Eminem

Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers) was born in 1972, in St. Joseph, a small town in Missouri. When the baby was six months his father left the family. Marshall spent all his childhood moving from one place to another with his mother. In the end, they settled down in Detroit. He found it hard to get used to new surroundings and had to change the school regularly. In summer 1983, Marshall was beaten up so severely that he spent ten days in coma. These years of suffering later influenced Eminem's art works. Aged 13, Marshall started writing and recording his own rap. Eminem had his debut in 1995 as a member of Soul Intent. It is an extremely rare and hard-to-find record today due to the small number of copies released and the band's lack of financial support. In 1996, Eminem recorded his demo Infinite that was left without much attention because of abundance of suchlike music in Detroit. In spite of this failure, in a year, Eminem released a sarcastic and mocking short album called The Slim Shady Lp to feature his 'dark alter ego'. This EP drew the attention of Dr. Dre himself.

As a result, Eminem was signed by Aftermath Records, a label owed by Dr. Dre. The Slim Shady, the young man's debut long player, became a challenge to the society. Full of violence and obscene lyrics, this album turned out a commercial success thanks to tracks My Name Is and Guilty Conscience, which video versions never left MTV. The album immediately ran third in Billboard, which inspired Eminem to work hard on the following album's material. Eminem's songs terrified his mother and she brought an action against him for the rude utterances concerning her, made on The Slim Shady. She claimed 10 million dollars for the moral damage the rapper had done to her. This scandal did not affect the sales of The Marshall Mathers, Eminem's second album, as it started on the first place in the American charts in May 2000. Just like the first record, this CD brought about controversial response. Some criticized the rapper for extremely aggressive lyrics, while the others, on the contrary, praised Eminem as the best white-skin rap singer. The album featured such immense hits as The Real Slim Shady, Stan (for chorus, Eminem sampled the young British female singer Dido's vocals) and The Way I Am. Eminem proved his bad guy reputation causing chaos in Hot Rocks Cafe in Detroit as he leveled the gun at one of the visitors who kissed his wife Kimberly.

Many public organizations stepped forward against Eminem. Nevertheless, he won three awards at Grammy-2001 and expressed his gratitude to those who had taken his album as music and not as a reason for a scandal. In the same year, Eminem was rewarded with Oscar for Lose Yourself as the best song for a movie. In 2004, the same song brought him two more Grammies. The next album Encore was released in November and within a couple of days flew to the tops of the charts. Afterwards, Eminem took some rest from his music activity and went into producing. In 2005, speculations emerged on Eminem's plans to wind up his career. In reply, he released a new record called Curtain Call: The Hits. It was a compilation of the rapper's best songs. In September 2007, he made an announcement that a hiatus made for personal reasons had come to an end and that he had been preparing a new album. The sixth studio album by Eminem received the title Eminem Presents The Re-Up. Three years later, Eminem, backed by Dr. Dre as producer, prepared the new studio album. Relapse (2009), proved to be, perhaps, the darkest work done by the artist so far with not tiniest spot for his widely known sense of humor. The record showcased the rapper’s creative ability to work on and on. The seventh studio work titled Recovery saw the light in 2010. It was not a surprise that this traditionally strong record debuted at the very top of numerous charts: Eminem still has a lot to say to his listeners. The album Recovery was created in the rapper’s signature style and it turned out to be an excellent present for the artist’s old fans and for all the lovers of hip-hop.