Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (/ˌɛmɪˈnɛm/; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is widely considered as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Eminem’s global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of Caucasian rappers in popular music. While much of his transgressive work during the late 1990s and early 2000s made him widely controversial, he came to be a representation of popular angst of the American underclass and has been cited as an influence for many artists of various genres.

After the release of his debut album Infinite (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP. His next two releases, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002), were worldwide successes and were both nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. After the release of his next album, Encore (2004), Eminem went on hiatus in 2005, largely due to a prescription drug addiction. He returned to the music industry four years later with the release of Relapse (2009) and Recovery, which was released the following year. Recovery was the bestselling album worldwide of 2010, making it Eminem’s second album, after The Eminem Show in 2002, to be the best-selling album of the year worldwide. In the following years, he released the US number one albums The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013), Revival (2017), Kamikaze (2018) and Music to Be Murdered By (2020).

Eminem’s well-known hits include “My Name Is”, “The Real Slim Shady”, “The Way I Am”, “Stan”, “Without Me”, “Mockingbird”, “Not Afraid”, “Love the Way You Lie”, “The Monster”, “River” and “Rap God”, which broke the Guinness World Record for the most words in a hit single, with 1,560 words. In addition to his solo career, Eminem was a member of the hip hop group D12. He is also known for collaborations with fellow Detroit-based rapper Royce da 5’9″; the two are collectively known as Bad Meets Evil.

Eminem made his debut in the film industry with the musical drama film 8 Mile (2002), playing a dramatized version of himself. “Lose Yourself”, a track from its soundtrack, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks, the most for a solo rap song, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Eminem the first hip hop artist ever to win the award. He has made cameo appearances in the films The Wash (2001), Funny People (2009) and The Interview (2014) and the television series Entourage (2010). Eminem has developed other ventures, including Shady Records, a joint venture with manager Paul Rosenberg, which helped launch the careers of artists such as 50 Cent, D12 and Obie Trice, among others. He has also established his own channel, Shade 45, on Sirius XM Radio.

Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated worldwide sales of over 220 million records. He was the best-selling music artist in the United States of the 2000s and the bestselling male music artist in the United States of the 2010s, third overall. Billboard named him the “Artist of the Decade (2000–2009)”. He has had ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200—which all consecutively debuted at number one on the chart, making him the first artist to achieve this—and five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, Curtain Call: The Hits (2005), “Lose Yourself”, “Love the Way You Lie” and “Not Afraid” have all been certified Diamond or higher by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Rolling Stone has included him in its lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. He has won numerous awards, including 15 Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards, 17 Billboard Music Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and an MTV Europe Music Global Icon Award. In November 2022, Eminem was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mathers was born on October 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the only child of Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. and Deborah Rae “Debbie” (née Nelson). He is of Scottish, Welsh, English, Cherokee, German, Swiss, Polish, and possibly Luxembourgish ancestry. His mother nearly died during her 73-hour labor with him. Eminem’s parents were in a band called Daddy Warbucks, playing in Ramada Inns along the Dakotas–Montana border before they separated. His father abandoned his family when he was a year and a half old, and Marshall was raised only by his mother, Debbie, in poverty. His mother later had a son named Nathan “Nate” Kane Samara. At age twelve, he and his mother had moved several times and lived in several towns and cities in Missouri (including St. Joseph, Savannah, and Kansas City) before settling in Warren, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Eminem frequently fought with his mother, whom a social worker described as having a “very suspicious, almost paranoid personality”. He wrote letters to his father, but Debbie said that they all came back marked “return to sender”.

When he was a child, a bully named D’Angelo Bailey severely injured Eminem’s head in an assault,[19] an incident which Eminem later recounted (with comic exaggeration) on the song “Brain Damage”. Debbie filed a lawsuit against the public school for this in 1982. The suit was dismissed the following year by a Macomb County, Michigan judge, who said the schools were immune from lawsuits. For much of his youth, Eminem and his mother lived in a working-class, primarily black, Detroit neighborhood. He and Debbie were one of three white households on their block, and Eminem was beaten several times by black youths.

Eminem was interested in storytelling, aspiring to be a comic book artist before discovering hip hop. He heard his first rap song (“Reckless”, featuring Ice-T) on the Breakin’ soundtrack, a gift from Debbie’s half-brother Ronnie Polkingharn. His uncle was close to the boy and later became a musical mentor to him. When Polkingharn committed suicide in 1991, Eminem stopped speaking publicly for days and did not attend his funeral.

At age 14, Eminem began rapping with high-school friend Mike Ruby; they adopted the names “Manix” and “M&M”, the latter evolving into “Eminem”. Eminem sneaked into neighboring Osborn High School with friend and fellow rapper Proof for lunchroom freestyle rap battles. On Saturdays, they attended open mic contests at the Hip-Hop Shop on West 7 Mile Road, considered “ground zero” for the Detroit rap scene. Struggling to succeed in a predominantly black industry, Eminem was appreciated by underground hip hop audiences. When he wrote verses, he wanted most of the words to rhyme; he wrote long words or phrases on paper and, underneath, worked on rhymes for each syllable. Although the words often made little sense, the drill helped Eminem practice sounds and rhymes.

In 1987, Debbie allowed runaway Kimberly Anne “Kim” Scott to stay at their home. Several years later, Eminem began an on-and-off relationship with Scott. After spending three years in ninth grade due to truancy and poor grades,[26] he dropped out of Lincoln High School at age 17. Although interested in English, Eminem never explored literature (preferring comic books) and he disliked math and social studies.[25] Eminem worked at several jobs to help his mother pay the bills. One of the jobs he had was with Little Caesar’s Pizza in Warren, Michigan. He later said she often threw him out of the house anyway, often after taking most of his paycheck. When she left to play bingo, he would blast the stereo and write songs.

In 1988, he went by the stage name MC Double M and formed his first group New Jacks and made a self-titled demo tape with DJ Butter Fingers. In 1989, they later joined Bassmint Productions who later changed their name to Soul Intent in 1992 with rapper Proof and other childhood friends. They released a self-titled EP in 1995 featuring Proof. Eminem also made his first music video appearance in 1992 in a song titled, “Do-Da-Dippity”, by Champtown. Later in 1996, Eminem and Proof teamed up with four other rappers to form The Dirty Dozen (D12), who released The Underground E.P. in 1997 and their first album Devil’s Night in 2001. He was also affiliated with Newark’s rap collective Outsidaz, collaborating with them on different projects.

Eminem was soon signed to Jeff and Mark Bass’s F.B.T. Productions and recorded his debut album Infinite for their independent Web Entertainment label. The album was a commercial failure upon its release in 1996. One lyrical subject of Infinite was his struggle to raise his newborn daughter, Hailie Jade Scott Mathers, on little money. During this period, Eminem’s rhyming style, primarily inspired by rappers Nas, Esham and AZ, lacked the comically violent slant for which he later became known. Detroit disc jockeys largely ignored Infinite and the feedback Eminem did receive (“Why don’t you go into rock and roll?”) led him to craft angrier, moodier tracks. At this time Eminem and Kim Scott lived in a crime-ridden neighborhood and their house was robbed several times. Eminem cooked and washed dishes for minimum wage at Gilbert’s Lodge, a family-style restaurant at St. Clair Shores. His former boss described him as becoming a model employee, as he worked 60 hours a week for six months after Hailie’s birth. He was fired shortly before Christmas and later said, “It was, like, five days before Christmas, which is Hailie’s birthday. I had, like, forty dollars to get her something.” After the release of Infinite, his personal problems and substance abuse culminated in a suicide attempt. By March 1997 he was fired from Gilbert’s Lodge for the last time and lived in his mother’s mobile home with Kim and Hailie.