“Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.” Marshall Bruce Mathers III, also known as famous rapper “Eminem,” learned to never have his back turned to anybody. Marshall was born in Kansas City, Missouri on the 17th of October in 1973 and spent most of his early childhood moving back and forth between Kansas City and Metro Detroit. Marshall’s mother, Deborah Mathers, was just fifteen years old when she gave birth to her son Marshall and He never got a chance to even meet his father, Marshall Mathers Jr., who had abandoned the family six months into Marshall’s life. (Reece) His mother would never be able to hold down a steady job for at least a year, which resulted in minimum support for herself and her family. Marshall had settled on the East-side of Detroit at the age of twelve and began his rapping when he was fourteen. He attended Lincoln High School in Warren from 1986 to 1989 and failed to pass the ninth grade all three of those years. After he realized he was no good at school, failing freshman year three times, he decided to drop out of high school and focus solely on his rapping and at the age of seventeen, Marshall had made a name for himself, becoming M&M, which would later be respelled as “Eminem.” (Shmoop) The way that the world should see it, Marshall Mathers has successfully proved himself to the world over the years from his movie to his book to his unique rapping style, describing verbally and literally about what it was like for him growing up the way he had to and this will show the people who don’t follow Eminem exactly what he went through to get where he is today.

Marshall was surrounded by backstabbers his entire life until he got out on his own. His mom was included in that category. His mother, Deborah, was addicted to alcohol and drugs while raising Marshall. It did not help the situation very much by never living in the same house all the time because of the constant movement back and forth between cities, which did not allow Marshall to succeed very well in the field of making friends when he was a kid. In the beginning stages of Marshall’s rapping, he would usually se strong language in most of his music that was usually meant to be aimed towards his mother who he despised for living the life she lead and raising her son the way she had. Deborah Mathers, however, has denied everything her son has accused her of and in 1999, Deborah filed $10 million defamation case against her son, Marshall. The case was settled for $25,000. He was always that new kid at school that would get beat up every day, in the bathroom, hallways, and shoved into lockers. Marshall failed the ninth grade three times and that resulted his decision to discontinue his education, which was one of the bigger decisions he had to make in his early life. He was seventeen years old when he made this decision and his own opinion of dropping out of school was once said in his own words entirely. “ I found that no matter how bad I was at school, like, and no matter how low my grades were at some times, I always was good at English … I just felt like I wanna be able to have all of these words at my disposal, in my vocabulary at all times whenever I need to pull ‘em out. You know, somewhere they’ll be stored, like, locked away.” I believe that Marshall’s decision to discontinue his education was a huge part towards the rest of his life. The general public almost always makes it seem that a drop out in high school will never make it in the real world or pursue their dreams. Marshall Mathers, however, proved the people wrong.

As Marshall grew older and began to get into the rap game more and more, most of the crowds insisted that he was going nowhere because of his white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Although there was and always will be some type of hatred towards him from certain crowds, he proved the people wrong by joining in on some local underground rap battles in his hometown of Detroit and being one the biggest competitors in the entire competition. These battles were featured and mainly focused on in Marshall’s movie, 8 mile. The movies explains his life and everything he went through from being at his variety of odd jobs that he worked to make ends meet and getting talked bad about to being with his friends or at home. Marshall was the definition of an outcast in his neighborhood because of his race, style and personality. Marshall was skilled at his underground battles and verbal sparring, which helped him quickly become one of Detroit’s most respected figures in the underground rap scene. He had finally found something he was great at and something that he would actually earn real respect from people. In 1989, Marshall began dating an old friend from high school, Kim Ann Scott and in 1995, the couple had a daughter named Hailie Jade Scott. Marshall’s daughter inspired him to pursue his rapping career to the fullest and in 1996 Eminem released his first independent rap album, Infinite. His first album did not gain too much attention or make any great amount of profit, however, a year later he released The Slim Shady LP Demo. The legendary rapper and producer of Marshall’s favorite rap group N.W.A., Dr. Dre had discovered Eminem and had went to Detroit to scout out Masrshall during one of his freestyle rap battles and Marshall got signed on the spot. When he began working with Dre, Marshall released another album called The Slim Shady LP and soon after came his first single, “My Name Is.” Marshall and Kim Mathers got married later that year.

After Marshall’s beginning successful stage, he continued to work in the studio with Dre, and in May of 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP was released. In his new albums, Marshall showed the world his poetic talents mixed in with his messed up childhood and the emotions he was able to finally release after all these years growing up. Some of his songs were humorous, some heartbreaking, violent, self-evaluated songs were also included. Some of the general public did not appreciate what their kids may have been listening Eminem rap about like drugs, violence, profanity, homophobia. Marshall tried to explain that his raps simply use the rough language that he has been surrounded by and influenced since childhood. About a year later, Marshall reunited with his old friends from Detroit and formed a group called D12. After getting the group together, D12 worked together to create a new album called The Devil’s Night with a very popular single, “Purple Pills.” The Eminem Show came soon after and this was Marshall’s solo album with some highlighted tracks, “Without Me, ”Cleaning Out My Closet” and “Sing For The Moment,” which are songs that are still played very often today. Encore was the next album and did not did not sell as much as the previous album but it did, however, have some hot singles where he raps about his daughter, Hailie and the names of those singles are “Like Toy Soldiers” and “Mockingbird.” After all of Marshall’s brilliant success after Dre had signed him and he created all of his albums, Marshall slowed down his pace in the studio and did little recording because of all of the personal issues he was going through at the time. Marshall and his wife, Kim, divorced in 2000. The two of them still had an on and off relationship until they married again in ’06. As they tried working it out with each other, it seemed they just could not make it work and several months later, they split up yet again and it was made a big scene to the public about the custody of their daughter. After the break-up, Marshall began his stage of drug abuse, consuming alcohol frequently, popping sleeping and prescription painkiller pills and in 2007, overdosed and came extremely close to dying. His words were “ If I would have gotten to go to the hospital two hours later, that would have been it.” After a long year of abusing drugs, Marshall took back control of his life and got off alcohol and pills and got back in the studio, releasing his first album in a long time in ’08, called Relapse. A couple years after, Marshall released his second and his album with the most inspirational tone in years. This album was an attempt at showing his fans what he went through once again, just with a different scenario with his addictions and his rehabilitation. He explained in his own words what he was trying to say with this album. “ I don’t want to go overboard with it, but I do feel like that if I can help people that have been through a certain situation, then, you know, why not?”

Rapper, Actor, Hero, Musician, Marshall Mathers, or Eminem, portrays himself throughout his career as a couple different persons or personalities and they are all true to the album he was creating at the time or the phase he may have been going through at the time, but growing up the way he has and making something huge out of himself over the years has definitely proved why he was chosen by myself to write this paper about his life and accomplishments for himself and to the world. He overcame everything he had gone through from his mother, his wife, and himself going through changes throughout his life to set himself space bound and free of the problems he overcame. The lessons that people are learning still to this day about Eminem and his lifestyle and way of life will hopefully takeover a good amount of society’s way of living one day and to turn bad choices into good ones. He has taught people through his music to never give up, stay strong, believe, and don’t worry about people that talk bad about you. Do not let anybody tell you that you aren’t who you think you are or who you want to be.