty first of May 1999 Bugz, a member of Proof's Detroit crew D12, was shot and killed, just hours before a concert. Eminem volunteered to take his place, and one of Bugz's last wishes brought in Swifty McVay, completing a six man lineup. Weeks later, on the fourteenth of June 1999, Marshall married Kim. In late 1999 he and Rosenberg founded Shady Records, and D12 became its first signing.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Marshall Mathers LP and a year of chaos

The follow up was made in a burst of twenty hour sessions. The first song recorded was Kim, a screaming murder ballad in which he plays both himself and his wife. Then Rosenberg passed on a tape from the producer The 45 King, who had looped a verse of Dido's Thank You after hearing it in the film Sliding Doors. The line about a picture on the wall made Marshall think of a fan who takes him too seriously, and Stan was born, a story told in letters from an obsessive fan who finally drives off a bridge. When the label said there was still no obvious single, he wrote The Way I Am in protest, and then, against a final deadline, The Real Slim Shady.[1] [2] [3]

The Marshall Mathers LP arrived on the twenty third of May 2000 and sold one point seven six million copies in its first week in America, a record for a rap album at the time. It spent eight weeks at number one and has sold around twenty five million copies worldwide. It was also a lightning rod. GLAAD condemned its homophobic language, Lynne Cheney attacked it at a Senate hearing, and Ontario's attorney general tried to keep him out of Canada. Critics were torn between horror and admiration, and many now call it his best album. Stan even gave the language a new word. In 2017 the Oxford English Dictionary added stan, meaning an obsessive fan.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Off the record, 2000 was chaos. On the third of June he pulled a gun on Douglas Dail, an associate of the Detroit duo Insane Clown Posse, in a parking lot in Royal Oak. The next day, outside a bar in Warren, he saw a man named John Guerra kissing Kim and was arrested for allegedly hitting him with a pistol. Both incidents ended in probation. On the seventh of July Kim tried to take her own life by cutting her wrists. She later said the breaking point was seeing him on stage beating an inflatable doll meant to be her while the crowd cheered. The couple separated that summer and divorced on the fifth of October 2001.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In the middle of all this he was being taken seriously as an artist. He toured with Dre, Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube on the Up in Smoke Tour, with Proof as his hype man. At the Grammys on the twenty first of February 2001, while GLAAD protested outside, he performed Stan with Elton John, who sang Dido's part, and the two embraced at the end. That June, D12's debut Devil's Night, recorded in memory of Bugz, went to number one in America. Later in 2001 he was the only guest rapper on Jay Z's album The Blueprint, producing and rapping on Renegade, a song that had begun life as a Bad Meets Evil track with Royce.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Eminem Show and 8 Mile

Divorce, lawsuits and the threat of jail fed his next album. His life felt like a circus, and after watching The Truman Show, about a man whose whole life is secretly broadcast, he joked that Jim Carrey had basically written his record. The Eminem Show came out in May 2002, rushed forward after pirated copies leaked online. He produced most of it himself, with Jeff Bass, and leaned hard on rock, borrowing Aerosmith's Dream On for Sing for the Moment. Cleanin' Out My Closet laid bare his anger at his mother, while Without Me mocked Moby and the censors. It was the best selling album in the world in 2002, and with some twenty seven million sold it is the biggest selling hip hop album ever.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Hollywood came calling. Producer Brian Grazer wanted a hip hop film with the feel of Saturday Night Fever, and director Curtis Hanson took the job after long talks in Detroit, where Eminem made clear he did not want a vanity project. 8 Mile, shot from September 2001, set the story in 1995 and cast him as Jimmy Smith, known as B Rabbit, a factory worker living in his mother's trailer and trying to win battles at a club called the Shelter. Kim Basinger played his mother, Brittany Murphy his love interest, and Proof a rival battle rapper. Eminem turned down parts in Training Day and The Fast and the Furious to make it.[1] [2] [3]

The theme song was written on set, between takes. Jeff Bass had started the music in September 2001, and Eminem wrote the words during breaks in filming, recording in a portable studio on location with a single take for each verse. The sheet he wrote on even appears in the film, in a scene on a bus. Lose Yourself reached number one on the Hot 100 in November 2002 and stayed there twelve weeks, a record for a solo rap song. 8 Mile opened with fifty one million dollars and took almost two hundred and forty three million worldwide, and critics including Roger Ebert found him surprisingly convincing on screen.[1] [2] [3]

In March 2003 Lose Yourself won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the first rap song ever to do so. Eminem was not there. Barbra Streisand read out the names, and his keyboard player and co writer Luis Resto walked up to accept, telling the room that Marshall had symphonies in his head. Jeff Bass, the third writer, was also at home, with a newborn baby. That same year Eminem's label turned the New York rapper 50 Cent into a superstar. Rosenberg had been handed 50's mixtape Guess Who's Back, Eminem flew him to Los Angeles to meet Dre, and Get Rich or Die Tryin' went on to sell more than twenty million copies.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Pills, Encore and losing Proof

Behind the success, something was going badly wrong. During the exhausting 8 Mile shoot, working sixteen hour days, he could not sleep, and an associate gave him an Ambien. It knocked him out, he got a prescription, and it became the start of an addiction to Ambien, Valium and Vicodin. He later said that at his worst he was taking forty to sixty Valium a day and perhaps thirty Vicodin, not to get high but just to feel normal. He put on weight, reaching around two hundred and thirty pounds, and ate fast food alone. Once he overheard two teenagers arguing about whether it was really him, one insisting that Eminem was not fat.[1] [2]

The feuds were multiplying too. The Source magazine and its co owner Benzino attacked him, and 50 Cent's war with Ja Rule dragged Eminem in after Ja Rule rapped about seven year old Hailie. In December 2003 the Secret Service said it was looking into an unreleased song with a line about the president, and several songs meant for his next album leaked. He hurried to Los Angeles to record replacements with Dre. Encore came out in November 2004. Its single Just Lose It mocked Michael Jackson, who complained publicly, while Mosh, released online just before the election, attacked George W. Bush. Eminem later called Encore one of his worst albums, blaming the leaks and the pills.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In the summer of 2005 he cancelled the European leg of the Anger Management 3 tour and entered rehab for what was described as a dependency on sleep medication. A greatest hits set, Curtain Call, followed that December amid talk of retirement. On the fourteenth of January 2006, fifteen years to the day after their first date, he married Kim again, with Proof as his best man. It did not last. Kim said he walked out forty one days later, and he filed for divorce in April. Then, on the eleventh of April 2006, came the worst blow of his life. Proof was shot dead in an after hours bar on Eight Mile Road in Detroit.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

According to police, an argument over a game of pool with a man named Keith Bender turned into a fight at the C.C.C. Club. A bouncer who was Bender's cousin fired into the air, Proof shot Bender in the head, and the bouncer, Mario Etheridge, shot Proof three times. Bender died a week later. Authorities decided Etheridge had acted lawfully in defense of another, and he was sentenced only to time served and a fine for weapons offences. Proof was thirty two. Around two thousand six hundred people filled his funeral at Detroit's Fellowship Chapel, with thousands more outside. Eminem later said the loss sent him to such a dark place that the more depressants he took, the more he hated himself.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The spiral peaked in December 2007. A dealer had sold him methadone, promising it was just like Vicodin and easier on the liver. One night he collapsed in his bathroom and was rushed to hospital. Doctors told him he had taken the equivalent of four bags of heroin and had been about two hours from dying. He missed Christmas with his children, checked himself out too early, tore his meniscus and later had a seizure, and within a month he was using again. Finally he found a rehab counselor, started running, and leaned on Elton John, who phoned him every week. He has been sober since the twentieth of April 2008.[1] [2] [3]

Relapse, Recovery and the comeback

Sober and suddenly prolific, he worked with Dre at Effigy, a studio he had bought in Ferndale, Michigan, and parted ways with much of his old production team. Relapse, released in May 2009, brought Slim Shady back as a horror movie serial killer speaking in odd accents, with Dre producing every track but one. Crack a Bottle, with Dre and 50 Cent, topped the Hot 100. Reviews were mixed and Eminem himself later soured on it, yet it won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and has since gained a cult following. He had recorded so much that a sequel, Relapse 2, was promised. Then in April 2010 he announced that there would be no Relapse 2.[1] [2]

Instead came Recovery in June 2010, a more open, emotional record full of outside producers. Not Afraid, about staying clean, debuted at number one. Love the Way You Lie began as a chorus written by the singer Skylar Grey and became a duet with Rihanna about a violent relationship, echoing his past with Kim and her own with Chris Brown. It topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks and became his best selling single. Recovery was the world's best selling album of 2010, making him the first artist in the SoundScan era with two year end best sellers. That summer he and Jay Z played stadium shows in Detroit and New York billed as the Home and Home Tour.[1] [2] [3]

Old rifts began to heal. Eminem and Royce da Five Nine had spent years estranged, in a dispute that also pulled in D12, but they made peace in 2008. In 2011 Bad Meets Evil finally released Hell: The Sequel, which went to number one, and Shady Records signed Royce's group Slaughterhouse along with the Alabama rapper Yelawolf. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 followed on the fifth of November 2013. Its single Rap God, a six minute display of speed and stamina, entered Guinness World Records as the hit single with the most words, one thousand five hundred and sixty. The Monster with Rihanna was another number one, and the album won him a record sixth Grammy for Best Rap Album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The album's most talked about song was a quiet one. On Headlights, featuring Nate Ruess of the band Fun, he apologized to his mother for years of attacks in his lyrics, admitted he cringed whenever Cleanin' Out My Closet came on the radio and no longer performed it, and credited her for raising him alone. He said everything he had to say about her was in that song. They remained estranged. In July 2014 he played two nights at London's Wembley Stadium, and in 2015 he executive produced the soundtrack to the boxing film Southpaw, a movie he had once been considered to star in.[1] [2]

Politics, feuds and surprise attacks

As Donald Trump rose, Eminem turned political. Back in 2004, at a mock convention promoting his Shade 45 satellite radio channel, Trump had endorsed him, and Eminem later said he regretted shaking his hand. In October 2016 he released Campaign Speech, an attack on the candidate. At the BET Hip Hop Awards in October 2017 he delivered a filmed freestyle called The Storm, criticizing the president over hurricane relief in Puerto Rico, gun violence after the Las Vegas shooting, and his attacks on Colin Kaepernick's kneeling protests. He ended by telling any fans who supported Trump that they had to choose a side. LeBron James and Kaepernick himself praised it.[1] [2] [3]

Revival, released in December 2017 with guests including Beyonce and Ed Sheeran, became his eighth straight album to debut at number one, but reviews were harsh and many still rank it his weakest. His answer came just eight months later. On the thirty first of August 2018 he dropped Kamikaze with no warning at all, attacking critics and a list of younger rappers. It debuted at number one with four hundred and thirty four thousand units. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, whose uncredited voice is heard on the song Fall, publicly disowned it, and Eminem later admitted that a slur he aimed at Tyler, the Creator on that song had gone too far and hurt many other people.[1] [2] [3]

One of the rappers in his sights was Machine Gun Kelly. The bad blood dated back to 2012, when Kelly tweeted that Hailie, then sixteen, was hot. Kelly later claimed that Eminem had kept him off radio in response. After Kamikaze, Kelly hit back with Rap Devil, and eleven days later Eminem answered with Killshot, which set a record for the biggest YouTube debut by a hip hop song, thirty eight million views in a day. The sniping would drag on for years. That October, to promote Kamikaze and the film Venom, he performed the song Venom live from the hundred and third floor of the Empire State Building for Jimmy Kimmel's show.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In January 2020 he surprised fans again with Music to Be Murdered By, named after an Alfred Hitchcock record, and became the first artist with ten consecutive number one albums in America. The song Darkness retold the Las Vegas shooting from the gunman's point of view and ended with a call for gun control, while a line on Unaccommodating about the Manchester Arena bombing drew fury from the city's mayor and victims' families. On the ninth of February 2020 he made a secret appearance at the Oscars, performing Lose Yourself seventeen years after it won. He then tweeted an apology for taking so long to get there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That April, in the first weeks of the pandemic lockdown, he woke at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan, to find a stranger standing behind him. The intruder, Matthew David Hughes, had broken a kitchen window with a brick paver, and he told Eminem he had come to kill him. The year before, Hughes had broken into a house Eminem used to own in Rochester Hills, telling the new owner he was looking for his brother Marshall. He took a plea deal and got probation, but went back to prison after an unrelated assault. The case eerily echoed Stan, and it would not be the last time Hughes came to the house.[1] [2] [3]

The Hall of Fame and the death of Slim Shady

On the thirteenth of February 2022 he joined Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige for the Super Bowl halftime show in Inglewood, the first built entirely around hip hop. He tore through Forgot About Dre and Lose Yourself, with Anderson Paak on drums, and near the end he dropped to one knee, the gesture Colin Kaepernick made famous. The show became the first Super Bowl halftime to win the Emmy for outstanding live variety special, leaving Eminem only a Tony short of all four major American entertainment awards. That November he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, with Dre presenting.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In his speech he named more than a hundred rappers from hip hop's golden age who had shaped him, and said he hoped they would be inducted too. On stage he brought out Steven Tyler to sing Dream On for Sing for the Moment and Ed Sheeran to take the Stan chorus. His mother, not in the room, posted a video saying she loved him and was very proud. Dolly Parton, who was part of the same Hall of Fame class, later wrote him a letter saying she had always felt an unexplained connection to him. They never met. Eminem shared the letter in August 2026, on the day Dolly died at the age of eighty.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

In April 2024, at the NFL Draft in Detroit, he announced The Death of Slim Shady, promoted with a true crime style trailer and even a fake obituary for his alter ego in the Detroit Free Press. The lead single Houdini, built on the Steve Miller Band's Abracadabra, debuted at number one on Billboard's global chart. Released on the twelfth of July 2024, the concept album staged a showdown between Marshall and Shady and knocked Taylor Swift off the top of the Billboard 200, his eleventh number one there. Critics praised the rapping and groaned at the shock jokes. Its closing songs, Temporary and Somebody Save Me, were written to his children about the damage his addiction had done.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

There was happier family news. In June 2023 he walked his adopted daughter Alaina down the aisle at her wedding. Hailie, by now a podcaster, married Evan McClintock, whom she met at Michigan State University, in May 2024, with Dre and 50 Cent among the guests. That October the video for Temporary ended with Hailie handing her father a Detroit Lions jersey with Grandpa on the back. The same month he introduced Barack Obama at a Kamala Harris rally in Detroit, urging people to vote and speak freely, and Obama repaid him by rapping the opening of Lose Yourself to the crowd.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Loss, a grandson and the legacy

On the second of December 2024 Debbie Nelson died in St. Joseph, Missouri, the town where her son was born, from complications of lung cancer. She was sixty nine. Theirs had been one of the most public family wars in music, from the defamation suit to her 2008 memoir, My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, in which she said much of his story about her was untrue. Headlights had been his apology, and in 2022 she had publicly congratulated him on his Hall of Fame induction. His father, whom he never really knew, had died in 2019.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the fourteenth of March 2025 Hailie gave birth to a son, Elliot Marshall McClintock, named in part after his grandfather. The year also brought unwanted drama. In January more than two dozen unreleased Eminem songs appeared online, recordings stretching from 1999 to 2018. The leak was widely reported as an inside job, and Eminem's team called it significant damage. Hughes, meanwhile, had come back. In August 2024, months after his release on parole, he was spotted on the Clinton Township property and arrested days later at a Walmart.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

At his trial in May 2025, prosecutors said Eminem now slept in a padlocked room because of him. Eminem testified, and after little more than an hour of deliberation the jury convicted Hughes of first degree home invasion and aggravated stalking. That June a judge sent him to prison for at least fifteen years. Weeks later Eminem released Stans, a documentary he produced about his most devoted fans rather than about himself, which played in cinemas around the world for one weekend in August 2025. It featured fans like a woman who had worked for ten years in the diner he once worked in, hoping he might walk in.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Business and law kept him busy. His publishing company, Eight Mile Style, sued Meta in 2025 over the unlicensed use of two hundred and forty three songs, after losing a long fight with Spotify. He moved against an Australian beach brand called Swim Shady over its name. He made a cameo in Happy Gilmore 2 and joined Jack White at the Detroit Lions' Thanksgiving halftime show. In April 2026 he celebrated eighteen years sober, and on the twentieth anniversary of Proof's death he wrote that his life would never have taken its path without his friend. That July he joined Jay Z at Yankee Stadium to perform Renegade together for the first time since 2010.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

As of 2026, Eminem is the best selling rapper in history, with estimated sales of more than two hundred and twenty million records, eleven number one albums in America, fifteen Grammys and an Oscar. Billboard named him the artist of the 2000s. He is credited with carrying hip hop into Middle America and opening the door for white rappers, while his early lyrics about women and gay people remain a lasting stain for many critics. The boy who wrote rhymes under every syllable of a word gave the dictionary a new one, and a generation of artists, from 50 Cent to Tyler, the Creator, grew up on his records.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Eminem

Eminem and Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre heard a cassette in 1998 and told Jimmy Iovine to find its owner. On their first day together they finished My Name Is in about an hour, and Dre has appeared on or produced for Eminem's albums ever since, executive producing most of them. Together they signed 50 Cent, shared stages from the Up in Smoke Tour to the 2022 Super Bowl, and in 2022 Dre inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Dre has called Eminem a fellow perfectionist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Eminem and Proof. DeShaun Holton, known as Proof, was Eminem's closest friend from their teenage battles at Osborn High and the Hip Hop Shop. He founded D12, brought Eminem into it, served as his hype man on tour and was best man at his 2006 wedding. His killing in April 2006 sent Eminem into the worst years of his addiction. Twenty years on, in 2026, Eminem wrote that Proof's belief in him opened people's minds before they judged him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Eminem and Kim Scott. Kim Scott moved into the Mathers home as a runaway teenager, and she and Marshall began dating in 1991. Their daughter Hailie was born in 1995. They married in 1999 and divorced in 2001, remarried in January 2006 and divorced again that December. He wrote songs imagining her murder, she attempted suicide in 2000, and she sued him over the song Kim. Yet they raised their daughters together and he adopted her daughter Stevie.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Eminem and Debbie Nelson. Debbie Nelson raised her son alone after his father left. He accused her in song of neglect and drug use, and she sued him for ten million dollars and wrote a memoir disputing his account. In 2013 he apologized on Headlights, and in 2022 she publicly congratulated him on his Hall of Fame induction. She died of complications from lung cancer in December 2024, still largely estranged from him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Eminem and Hailie Jade. Hailie Jade, born on Christmas Day 1995, is Eminem's only biological child and the subject of dozens of his lyrics, from her baby voice on '97 Bonnie and Clyde to Mockingbird and Temporary. He also raised Kim's daughter Stevie, his niece Alaina, whose mother Dawn died in 2016, and his half brother Nathan. Hailie married in 2024 and made him a grandfather in March 2025.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Eminem and Paul Rosenberg. Paul Rosenberg, a Detroit lawyer, began managing Eminem in 1997 and also acted as his attorney. In 1999 they founded Shady Records together, and Rosenberg produced 8 Mile. On album after album his voice appears in skits called Paul, pleading with his client to tone things down. He ran Def Jam from 2018 to 2020, and in 2025 he produced the documentary Stans with Eminem.[1] [2] [3]

Eminem and Jeff and Mark Bass. The Bass Brothers took Eminem in after Mark heard him freestyle on local radio in 1992. They put out Infinite and the Slim Shady EP on their Web label, and Jeff co wrote and co produced hits including Without Me and Lose Yourself, sharing the Oscar. Jeff is the voice of the Public Service Announcement intros. Eminem moved to his own Effigy studio in 2007, but says they remain close.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Eminem and 50 Cent. In 2002 Eminem heard 50 Cent's mixtape Guess Who's Back, flew him to Los Angeles to meet Dr. Dre and signed him through Shady and Aftermath. Get Rich or Die Tryin' became a phenomenon, and Eminem was pulled into 50's war with Ja Rule. When 50 left the label in 2014, he said he was let go early out of friendship. In 2024 Eminem said he was open to a joint album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Eminem and Royce da 5'9". Royce met Eminem in December 1997 and they formed the duo Bad Meets Evil. Their verses were meant for Renegade before Jay Z took Royce's place. They drifted apart for years in a dispute that also involved D12, then made peace in 2008. In 2011 Hell: The Sequel went to number one, Royce's group Slaughterhouse joined Shady, and Royce later helped produce Music to Be Murdered By.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Eminem and Elton John. When GLAAD condemned Eminem's lyrics, Elton John sang Stan with him at the 2001 Grammys and hugged him on stage. Elton said Eminem's entrance at rehearsal gave him goose bumps he had not felt since first seeing Jimi Hendrix. During Eminem's recovery in 2008 Elton became a mentor, phoning him every week to check on him.[1] [2]

Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly. Machine Gun Kelly's 2012 tweet calling sixteen year old Hailie hot started a long grudge. Kelly claimed Eminem blocked him from radio, Eminem attacked him on Kamikaze's Not Alike, Kelly replied with Rap Devil, and Eminem answered with Killshot in September 2018. Barbs continued on later songs such as Unaccommodating and Gnat.[1] [2]

Eminem and Benzino. In 2002 The Source gave The Eminem Show four mics out of five, and Eminem blamed its co owner, the rapper Benzino. Benzino released diss tracks calling him a new Vanilla Ice, Eminem answered with The Sauce and Nail in the Coffin, and The Source unearthed an old teenage tape in which he insulted a black ex girlfriend, which he later apologized for on Encore. The feud reignited in 2024 with Eminem's verse on Doomsday Part Two and Benzino's reply, Rap Elvis.[1] [2]

Rare facts about Eminem

• His mother was in labor with him for seventy three hours and nearly died. Debbie Nelson's labor with Marshall lasted seventy three hours and almost killed her. She was still a teenager at the time.[1] [2]
• His parents once played together in a band called Daddy Warbucks. Before they split, Debbie Nelson and Marshall Mathers Junior performed together in Daddy Warbucks, playing Ramada Inns along the border of the Dakotas and Montana.[1] [2]
• The first rap song he ever heard was Reckless, from the Breakin' soundtrack. His uncle Ronnie Polkingharn gave him the Breakin' soundtrack. Before that, the boy had wanted to be a comic book artist.[1]
• His first stage name was MC Double M. In 1988 he rapped as MC Double M in his first group, the New Jacks. With a school friend he later used the name M and M, which became Eminem.[1]
• He was discovered by the Bass Brothers freestyling on local Detroit radio. In 1992 Mark Bass heard a white rapper freestyle on a local radio show and offered him free studio time. That rapper was Eminem.[1]
• The Rap Olympics he lost in 1997 offered five hundred dollars and a Rolex. He came second to Otherwize at the 1997 Rap Olympics in Los Angeles, but losing there got his tape to Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre.[1]
• By his own count, the original Slim Shady EP sold only about two hundred and fifty copies. He told Zane Lowe he pressed five hundred copies of the 1997 EP and sold only slightly more than half. Originals are now highly valued.[1]
• Henry Winkler's daughter is on The Slim Shady LP. A skit uses an answering machine message from Zoe Winkler saying she hated his music. He took her to dinner to get permission to use it.[1]
• Kid Rock scratched on one Eminem song in exchange for a guest verse. While both were making albums, Kid Rock scratched on My Fault, and Eminem rapped a verse for Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause in return.[1]
• Marilyn Manson turned down a guest spot on '97 Bonnie and Clyde. Eminem asked Manson to appear on the song, but he declined, feeling it was too misogynistic. The two later worked together on The Way I Am.[1] [2]
• The best take of Stan's third verse was accidentally erased. An engineer rewound the tape and recorded over it. Eminem told Genius in 2016 that the lost original was significantly better.[1] [2]
• Stan once had an extra verse in which Stan survives the crash. Eminem told SiriusXM a discarded verse had Stan climb out of the water and come to kill him, before Eminem finally shot him.[1]
• Macaulay Culkin was reportedly first choice to play Stan. Devon Sawa, who got the role, said he was cast because Dr. Dre liked his film Final Destination, and that Culkin had been the first choice.[1]
• He considered calling The Marshall Mathers LP Amsterdam. After a heavy trip to Amsterdam following his debut, he thought about naming his third album after the city.[1]
• He jokingly credited Jim Carrey with writing The Eminem Show. The Truman Show, about a man whose life is secretly broadcast, inspired the album, and he said Carrey basically wrote it.[1]
• The complaint about a missing snare drum at the start of Cleanin' Out My Closet was real. An engineer had muted the snare drum in his headphones during recording, and Eminem decided to leave his complaint on the finished song.[1]
• The lyric sheet for Lose Yourself appears in 8 Mile. He wrote the song on set, and the sheet he used can be seen in a scene where B Rabbit writes while riding a bus.[1]
• Seth Rogen and Jason Segel both auditioned for Cheddar Bob in 8 Mile. Neither got the part. Eminem himself turned down roles in Training Day and The Fast and the Furious to make the film.[1]
• In the final battle of 8 Mile, he used Anthony Mackie's real life as ammunition. Eminem searched Mackie online and worked details of the actor's real background into his rhymes against Papa Doc.[1]
• Of the three writers of Lose Yourself, only Luis Resto went to the Oscars. Eminem was asleep at home, and Jeff Bass watched from home because his wife had just had a baby.[1] [2] [3]
• Weird Al says Eminem made him halt his Lose Yourself parody video. Weird Al Yankovic said Eminem stopped the video for Couch Potato, and noted the irony when Michael Jackson objected to Just Lose It.[1]
• Michael Jackson came to own publishing rights to Eminem songs. In 2007 Jackson and Sony bought Famous Music, which gave them rights to songs by Eminem among others.[1]
• A judge dismissed his childhood bully's lawsuit with a ruling written in rhyme. In 2003 Judge Deborah Servitto rejected DeAngelo Bailey's slander suit in verse, saying the lyrics were an exaggeration no one would take as fact.[1]
• At his heaviest he weighed about two hundred and thirty pounds. During his addiction he ate fast food alone and once overheard teenagers arguing over whether he was really Eminem, because Eminem was not fat.[1]
• Rap God holds a Guinness record for the most words in a hit single. The six minute song packs in one thousand five hundred and sixty words, including one burst of ninety nine words and a hundred and fifty seven syllables in about sixteen and a half seconds.[1]
• His verse on Godzilla set a record at about ten and a half syllables per second. That beat his earlier records on Nicki Minaj's Majesty and his own Rap God.[1]
• He says he can make orange rhyme. Eminem told 60 Minutes it depends on enunciation, and improvised a line rhyming orange with door hinge, storage and porridge.[1]
• A New Zealand political party paid for copying Lose Yourself. In 2017 a New Zealand court ruled the National Party infringed his copyright with a 2014 campaign ad, awarding six hundred thousand New Zealand dollars.[1]
• He performed Venom from the Empire State Building's hundred and third floor. The October 2018 performance aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live as promotion for Kamikaze.[1] [2]
• A song cut from Encore resurfaced twenty years later. Christopher Reeves was dropped after the actor died in 2004, and was reworked as Brand New Dance on The Death of Slim Shady.[1]
• His two minute Chrysler Super Bowl ad was the longest in Super Bowl history at the time. It showed him driving through Detroit to Lose Yourself during Super Bowl XLV. He also appeared as a claymation figure in a Brisk ad.[1]
• His grandson's initials spell E M and M. Hailie named her son, born in March 2025, Elliot Marshall McClintock, partly after her father, and fans noticed the initials.[1]
• He quietly paid for Kurupt's rehab. In 2026 Kurupt said Dr. Dre phoned him first, then passed on Eminem's offer to pay for private treatment and a message that he loved him.[1]
• Dolly Parton wrote him a letter he kept private until her death. After the 2022 Hall of Fame ceremony she wrote that she had always felt an unexplained connection to him. He shared it in August 2026.[1]
• His childhood Detroit home was demolished in 2013. The bungalow where he spent much of his youth was torn down by the State of Michigan after it was damaged by arson.[1]
• Because of a repeat intruder, Eminem took to sleeping in a padlocked room. Prosecutors said in 2025 that because of repeated break ins by Matthew Hughes, Eminem had taken to sleeping in a padlocked room.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.