Eminem

Detroit

Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born on 17 October 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and settled in Detroit when he was 12. At 14 he began rapping with a school friend, Mike Ruby. The two took the names Manix and M&M, and the second turned into Eminem. With another friend, Proof, he went to Saturday open mic contests at the Hip-Hop Shop on West 7 Mile Road, known as ground zero for the Detroit rap scene. In 1988 he formed his first group, New Jacks, and in 1996 he and Proof teamed up with four other rappers to form The Dirty Dozen (D12).

In 1995 he signed to F.B.T. Productions, run by Jeff and Mark Bass, and recorded Infinite for their Web Entertainment label. It was a commercial failure and Detroit disc jockeys largely ignored it. The feedback he did get, including a suggestion that he try rock and roll, pushed him toward angrier, moodier songs.

Slim Shady

The failure of Infinite inspired him to create Slim Shady, a sadistic, violent alter ego. In the spring of 1997 he recorded the Slim Shady EP, and that year he placed second at the Rap Olympics in Los Angeles. An Interscope intern, Dean Geistlinger, asked for a copy of the EP. It reached the label's chief, Jimmy Iovine, who played it for Dr. Dre. Dre later recalled telling Iovine to find him, now. Eminem signed to Aftermath and Interscope on 9 March 1998.

The Slim Shady LP came out on 23 February 1999. It was recorded at Studio 8 in Ferndale, Michigan, and opened with My Name Is, his first top 40 hit. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with 283,000 copies in its first week, and won Best Rap Album at the 2000 Grammy Awards. It also brought lawsuits and accusations of misogyny. He answered the critics by saying records can be like movies and that he was not a role model.

Guilty Conscience, a concept song with Dre, helped begin a friendship and musical partnership between the two.

I'm not a role model, and I don't claim to be.

Eminem

The Marshall Mathers LP

Shady Records followed in late 1999, founded with his manager Paul Rosenberg. The Marshall Mathers LP was released on 23 May 2000 and sold 1.76 million copies in the United States in its first week. It spent eight weeks at number one. Executives felt it had no lead single, so he wrote The Way I Am and then The Real Slim Shady, which reached number four on the Hot 100. The third single, Stan, built a story about an obsessive fan on a sample of Dido's Thank You. The name stan later entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

The record drew protest. Lynne Cheney criticized it at a United States Senate hearing, and GLAAD condemned its lyrics. At the 2001 Grammy Awards he performed Stan with Elton John. The album won Best Rap Album and was nominated for Album of the Year.

The Eminem Show arrived in May 2002 and spent six non-consecutive weeks at number one. That year he starred in the film 8 Mile. Lose Yourself, from its soundtrack, held the top of the Hot 100 for twelve weeks and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the first for a hip-hop act.

Breaks and returns

Encore followed in 2004, the year he launched the Sirius channel Shade 45. The hits collection Curtain Call arrived in December 2005, and in April 2006 Proof died. Relapse followed in May 2009 and Recovery in June 2010, which sold 741,000 copies in its first week and was the best-selling album worldwide that year.

Each of his next five studio albums debuted at number one in the United States: The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013), Revival (2017), Kamikaze (2018), Music to Be Murdered By (2020) and The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) (2024). With Music to Be Murdered By he became the first artist to have ten consecutive albums debut at number one.

Standing

Eminem was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, in his first year of eligibility, with Dr. Dre presenting. The Hall's page calls him the single best-selling artist of the 2000s and counts 15 Grammy Awards. The Guardian put Stan at the top of its 2020 list of his 30 greatest tracks, and Pitchfork's Jeremy D. Larson wrote in 2018 that there could be no question Eminem was one of the greatest to ever do it.