After Eminem came in second at the 1997 Rap Olympics MC Battle in Los Angeles, Interscope head Jimmy Iovine sought him out, giving the EP to Dr. The Slim Shady EP opened many doors, the most notable of them being a contract with Interscope Records. All this sturm und drang was channeled into The Slim Shady EP, which is where he first demonstrated many of the quirks that became his trademark, including his twitchy, nasal rhyming and disturbingly violent imagery. After its release, Eminem developed his Slim Shady alter ego, a persona that freed him to dig deep into his dark id, something he needed as he faced a number of personal upheavals, beginning with a bad split with Kim, which led him to move in with his mother and increase his use of drugs and alcohol, capped off by an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He assembled his first album, Infinite, which received some underground attention in 1996, not all of it positive. InfiniteAs he was struggling to establish his career, he and his girlfriend Kim had a daughter, Hailey, forcing him to spend less time rapping and more time providing for his family. This single also featured Proof, and the two rappers broke off on their own to form D-12, a six-member crew that functioned more as a Wu-Tang-styled collective than a regularly performing group. The first of these was the New Jacks, and after they disbanded, he joined Soul Intent, who released a single in 1995. Initially, the predominantly Black audience didn't embrace Eminem, but soon his skills gained him a reputation, and he was recruited to join several rap groups. Under this name, Mathers entered battle rapping, a struggle dramatized in the fictionalized 8 Mile. At the age of 14, he began rapping with a high school friend, the two adopting the names "Manix" and "M&M," which soon morphed into Eminem. Joseph, Eminem spent his childhood between Missouri and Michigan, settling in Detroit in his teens. Eminem capitalized on this forward momentum by crossing over onto the big screen with 8 Mile, earning acclaim for his performance and an Oscar for the film's anthem, "Lose Yourself." A number of demons have led him to withdraw periodically, but he's always returned with mid-career rejuvenations like 2009's Relapse or 2017's Revival.īorn Marshall Mathers in the Kansas City, Missouri suburb of St. With hits "My Name Is" and "The Real Slim Shady," he ruled the airwaves, but it wasn't long before some detractors acknowledged his depth, helped in part by singles like the mournful "Stan," written from the perspective of an obsessed fan.
To be certain, a great deal of the controversy Eminem courted - during the turn of the millennium, there was no greater pop culture bogeyman than Marshall Mathers - came through in how his violent fantasias, often directed at his mother or his wife, intertwined with flights of absurdity that appealed to listeners too young to absorb the psychodramas Eminem explored on his hit albums The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP.
Dre, he's had music to match: thick, muscular loops evoking the terror and paranoia conjured by Em's lyrics. On sheer verbal skills, Eminem is one of the greatest MCs of his generation: rapid, fluid, dexterous, and unpredictable, capable of pulling off long-form narratives or withering asides. Certainly, he was the first white rapper since the Beastie Boys to garner both sales and critical respect, but his impact has exceeded this confining distinction. To call him hip-hop's Elvis is fitting to a degree, but it's largely inaccurate. Once again, it's the sinister cynical minister Shady Kryptonite to Superman, he's a dentist to Amy Administerer of the pain, he just finished huffin'Įdit bioEminem is one of the best-selling artists in music history, and easily the biggest crossover success ever seen in rap.
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