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Though he's sometimes described as an overnight success, Eminem—who was just twenty-four years old when The Slim Shady LP went platinum—spent nearly a decade honing his rhyming skills, building a reputation as one of the finest freestyle rappers in the Midwest prior to his ascent to mainstream stardom.
While certain details of his past are disputed by some witnesses, the established facts make it clear that the childhood of Marshall Bruce Mathers III was no bed of roses. Indeed, his turbulent youth was a seemingly endless series of soul-crushing hard knocks that would shape his personality in strange and unexpected ways.
Eminem's rebellious, contradictionladen character was forged through such early challenges as the desertion of an absentee father, conflicts with a mother whom he now portrays as an emotionally unstable drug user, and numerous encounters with neighborhood violence.
Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 17, 1975. He says that his mother, Debbie, was only fifteen when she and his father were married; his father, Marshall II, was seven years older. When Marshall III was born two years later, both parents were members of Daddy Warbucks, a cover band that worked in hotel lounges around the Dakota-Montana border.
Marshall II left the family six months after his son's birth and moved to California. Eminem has still never met him.
As a teen, Marshall would try sending letters to his dad, which were returned, unopened. But, in time-honored showbiz fashion, Em's father would eventually come out of the woodwork to attempt a reconciliation once his son had become famous.
The fatherless boy's self-described "stereotypical, trailer park, white trash upbringing" gave him an early taste of what it's like to be an outsider. He spent his early years shuttling with his mother between Missouri and Michigan, living with various relatives.
"We just kept moving back and forth because my mother never had a job," he now says. "We kept getting kicked out of every house we were in. I believe six months was the longest we ever lived in a house.
"I was born in Kansas City. I moved to Detroit when I was five. From five to nine, I lived in Kansas City again. We moved back for five years. Then we moved to Detroit permanently."
Changing schools frequently made it difficult for Marshall to form attachments and make friends. He became increasingly sensitive and introverted, retreating into comic books and television. "I didn't really start opening up until eighth grade, going into ninth."
The insecurities engendered by his unsettled home life were further fueled by frequent encounters with neighborhood gangs and local bullies. One of the most harrowing of these incidents later inspired him to write "Brain Damage," which namechecks D'Angelo Bailey, a grade-school classmate who administered a savage assault that left the future star in the hospital with a near-fatal cerebral hemorrhage.
The beating that nearly robbed the world of Slim Shady occurred at lunchtime recess one winter afternoon in 1983 while Marshall was in the fourth grade. After Marshall hassled a friend of Bailey's, Bailey "came running from across the yard and hit me so hard into this snowbank that I blacked out." The disoriented youngster was sent home from school. After his ear started bleeding, he was sent to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a cerebral hemorrhage and spent much of the next ten days in a coma.
The alienated kid tapped into a much-needed source of personal validation and emotional release when he discovered rap music. He now says that his passion for hip-hop was sparked at the age of nine, at the moment he heard the Ice-T track "Reckless," from the soundtrack album of the eighties breakdancing-exploitation flick Breakin'.
He quickly became a devoted convert to the still-emerging new genre, eagerly absorbing the inventively boisterous verbal outbursts of such groundbreaking artists as Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J. "From LL to the Fat Boys, and all that shit, I was fascinated," he says. "When LL first came out with ‘I'm Bad,' I wanted to do it, to rhyme. Standing in front of the mirror, I wanted to be like LL."
Marshall had received the Breakin' album from his uncle, Ronnie Polkinghorn, his mother's kid brother and an avid hip-hop fan. Though Ronnie was just a few months older than Marshall, he became a crucial influence on him, particularly when Ronnie began making primitive home recordings of his own raps.
When Ronnie committed suicide in 1993, Marshall was devastated.
In 1987, Marshall, his mom and his half-brother Nathan (who was born in 1986) returned to Michigan for good, settling in a poor, predominantly black neighborhood on the east side of Detroit.
Growing up in an economically disadvantaged area brought Marshall face-to-face with the randomness of urban violence, much of which carried racial undertones.
Attending Lincoln High School in Warren, Michigan, the troubled teen found solace from his bleak everyday existence—and found a much-needed source of self-esteem—in rap. He began writing and recording his own raps at the age of thirteen, and his budding rhyme abilities boosted his confidence, helping him to come out of his shell and make new friends. Adopting the stage name Eminem from his alliterative initials, Marshall would regularly compete in lunch-hour rhyme jousts, stacking up his already-impressive freestyling skills against those of his classmates.
At fifteen, Em formed his first rap group, Bassmint Productions. Two years later, he dropped out of high school after failing the ninth grade three times in a row. "I don't think it was necessarily 'cause I'm stupid," he says. "I didn't go to school. I couldn't deal."
He soon became immersed in Detroit's local rap scene, putting together homemade cassettes of his rhymes and hustling them around town. He and a close pal, a young black MC named Proof, would compete at Saturday-night open-mike freestyle contests at the Hip-Hop Shop on Detroit's West 7 Mile, the epicenter of the local rap community. "As soon as I grabbed the mike, I'd get booed," he later recalled. "Once the motherfuckers heard me rhyme, though, they shut up."
Early on, Em's talents were noticed by Marky and Jeff Bass, a pair of Detroit hip-hop producers collectively known as the Funky Bass Team, or FBT Productions for short. The duo first heard the teenage Eminem on a late-night radio show on influential local station WHYT, and were so impressed that they called him at the station and invited him to record at their studio.
Eminem also paid some early dues performing with such local groups as Champtown, the New Jacks and Soul Intent. The latter act, a duo with DJ Buttafingas, released a single, "Fucking Backstabber"/ "Biterphobia," in 1996. Em subsequently launched an all-star rap crew, the Dirty Dozen (aka D-12), with Proof and four other locally prominent rappers.
While attempting to make his mark musically, Em drifted through a series of frustrating minimum-wage jobs, including an extended stint at Gilbert's Lounge, a family restaurant in suburban St. Clair Shores. But his real goals were never far from his mind.
"I like to throw my ideas just scattered onto paper," he told The Source. "When I was busing tables I'd write ‘em on my hand or on receipts. I wrote rhymes on the wall in my old house right above my bed. I did it in pencil but one time when I went to wipe it off, it wiped off the paint. My mom fuckin' flipped."
On Christmas Day of 1995, Em's longtime girlfriend Kim Scott gave birth to the couple's daughter, Hailie Jade. His new parenthood motivated him to get more serious about pursuing his musical career. "I wanted to be a father to her, and not do what my father did to me. When Hailie was born, it was kind of a wake-up call to me. It was like, I have to do this shit, and really get up and go for it."
