EMINEM'S BIOGRAPHY

EMINEM'S BIOGRAPHY - (PART- I)



Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born on October 17, 1972 in Kansas City. His mother, Deborah Mathers-Briggs, was married at 15 and less than three years later, almost died delivering her first son at the end of a 73-hour labor. "I went through a living h*ll," Debbie has said, recalling the doctor who charged $90 for prenatal visits, delivery and circumcision.

Eminem's mother and his father, Marshall Mathers Jr, were both in a covers band called the Daddy Warbucks. Shortly after Eminem was born, the family relocated to North Dakota where his dad was supposed to take a job as a hotel manager. In 1973, Debbie took Eminem and moved to St. Joseph to live with her Aunt Edna. According to Eminem's father, he came home one day to find that his wife and son were gone. Two years later, Debbie filed for a divorce and the agreement left him with no visitation rights. Eminem never saw his father again.

Eminem spent most of his early childhood moving back and forth between Kansas City and the metropolitan Detroit area. Because he was constantly changing schools, Eminem found it difficult to make friends and he was often an easy target for bullies. While Eminem was attending Dort Elementary school in 1982, a bully named D'angelo Bailey put a severe beating on the 8-year-old boy. The incident occured in the school washroom where Eminem was found in a pool of blood and rushed to the hospital.

On a separate occasion in 1983, after throwing a snowball at Eminem's head, the same bully pushed him into a snowbank and beat him up. As a result of the attack, Eminem suffered from a cerebral concussion. He almost lost his eyesight and his hearing and there was even a possibility that he might have died. It took a year for him to bounce back but luckily he made it.

In 1986, Debbie Mathers gave birth to another baby boy named Nathan. His father left Debbie and she successfully sued him for child support. Though he was only 13 at the time, Eminem played a big part in helping Debbie raise Nate. A year later, the family settled in Warren. "I don't think I've seen segregation as bad as this, out of all the places I've lived," he says of Detroit. "I've lived in the white neighborhoods, I've lived in the black neighborhoods, I've fucking seen it all, and I know I would not be able to rap the way I rap if it wasn't for living here."

As a young teen, Eminem loved comic books and dreamt of being a cartoonist. In 1987, however, his Uncle Ronnie introduced him to rap music. After hearing the Ice-T song "Reckless," Eminem decided to be a rap artist. He wrote his first rap song to LL Cool J's "I'm Bad" at age 14. That year, he began attending Lincoln High school. Other students recall that he didn't stand out much except for an excellent rap performance at the school's annual talent show.

It was around this time that Eminem met his first girlfriend Kimberley Anne Scott. The two met through mutual friends. "She came by, and I remember I was jumping all around the furniture while lipsynching L.L. Cool J songs," Eminem recalls. The two quickly became inseperable. "Detroit is really segregated and to get to Kim's part of town, I would have to walk through all-black neighborhoods. I would always get my ass beat; I even got shot at once. But Kim would usually meet me halfway. Or sometimes we would walk down the railroad tracks- nobody would F*c* with us there," Eminem recalls.

According to Eminem's grandmother, Betty Kresin, Deborah took Kim in at age 12 after she was kicked out of her house. "They fought like brother and sister," Betty says of Eminem and Kim's early relationship. "But then all of a sudden it reversed and they became intimate."

Eminem made his first radio appearance at age 15 on the Detroit radio station WDRQ (93.1) At the time he was going by the stage name M&M. DJ Lisa Orlando says, "We basically let 'em call, and they'd rap for us on the phone. If I thought they had some talent, we'd bring 'em down and put them in the production room. It was all live on the radio. You'd point to the kid, and this street kid would have to just start doin' his thing." Eminem made the cut and him and his crew became regulars on Open Mic Night.

"He was different," says Orlando, "but he was shy. He was a little more timid when he was doing the show. At the time, he wasn't the one that I thought would make it. But he'd come down, and his raps would always be funny. The other guys would all talk about some girl or getting into fights, your typical gangsta rap stuff. And he'd come in talkin' junk- he was unique." During one of his radio appearances, Eminem was discovered by local producers Marky and Jeff Bass. After meeting with Eminem, they signed him to their independent label Web Entertainment.

That year, Eminem faced another encounter that could have cost him his life. While walking through the neighborhood one day, a car full of guys gave Eminem the finger. He returned the gesture and didn't think much of it until he turned the corner and saw them waiting for him. They stripped him down to his boxers and pointed a gun at him. Luckily, a truck driver pulled over, pulled out a gun of his own and scared off the attackers.

In 1989, after failing grade nine for the third time, Eminem dropped out of high school to pursue his career as a rapper.

EMINEM'S BIOGRAPHY - (PART- II)



After quitting school, Eminem was constantly struggling to find work as well as become an MC. After working on an assembly line and painting pictures on clothes, Eminem got a job at a family restaurant called Gilbert's Lodge. He worked there for $5.50 an hour with his high school friend Mike Ruby.

The two of them also recorded songs in Mike's basement, which they dubbed Bassmint Productions. Mike went by the stage name of Manix and Eminem took the initials from his real name and came up with M&M, later modified to Eminem. The only song that has materialized from Eminem's days with Bassmint Productions is the track "Crackers N Cheese." To listen to it, click here

Before long, Eminem decided to take his rhyme's outside of Mike's basement, but found it difficult to find a receptive audience. At the age of 16, he would often go to hip hop clubs to rap but very few people wanted to hear some skinny white boy rhyme. So Eminem became a battle MC, and he finally found an accepting audience at the Hip Hop Shop.

"He was getting in everybody's ass. It was kind of political at first, because he was an outsider," says House Shoes, a DJ at St. Andrew's Hall. "After he bit a few heads off people, it got to the point where people looked forward to him coming out there." Eminem became so well known that a local emcee named Kuniva, who is now a member of D-12, once battled Eminem to boost his credibility.

Eminem faced the most devastating moment of his life in 1990 when he learned his Uncle Ronnie had committed suicide. Eminem was apparently so shaken by Ronnie's death that he couldn't bring himself to attend the funeral and he barely even talked to anyone for some time after the incident. Eminem has a tattoo on his left arm that reads "Ronnie R.I.P" to memoralize his late soulmate and he also wears a dogtag around his neck which used to belong to Ronnie. After Ronnie's death, Eminem decided to stop rapping for the time being.

When Eminem decided to take up rapping again, he was part of several rap groups including the New Jacks and Soul Intent who released their first single "Biterphobia" in 1995 on Web Entertainment. A rapper named Proof, who had been best friends with Eminem since they were teens, was featured on the B-side of the single. That year, Proof decided to form a group of the best emcees in Detroit. The first three members were Eminem, Proof and another rapper named Kon Artis. The group was named D-12 which stands for the Dirty Dozen.

Although his rap career was getting off to a good star, Eminem had a lot of financial problems. Making ends meet became even more difficult when Kim gave birth to her and Eminem's daughter Hailie Jade on December 25, 1995. Eminem took time off of his music career in order to raise money for his family. His former manager at Gilbert's Lodge remembers a six-month period shortly after Hailie's birth when Eminem worked 60 hours a week."

In 1996, Eminem released his debut album Infinite. On the album, he rapped about love, unity and moving on in spite of hard times and his rhyme style was compared to that of Nas and Jay-Z. Eminem was discouraged by the negative response that his album received and his producers were starting to give up on him.

At this point, Eminem started to become fed up with everything. He needed an outlet to dump all of his emotions in and finally during a toilet session in 1997, he came up with an idea. Every member of D-12 needed to have an alter ego and Eminem was having trouble thinking of a name a for his. While sitting on the pot, Eminem came up with the name Slim Shady, an evil side to himself that always spoke his mind no matter what.

As Eminem prepared to record his second underground album, his personal life began to spiral downhill. His little brother Nathan was removed from their mother's custody in 1996 after St. Clair Shores school officials accused her of abusing him. They claimed that she "exhibits a very suspicious, almost paranoid personality" and suggested she might have had munchausen syndrome, where a parent injures a child to gain sympahty for herself.

Debbie Mathers-Briggs pleaded no contest to charges that she was emotionally unstable and had failed her son by isolating him from other children; with that, she regained custody. By then, Nathan had been in foster homes for more than a year. Through it all, neighbors remember that Eminem was always there for Nate. "He was good to his brother," says Rose Slone, a former family friend who knew Marshall from when he visited his mother and brother in a rundown Warren trailer park. "He was always there for Nathan."

Things started to become even more difficult for Eminem in 1997. Kim dumped him and he couldn't afford a place to stay. He was either staying with friends or living with his mother. While staying at his mom's house, Eminem wrote the first song for The Slim Shady EP which he called "Just Don't Give a F*c*." Many that knew him were surprised by the song because the subject matter was so different from what he usually rapped about. "I soon found myself doing things that I normally didn't do. Like getting into drugs and drinking. I was really fucked up. I was sick of everything," Eminem remembers.

During the time that Kim and Eminem were broken up, they were both involved with other people but she refused to let Em see their daughter. "Marshall would try to see little Hailie and Kim's stepfather met him at the door one day and told him 'you're no good, you're never going to amount to anything and if you ever come here again, I'll kill you,'" Eminem's grandmother said in a recent interview with a British radio station.

This led to Eminem writing the song '97 Bonnie & Clyde in which he kills Kim and with Hailie's help, dumps her dead body into the lake. "I even went so far as to use Hailie for the vocal you hear on the record. It was my little baby's first musical appearance," Eminem says. The Slim Shady EP was released that year and quickly became an underground classic. Eminem thought he was about to be discovered when a guy who claimed to work at a record company promised to play his tape for an executive at the label. However, it turned out the guy was just a mailroom clerk and couldn't get Eminem's tape anywhere.

During that time, Eminem had also been evicted from the place he was staying. Him and his friend were living with somebody who offered them cheaper rent. Although they were paying their rent, their roommate wasn't paying the landlord so they were all kicked out. Fed up with everything, Eminem wrote the song "Rock Bottom" and that night he attempted suicide.

"A bunch of other personal shit was happening in my life right about then, and I just thought I wasn't gonna get a deal no matter what, and I just took a fucking bunch of pills. I puked the shit up. I didn't have to go to hospital but my fucking stomach hurt so bad. I had a little problem and I just took too many. I don't know if I was necessarily trying to kill myself, I was just really depressed and I kept thinking, more pills, more pills, I just kept taking 'em. I bet I took 20 pills in the course of two hours," Eminem says of the ordeal. Little did he know that he would soon get the big break he'd been hoping for all of his life.

EMINEM'S BIOGRAPHY - (PART- III)



Soon after the release of his second album, Eminem and D-12 took a trip down to Florida to participate in the How Can I Be Down seminar. While there, Wendy Day, the founder of the rap coalition, invited Eminem to compete in the 1997 Rap Olympics. Figuring the $500 cash prize could help him out, Eminem jumped at the chance to go. "I went with the mind frame that I was not gonna lose," he recalls. "I needed that cash so bad. I had a job, but I was working part time so I could do my rap shit."

Despite his confidence, Eminem placed second after losing to an emcee named Juice. Ultimately it didn't matter because after his performance, an assistant to Jimmy Iovine (the CEO of Interscope Records) asked Eminem for a demo tape. Eminem gave him a copy of The Slim Shady EP without even knowing that this guy worked for a record company. "He came up to me afterwards and I didn't know he was anybody from anything," Eminem remembers. "He was like, 'Yo, you got a tape or anything?' I was all pissed, like, 'Yeah, here just take it,'" Eminem remembers.

Jimmy Iovine liked what he heard and played the tape for legendary rap producer Dr. Dre. After hearing the demo, Dre became very interested in Eminem and he wasn't the only one. Back in Detroit, Web Entertainment was getting tons of orders for The Slim Shady EP. Eminem's underground buzz landed him an appearance on The Wake Up Show in Los Angeles. Dr. Dre heard the performance and called the radio station to question Eminem's whereabouts. Finally, Dre got in contact with the Eminem and signed him to his Interscope distributed Aftermath Records. Initially, Dre thought the young rapper was black. At their first face-to-face meeting, Em says, "he was kind of, like, blown back a little bit."

Regardless, the two recorded "My Name Is" within an hour of meeting and Dr. Dre was soon producing Eminem's major label debut. Things finally started looking up for Eminem. In 1998, Eminem released "Just Don't Give a F*c*" as a single and a few months later him and Kim got back together. The Slim Shady LP was released on February 23, 1999 and went triple platinum. "My Name Is" became a major hit and Eminem was officially a star. In addition to his success, Eminem's personal life reached a high point when he married Kim on June 14.

Finally, Eminem had acheived his dream but he soon learned that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. His mother slapped him with a 10 million dollar lawsuit, saying that he defamed her character by telling various magazines that she was an unfit mother. She denies that she ever collected welfare although records obtained by the Detroit Free Press indicate otherwise. Records also state that she had several different jobs while Eminem was a child and she was constantly moving houses. Eminem attended at least 5 different schools in 4 years when he was young, yet Debbie claims to have been a good mother to him.

Eminem's legal troubles didn't end there. For his second major label release, Eminem wanted to pay tribute to his Uncle Ronnie by sampling a tape of them rapping together. Eminem's grandmother threatened to sue him if he dared to use the tape; to avoid anymore lawsuits, Eminem dropped the idea altogether.

At the 1999 MTV Music Video Awards, Eminem won Best New Artist in a video for "My Name Is." Eminem seemed surprised by his victory and didn't even have a speech prepared. "Uh oh, was this supposed to happen?" he joked while accepting the award. In February, he won two Grammy awards, one for Best Rap Album and one for Best Rap Solo Performance.

On May 23, 2000, Eminem released The Marshall Mathers LP. The album broke numerous records, including the fastest selling hip hop album ever and the highest opening s*l*s for a solo artist in recent history. In just one week, the album sold 1.75 million copies and garnered critical acclaim, however, some people weren't so impressed with the album's subject matter. GLAAD, the g*y and l*sb**n Alliance Against Defamation, claimed that the album's lyrics were "the most homophobic and hateful that GLADD have ever seen in the past 15 years."

In June, Eminem was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and assault with a deadly weapon. He allegedly beat nightclub bouncer John Guerra with the butt of his unloaded pistol for kissing Kim in the parking lot of the Hot Rocks Cafe in Warren. Prosecutors also say that in the hours prior to that incident, Eminem pulled his gun on Insane Clown Posse associate Douglas Dail at an electronics store in Royal Oak, Mich.

In spite of his legal woes, Eminem went on a summer tour with Dr. Dre, Xzibit, Ice Cube and others on the Up in Smoke tour. While Eminem was gone, Kim attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. The incident occured on July 8 and it was later revealed that Eminem was planning to file for a divorce which was made official on August 16. At first Em was planning to fight for sole custody but later settled to give Kim ten million dollars, a personal driver, re-enstatement of her credit cars and joint custody of their child.

In the fall of 2000, Eminem joined Limp Bizkit, Xzibit, D-12 and Papa Roach on the Anger Management tour. When he came to perform in Toronto on October 26, officials threatened to arrest him if he performed the song "Kill You" because a woman named Valerie Smith claimed that the lyrics violated Canada's hate crime law. Eminem performed the song anyway and at the end of his set, he dedicated "The Way I Am" to "that bitch Valerie Smith!"

Kim and Eminem decided to call off their divorce in December and renew their relationship for the sake of their daughter. Eminem went on a European tour with Outkast, Xzibit and D-12. When he arrived in Britain, controversy followed. Officials were not too pleased with his stage antics which included using a chainsaw on stage and pretending to take Ecstacy.

More controversy followed when it was announced that Eminem was nominated for four awards at the 2001 Grammys. After Eminem agreed to attend and perform, he shocked everyone by going on stage with openly g*y singer Elton John. 200 GLAAD members protested outside, but Eminem and Elton receieved a standing ovation. That night, Eminem took home 3 awards but lost the Album of the Year award to Steely Dan's 2 Against Nature.

As for his legal troubles, Eminem pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon and the charge for assault with a deadly weapon was dropped. As a result, he received 2 years probation. Recently, Eminem's personal life took another twist when Kim filed for a divorce on March 1, 2001. The couple have reached a settlement giving them joint custody of Hailie.

Recently, Eminem executive produced the D-12 album "Devil's Night" which was released on June 19th. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts and the single Purple Pills was a hit. Currently, Eminem is working on a movie and his third LP which is said to be more of an emotional album.