Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born on October 17 in 1972 and is most famously known professionally as his stage name, Eminem. Eminem is known globally as an American rapper, songwriter, record producer, record executive, and actor.
Eminem started out not only in a broken home, but a series of them. The artist we know today was raised by a single mom, lived hand to mouth, on and off welfare, constantly moving from one place to another but still pushed himself to reach his goals. After dropping out of high school, he pushed himself to begin competing in local rap battles, which resulted in earning respect for his craft from his peers and overall music scene. Once he broke into the scene, there was no stopping the “rap God”.
Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III) was recorded as the best-selling artist of the 2000s in the United States. Throughout his entire career, Eminem had earned himself 10 number one albums on the Billboard 200 charts and five number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. With over 47.4 million albums and 107.5 million singles sold in the U.S. alone, and another 220 million records globally, he is among the world’s best selling artists of all time and is consistently named as one of the greatest and most influential rap artists of all time. Eminem is still to date the only artist to have nine albums consecutively debut at number one on the Billboard 200 charts and was titled as the “King of Hip Hop” by Rolling Stone.
Eminem released his debut album titled Infinite in 1996, followed by the Slim Shady EP in 1997. Shortly after, Eminem signed a contract with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP – something that Dr. Dre’s huge success no doubt helped achieve. The success of the album then went on to earn Eminem his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album.
The Marshall Mathers LP followed in the 2000 and 2002’s The Eminem Show shortly after that, were worldwide successes, with each achieving certified diamond in U.S. sales and both winning Best Rap Album Grammy Awards. The achievements then made Eminem the first artist to win the award for three consecutive LPs. In 2004, Eminem released “Encore” before taking a short hiatus after continuously touring in 2005. When he returned, Eminem then released Relapse in 2009 and then Recovery in 2010. Each of the albums won Grammy Awards for their huge success. In 2013, Eminem released his 8th album -The Marshall Mathers LP 2, which soon won two Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album. In 2017, the artist then released his 9th studio album, Revival. On August 31, 2018, Eminem shocked the world and released his 10th studio album, Kamikaze, which gathered controversy around his subject points within’ it’s tracks, particularly with rapper Machine Gun Kelly, who had previously been in the spotlight for harassing Eminem’s daughter, and igniting a “beef” between the two.
Eminem has also been part of a number of successful ventures outside of the music industry. In November 2002, Eminem starred in the hip hop film 8 Mile, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Lose Yourself”, becoming the first rap artist to ever win the award. The movie, written by Scott Silver, directed by Curtis Hanson, and starring Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy, Michael Shannon, and Kim Basinger was based loosely on Eminem’s actual and followed white rapper B-Rabbit (Eminem) and his attempt to launch a career in a genre dominated by African-Americans. The movie originally opened at No. 1 with $51,240,555 in its opening weekend, then proceeded on second highest opening for an R-rated movie in the U.S. The movie eventually went on to gross $116,750,901 domestically, and $126,124,177 overseas for a total of $242,875,078 worldwide.
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