Artist history                                    



Eminem born Marshall Bruce Mathers the third is a rapper, record producer, song writer and actor. Eminem first got interested in hip hop when he watched the movie breakin' and saw Ice T perform the song reckless in the movie. At the age 14, Eminem began rapping with his high school friend Mike Ruby, their rap names were Manix and M&M, which was later changed to Eminem. Eminem would sneak out of school so he would go to the Osborn High School(which was close to his school) with his friend and fellow rapper proof for lunchroom freestyle battles. On Saturdays they would both attend open mic contests at the Hip Hop Shop, located on West 7 Mile.      





Eminem gained approval from underground hip hop audiences. At that time Eminem was recruited to join sa lot of groups because of his growing profile and reputation. The first group he joined was was the New Jacks and after they disbanded , he joined Soul Intent, they released a single in 1995. The song also featured his friend Proof. They went on to form D12. Eminem was soon signed to FBT Productions, run by brothers Jeff and Mark Bass, and he recorded his debut album Infinite under their independent label Web Entertainment in 1996. Music critics didn't warm to the album but they praised Eminem for his lyrically skills. At this time Eminem  lived in a high crime neighborhood, where his house was burgled numerous of times. He also had a job as a cooker and dishwasher at a family style restaurant. He was fired shortly before Christmas. By March 1997, Eminem was fired from his job for the last time, and he was still living in his mothers mobile home with his girlfriend and daughter.  


 





Things started to pickup when he developed his sadistic, ultra violent alter ego Slim Shady. The character a drug dealing, bloodthirsty thug who spits furious rhymes about murder, rape, drugs and living by the law of the urban jungle. In the spring of 1997, he recorded his debut EP, the Slim Shady EP, issued later that winter by web Entertainment. The EP features constant reference to drug use, mental instability and over the top violence. After being evicted from his home, Eminem traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the rap Olympics, an annual nationwide rap battle competition. He placed second, and the staff at Interscope Records who attended the event sent a copy of the Slim Shady EP to the company CEO Jimmy Iovine. Iovine then played the tape for record producer Dr. Dre, founder of Aftermath Entertainment. Dre immedatly wanted to sign him after listening to the album and sent Jimmy Iovine to find him. Eminem's major label debut The Slim Shady LP was released in February 1999 and went on to become one of the most popular albums of the year, going triple platinum by the end of the year. With the albums popularity came controversy surrounding many of the albums lyrics. In the song '97 Bonnie and Clyde', he describes a trip with his infant daughter, disposing of his wife's body. Another song, 'Guilty Conscience', ends with him encouraging a man to murder his wife.       







The Marshal Mathers LP was released in May 2000. It went on to sell 1.76 million copies in its first week, breaking the records set by Snoop Dogg's album Doggystyle as the fastest selling hip hop album and Britney Spears ...Baby One More Time as the fastest selling solo album in US history. The first single released from the album, 'The Real Slim Shady' was a success and created some controversy by insulting celebrities and making dubious claims about them. In his second single. 'The Way I Am', he reveals to his fans the pressures from his record company to top 'My Name Is' and sell more records. In the third single, 'Stan' (which samples Dido's 'Thank you'), Eminem attempts to deal with his new found fame, taking on the persona of a deranged fan who kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend, mirroring '97 Bonnie and Clyde' on the Slim Shady LP. Q magazine named 'Stan' the third greatest rap song of all time. In July 2000, Eminem became the first white person to be featured on the cover of the source magazine. The Marshal Mathers LP has been certified 10x platinum by the RIAA.  




Eminem performed with Elton John at the 43rd Grammy awards ceremony in 2001; the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an organisation that perceived Eminem's lyrics to be homophobic, condemned the openly gay singer's decision to perform with Eminem. Entertainment weekly put it  as number one on it's end of decade, best of list, saying, 'It was the hug heard round the world. Eminem, under fire for homophobic lyrics, shared the stage with a gay icon for a performance of 'Stan' that would have been memorable in any context.' On February 21, the day of the ceremony GLAAD held a protest outside the Staples Center, the venue where the Grammy ceremony was held.     


Eminem's third major album, The Eminem Show, was released in summer 2002 and proved to be another hit for him reaching number one on the charts and selling well over 1.332 million copies in its first full week  sales. The Eminem Show was the best selling album of 2002. In 2004, Eminem released his fourth major album, Encore. The album was another chart topper.  In 2005, some industry insiders speculated that Eminem was considering ending his rapping career after six years and several multi-platinum albums. Speculation began in early 2005 about a double disc album to be released late that year, rumored to be titled The Funeral. The album later manifested itself as a greatest hits album under the name Curtain Call: The Hits in December. On the same day of the release of the compilation album, Eminem said he wasn't retiring but he would at least be taking a break as an artist, saying 'I'm at a point in my life right now where I feel like I don't know where my career is going... This is the reason why we called it 'Curtain Call', because this could be the final thing. We don't know.'  




In summer 2005, Eminem embarked on his first US concert run in three years, the Anger Management 3 Tour. In August 2005, Eminem cancelled the European leg of the tour and subsequently announced that he had entered drug rehabilitation for treatment for a 'dependency on sleep medication'. Curtain Call: The Hits was released on December 6th 2005, under Aftermath Entertainment. In its first week it sold nearly 441,000 copies in the US and was Eminem's fourth straight No. 1 album on the Billboard Hot 200. The album has been certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA. It was at this time that he started to gain weight. Speaking about the experience 'I feel better. I feel like a human being again. There was one point in time where I felt like...plastic . I think I looked plastic. My face, fat plastic. I was eating, but the Vicodin made me hungry because it eats up your stomach lining, so you want to fill your stomach back up, but then it blocks you up. That's why I was gaining so much weight, I was just so bloated'.   




Eminem made an appearance on his Sirius channel Shade 45 in September 2008 in which he said, 'Right now I'm kinda just concentrating on my own stuff, for right now and just banging out tracks and producing a lot of stuff. You know, the more I keep producing the better it seems like I get cause I just start knowing stuff'. It was around this time that Interscope finally confirmed the existence of a new Eminem album, with Spring 2009 later being stated as the period span in which the album is due. In December 2008, he gave more details on the album, which he recently reported was being titled Relapse. He said, 'Me and Dre are back in the lab like the old days, man. Dre will end up producing the majority of the tracks on 'Relapse'. Wee are up to our old mischievous ways...let's just leave it at that'.    

On March 5, 2009, Eminem reported in a press release that he would be releasing two new albums that year. Relapse, the first album, was released on May 19th, while 'We Made You', the first official single and its music video, were released on April 7th. While relapse did not manage to sell as well as his previous efforts, it was still a commercial success that received some critical acclaim, while also re establishing his presence in the hip hop world. Relapse was named one of the top albums of 2009. Relapse has sold more than five million copies worldwide. On November 19th, Eminem announced on his website that Relapse: Refill would be released on December 21st. The album was a re release of the Release album with seven bonus tracks, including Forever and Taking My Ball. In a statement he described the forthcoming CD: 'I want to deliver more material for the fans this year like I originally planned...Hopefully these tracks on Refill will tide the fans over until we put out Relapse 2 next year...I got back in with Dre and then a few more producers, including Just Blaze, and went in a completely different direction which made me start from scratch. The new tracks started to sound very different than the tracks I originally intended to be on Relapse 2, but I still want the other stuff to be heard'.             




On April 14, 2010, Eminem tweeted, 'There is no Relapse 2' to his followers. This caused people to believe that he was not releasing an album at all, but it simply meant that the album title would be changed to Recovery. He confirmed this by tweeting, 'RECOVERY', with a link to his website. Eminem said, 'I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year. But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves it's own title.' His seventh studio album, Recovery, was released on June 18th. In the US, Recovery sold 741,000 in its first week to land atop the Billboard 200. It became Eminem's sixth consecutive number one album in the US and achieved international commercial success, charting at number one several other countries. It stayed at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart for five consecutive weeks and a total of seven weeks.