Eminem
The
best selling music artist of the last decade with over 80 million album sales
worldwide, Eminem is almost certainly the most successful rap artist of all
time. With 8 Billboard Top 200 number one albums to his name, 12 number one
singles, and 11 Grammy awards, he has certainly been the most successful in
bringing rap music to a mainstream audience. Vibe magazine has labelled him
Best Rapper Ever, he ranked 82nd on a Rolling Stone list of the 100
Greatest Artists of All-Time, and was Billboard Magazine’s Artist of the Decade
for the ‘noughties’.
Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III in Saint Joseph during the autumn of 1972, Eminen grew up in the poverty of the trailer parks and ghettos of Missouri. His father abandoned the family while he was still a baby, leaving young Marshall to be raised solely by his mother. Both his difficult childhood and rocky relationship with on-off girlfriend (and twice wife) Kimberly Anne Scott have been the subject of and inspiration for much of his lyrical material. Indeed, such was the open and often brutal nature of his lyrical soul-baring, he has been sued by both his mother and Kimberley during the course of his career.
After he and his mother finally settled in Detroit during his early teens, a Beastie Boys-influenced Mathers began experimenting with hip-hop. He performed on an amateur level at freestyle battles during his teenage years under the name “M&M”, and joined a group called “Bassmint Productions”, his exploits culminating with a second place finish in the 1997 ‘Rap Olympics’. However, it was not until he had dropped out of high school aged 17 and hooked up with Dr Dre, that his rap career really took off.
With the release of the “The Slim Shady LP” in 1999, Eminem had arrived: and how. The album went triple-platinum by the year’s end, featured two hit singles in “My Name Is” and “Guilty Conscience”, and has sold over 9 million copies worldwide to date. He quickly followed this up in 2000 with “The Marshall Mathers LP”, which became the fastest-selling solo album in history, shifting 1.76 million copies in the first week alone. However, Eminem’s rapid rise to stardom did not coincide with a harmonious personal life. Mathers’ mother sued him for 10 million dollars after the release of his first album, accusing him of slander – a case that was not settled until 2001. Then after the release of “The Marshall Mathers LP”, his wife Kimberley attempted suicide, subsequently suing Mathers for defamation of character after his song “Kim” described her being brutally killed.
Despite all of this, Eminem continued to experience musical success, releasing “The Eminem Show” in 2002 and “Encore” in 2004. Following a three-year break from recording from 2005-2008, he then released “Relapse” in 2009. His follow up, “Relapse 2”, is scheduled to hit the shelves this year, which is sure to be yet another hit for the most successful rapper that ever walked the earth.
